Seventeen-year-old Cameron Martin has a huge problem: he’s aging a whole year of his life with each passing day! High school is hard enough; imagine rapidly aging from seventeen to seventy in a matter of weeks, with no logical explanation, and with prom, graduation, and the state championship basketball game all on the horizon. That’s what happens to Cameron, a popular pretty boy who's never had to face a day looking anything but perfect.
All Cameron wants to do is go back to normal, but no one, not even the best doctors, can diagnose his condition. When he finds love with a mysterious young woman, however, he realizes his only hope for survival might be with the one person who started his condition in the first place..
This book grabbed me from page one, because the beginning is actually a scene of the book pretty close to the end of it, so from the beginning we know how things are going to pan out and this bit at the beginning has us wondering all the way through what will happen at the very end. (I'm trying to be cryptic, is it working?), and Cameron's voice is so engaging that it didn't take me long at all to be interested in his story.
At times this book seemed pretty similar to Alex Flinn's Beastly, whilst both have their originality, they both use the concept of an attractive, cocky, popular boy being made less attractive somehow by the mysterious, unusual girl. Don't let that sway your opinion, this story is more engaging than Beastly and the characters were better to read.
I loved both Liesl and Cameron as characters but their whirlwind romance at the end comes as kind of instalove, and I can't help but see images of this pretty seventeen year old girl walking hand in hand down a school hall with an eighty year old man, which hindered my enjoyment of the romance. I also like Wesley, Cameron's best friend who was supportive of his condition, Aaron, who has a crush on the aging Cameron. I totally disliked Charisma, Cameron's ex-girlfriend, but personally I'm bound to dislike anyone with name like that.
The book has a lot of humour, which I absolutely loved. Some of the scenes had me heaving with laughter, like the bedroom scene with his mum, or the library lady kidnapping him, but the book also had a pretty good moral.
Overall, Happy Birthday to Me was a fun and engaging read which, despite not being the most original book, makes up with it in humour and writing.
Overall Rating: B-
Published April 7th 2011 independently, this book was given to me by the author in exchange for an honest review.
Great review! I really enjoyed this book, and the sequel. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
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