ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
BY JESSE ANDREWS
PUBLISHED: 2012
AVERAGE RATING: 3.59
295 PAGES
READ: SEPTEMBER 27TH - SEPTEMBER 30TH 2015
★★★★☆

(Review published September 30, 2015)

I'd decided it would be nice to have a e-book available since I use plenty of my day just sitting on the bus, existing. Why not spend the time enjoying a good book? So I borrowed this one on the e-library, looking forward to spend the next couple of weeks on the bus reading.

Then I finished it in three days, and most of it over one night because I just couldn't put it away.
(which on a completely different note and for those of you who read my weekly update, is proof of why I can't read anything else but short story collections during stressful weeks..I almost overslept the next morning because I seriously couldn't come to my senses and put the book away)

"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" was written by Jesse Andrews and was published March 1st 2012. It is "the best debut novel he has ever written", according to himself (on goodreads). The book holds the genres young adult (YA), fiction, contemporary and humor. The book has been adapted to a movie with the same name, which was released 12th of June 2015 in USA, and 25th of September 2015 here in Norway.

“I'm not really putting this very well. My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And, unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there are definitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you're supposed to think are deep because they're in italics. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about sentences like this:

The cancer had taken her eyeballs, yet she saw the world with more clarity than ever before.

Barf. Forget it.

Greg Gaines is on his last year of high school. He has one friend, or rather a co-worker,named Earl who he makes movies with. He has successfully managed to blend in with every group at the school That way, he has no friends, but also no enemies. Which is exactly the point. Life is good. 

Then Greg's mother forces him to start hanging out with Rachel again, and soon his life is changed forever. 

Rachel is a childhood friend who has been diagnosed with Leukemia, and as Greg and Earl try to do what they can to cheer her up, the idea of making her a movie comes to mind. When the movie then turn out to be "The Worst Film Ever Made", it becomes a turning point for both of them. 


Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a really easy read that makes you laugh a lot. A lot. It's almost awkward how much I relate to the main character Greg and his constant goofiness. It's impossible not to fall completely in love with both him and the other characters in this book. It is written in diary-style, and through "Greg's own words", you really get to know him and how he thinks in all the situations. Which is hilarious, most of the time.

“I think I might have a disorder where your emotions frequently malfunction and a lot of the time you're sitting there feeling something inappropriate. It should be called Emotional Moron Disorder”

Somehow, between all the goofiness and the awkward situations, it's a lesson of life and how it plays you, and how you should play it back. This book made me laugh, cry and believe in myself and the choices that I've made so far in my life.

I really can't wait to see the movie! If they've caught the spirit that this book has, it's bound to be amazing.