There are days when you scan your shelves for the next book to tackle and Jane Austen is what you pick up. And then there are days when you just want the satisfaction of crossing something off a list and you pick a super easy book half-filled with pictures because you know you can crank it out quick and move on to something else. The huge bummer of it all is when that's the mood you're in, but right after you start reading your husband goes on midnight shift and your sister comes to visit for three days and your dog breaks his leg and Christmas presents need to be wrapped and suddenly it's Christmas Eve and you're traveling...you see where I'm going with this? I didn't exactly crank this one out quick and move on, but the couple times that I did sit down and read I was able to zoom through about 100 pages at a time, keeping the total amount of time I actually spent reading pretty short. So my theory was spot on, anyway.
Get Me Out of Here, the second book in James Patterson's Middle School series, is just as cute and entertaining as the first...and maybe even a little bit more so. There were a couple of little things that irritated me about Rafe in the The Worst Years of my Life (the entire plot being centered around him breaking every rule in the school's code of conduct, for one), but those issues aren't here this time around. Either Patterson got some slack from other people and went a different direction, or he wanted to really show how his character had grown between books 1 and 2. Regardless, I like where he's headed with the series a lot.
As of the end of book 1, Rafe has been expelled from his public school but given an incredible opportunity to attend a private art school in town where his talents and creativity will be encouraged and fostered so he doesn't find himself itching to get into trouble again. Everything is perfect, until the diner his mom is a waitress in burns down and they find themselves jobless and homeless and moving to the "big city" to live in Grandma's tiny house. All seems lost until Rafe's mom surprises him with a special scholarship to a similar art school in their new city. Trouble surfaces once again, though, when he has a hard time making new friends in this cutthroat, hypercritical environment.
I still think the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are slightly more funny and witty, but I can see a big improvement from the first book to the second in this series. Rafe is more loveable, his antics are more tasteful, and the interactions between middle schoolers is more realistic. Both good and painful lesson learned in this one, and I found it all to be pretty believable. There's even a surprise-ish ending you don't necessarily see coming like last time, but unlike last time I wasn't super conflicted in my feelings about it. Overall, I liked it a lot. It was indeed a super quick read, and I'm excited to read the others at some point soon.
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