[LISTENED TO: Summer 2017] Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
I might be one of the few people in America to have never read anything by James Patterson. Well, C. really enjoyed this series (and his other books for young readers) so we decided to listen to this on a car ride. (Both kids had seen the film already, although I hadn’t).
I have to say that right off the bat I was turned off by the introduction of this book because there was this hard rocking guitar that they played through about 3 minutes of opening text. And it was too loud! It was really hard to hear the narrator. I kind of tuned out because I feared that the whole book would feature this (it doesn’t). And while I won’t say I was confused by what I missed, I did wonder if I’d missed some things that were revealed later (also, some of the main character’s motivation).
Rafe Khatchadorian is starting Hills Village Middle School. It’s a new school (sixth grade). Rafe seems to have a hard to succeeding in school in general. There’s also a lot going on at home. His mom has been dating a jerk named Bear. Bear is unemployed, and living with them while Rafe’s mom is working two jobs and is hardly ever home.
The only person who seems to help Rafe cope with things is his friend Leo the Silent. Leo doesn’t talk much, but he is an awesome artist. And he also encourages Rafe to do things that maybe he shouldn’t.
When Rafe arrives at school, he is given a rule book with over 100 rules that he must follow. Given the possibility of hanging out, being good and following the rules or having fun and enjoying school, he and Leo make a choice. And they come up with “Operation R.A.F.E.” (which stands for Rules Aren’t For Everyone). The operation is set up like a video game. Rafe is going to try to break every rule in the handbook. Leo will award him points. But he will also only have three “lives,” which he will lose if he gets caught or otherwise fails in his quest.
Some of the rules are easy to break and people don’t even notice. Chewing gum in class–5,000 points! Running in the hallway–10,000 points! But Leo ups the ante and insists that Rafe score a certain number of points every day. Pulling the fire alarm–50,000 points! Which means that soon Rafe is in detention.
He feels bad about this, especially for his mom. She is kind and understanding and he knows she works really hard (and makes delicious pies at work). He hates to see her upset with him. But he can’t give up now, can he?
Especially since he has been getting a reputation. Unfortunately Miller (also known as Miller the Killer), the school bully has heard of this reputation. Miller puts Rafe on notice that Miller is always watching him–and isn’t afraid to hurt him, either. Obviously, Rafe doesn’t want to be the school bully, he is not challenging Miller at all. But Miller can’t be persuaded of that.
The only person in school who he likes is Jeanne Galletta. She’s a good girl and she knows that Rafe is a good kid, so she tries to steer him on the right path. Rafe has a huge crush on her so he takes some of her advances the wrong way. At first he’s happy to do good work with her (there’s a hilarious scene where he puts on a mascot costume to impress her), but once he feels that she is kind of babysitting him (and once he is sent to be tutored by her in math) he gives up on her and her good intentions.
The thing that Rafe loathes most is detention with Mrs. Donatello (whom he calls “Dragon Lady”). He has several detentions with her in which he knows she is trying to analyze him, but he’s not willing to fall for it. Eventually she just says they can simply sit and draw quietly, which is good for Rafe.
The plot more or less plays itself out nicely until a wrinkle occurs–Miller finds Rafe’s Operation R.AF.E. book and starts to blackmail him with it. This means that Rafe needs to make some money (which involves selling Bear’s stockpile of energy drink at school).
When Rafe sees the grades he is getting and realizes that he might have to repeat sixth grade, he decides to stop the nonsense and settle down. But he has already been tarred with the troublemaker brush and so no one believes that he is trying to do good now (except Jeanne).
Things come to a head in a couple of different ways. For Rafe it involves graffiti–an awesome attempt to make a lasting impression. At home it involves his mom finally realizing how terrible Bear is.
When the book opened, Rafe and Leo were in a police car. At least one of these events has something to do with that police car.
The ending is certainly interesting. Things go pretty well for Rafe, but he is in no way off the hook. And the way that Patterson arranges the ending (and the potential for sequels) was quite smart. There’s quite an unexpected ending and I loved the reveal.
Patterson seems to write a book a week and I can’t really say that this book was genius–there were a lot of things that were kind of easy and some things that were kind of lazy. But the story was good (certainly good for non-readers) and it moved at a fast clip.
I had a couple of problems with the audio book. The first is that this book revolves around art. There’s even a plot point involving Miller and drawing that the book says you really have to see. Well, the audio book comes with a disc of PDFs which is nice, but which is certainly inconvenient when you are in a car. I don’t really know how audio books could or should deal with pictures, but I felt at a disadvantage with that .
But then there was the reader, Bryan Kennedy. He did a very good job with most of the voices, but I feel like he made Rafe seem quite unlikable. There didn’t seem to be any real incentive for Rafe’s behavior (the film adds some seriously mean authority figures) and the tone that he took with Rafe made him seem rather like a jerk.
I wanted to like him, but I felt like he just seemed unlikable. That’s not a good tone for a main character especially one who sets off fire alarms.
But I enjoyed the story overall and I’m curious to find out what else happened to Rafe.
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