Cure for the Common Universe / Christian McKay Heidicker / 2016

Cure for the Common Universe / Christian McKay Heidicker / 2016

This book is hilarious. Especially if you have the sense of humor of a teenage boy and don’t mind curse words too much. I’m impressed by how many ways Heidicker managed to make Jaxon’s self-deprecating man boob jokes funny. Sophomoric jokes aside, I appreciated the emotional journey of the protagonist Jaxon on this one. While the majority of the plot tackles Jaxon’s cross-eyed infatuation with a teenage girl he had a five-minute (if that) encounter with, the novel successfully unravels Jaxon’s romantic naivete, family baggage, and teenage myopia. The conflict is this: Jaxon finally has a date on Friday, but on Monday, his parents force him to go to a video game rehabilitation center. Jaxon has four days to prove he’s well enough to leave the center and make it not only to his first date, but potentially his only chance at love in the universe. The rehab center features plenty of unexpected surprises, both within its bizarre programming and in the genuine wisdom teens learn at the facility. In my favorite scenes, Jaxon is called out for his privileges by a blunt queer fat Vietnamese teenage girl gamer, who despite facing racist bullying at the rehab center, manages to come off as more than a stereotype and one of the most fleshed out characters among the gamers. Much less can be said of Soup, a child Jaxon bullies and although he ultimately deeply regrets his behavior, Jaxon (and thereby the reader) aren’t afforded a glimpse into Soup’s full humanity.

Gamers will find a plethora of deep cut references to scratch their nerdy bones, but even if your gaming knowledge is limited, you will still find plenty to hang out to with this book.

Please gift this to a teenager in your life, especially if they have a doofus sense of humor. I recommend this book for anyone interested in YA, video games, masculinity, and fiction. I give this a 5/5.