Review: Spinning Out by David Stahler Jr.

Book: Spinning Out by David Stahler Jr.
Pages: 288 Pages
Release Date: May 4th, 2011
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Source: Publisher

Synopsis:
High school senior Frenchy has little ambition beyond hanging out at the smoking rock until his best friend, the ever-witty and conniving Stewart, gets him to try out for Man of la Mancha. To everyone's surprise, the guys are a hit. But when Stewart's antics begin to grow more obsessive he wears his costume 24/7, freaks out about little details, and displays an incessant hatred of the high-tech windmills outside of town Frenchy worries that there's something deeper going on. Is Stewart spiraling into madness, just like Don Quixote? And can Frenchy battle through his own demons in time to save his friend from self-destruction before it's too late?

My Thoughts:

I really didn’t expect Spinning Out to be as good as it was. It was really slow at the beginning, but then after Stewart and Frenchy tried out for the play, something happened. It was one of those somethings’ that kept me reading the rest of the book without stopping.

Frenchy and Stewart, I think, should be in a top ten best friend list. They were like the three amigos except there wasn’t a third. It was refreshing to see because in most books you don’t really see straight guys being close all the time.

Reading about all the characters challenges and accomplishments in Man of La Mancha was very interesting. However, I didn’t think that how everything worked out in the theater was very realistic. My cousin (who used to be in a lot of productions) says that the cast and crew are like a family and in the book almost all of the people are separated into “cliques” like the “techs” and the “drama queens”.

It took me about one hundred pages to get into Spinning Out, but afterwards reading it was a blast. I can’t wait to read another of David Stahler’s books.