Book Review: The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life by Tara Altebrando

Title: The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life 

Author: Tara Altebrando

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile ( Penguin group)

Published On: July 5, 2012

Source: own copy

An all-day scavenger hunt in the name of eternal small-town glory
With only a week until graduation, there's one last thing Mary and her friends must do together: participate in the Oyster Point High Official Unofficial Senior Week Scavenger Hunt. And Mary is determined to win.
Mary lost her spot at Georgetown to self-professed "it" bully Jake Barbone, and she's not about to lose again. But everyone is racing for the finish line with complicated motives, and the team's all-night adventure becomes all-night drama as shifting alliances, flared tempers, and crushing crushes take over. As the items and points pile up, Mary and her team must reinvent their strategy--and themselves--in order to win.(goodreads)

My Thoughts:

It was a really fun read! I adored it. What I expected to be a light read turned out to be quite a little bit heavy after all. Mary, the one narrating the story, pretty much carries a lot of emotional baggage with her...and well, everyone in there has. There were so many characters in the book, but somehow I didn't have a hard time remembering all of them. It was that enjoyable I guess. the writing was smooth and funny. The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life is about remembering and saying goodbye. Cliché as it may be but there's something treasurly in one night-setting novels. Something epic and life changing. And it was..in this novel. I think we all get to experience many life-changing nights in our lives. Things like these makes me wonder how, in one day (12 hrs really if you're going to be strict about it,lol) many things could happen. Though, I've experienced a looooong day-one day. All things are possible I guess. But for an almost 300-page novel? Impressive. Moving on, I liked Mary. I can actually relate to her: the honest, smarty, goody girl with a bit of insensitivity on her. Dez was pretty awesome for a friend, also Patrick. He was very cool with how things ended for him that night, and I salute him for that. Winter was a good friend, but her kept secret invoving Mary hurt a lot. She didn't even know how she hurt her. Bummer. Carson was attractive (yes, even if I havent seen him) but by the end of the book, I learned to know more of him and could finally see who he truly was, but I still think he's a good friend to all of them. Each of them had something to give for the story. Different types ofparents also came into the picture, even if only a bit. There was a little bit of everything in the novel which is fairly understandable since it's a one-night only gig, but for a 1-nyt gig, it held ao much in its hands. All the pent-up emotions in high school, all the lost chances, and many many possibilities..and one of them I'm already eyeing on. (Something to do with Lucas..i hope there's a spin-off,lol) and my oh my the scavenger in itself was so exciting! I was thrilled all the time. O guessed the Winston Churchill instantly just by looking at the jumbled words..just sayin'! Lol. I'm competitive in nature, healthy competitions. Hee. So you can see how I was so happy with the story. The adrenaline rush of wanting to win being your urge to move faster and right. You'll laugh a lot and cry a lil on this book. I did.!