Danny Roberts is enjoying life. He’s a straight A student playing in the school orchestra and on the fast track to university. But when Danny defies authority for the first time, things go wrong quickly. Luckily Danny doesn’t let these challenges get him down. He decides to fight back on his own terms and charts his own course to success. With the support of his parents, Plan B might just work.
In his second book, Steven Verrier, author of Tough Love, Tender Heart, switches gears to bring young adult readers a fun and engaging story of teenager Danny Roberts, whose life goes from charmed to downright awful in the span of a few days. I don’t want to spoil anything for potential readers by giving away too much of the beginning, but it is certainly the perfect opener for Plan B. Just imagine what it might have been like at your high school: your next class is at one end of the building, you’re at the other, you’ve just eaten lunch, and unfortunately the distance is so great between Point A and Point B that you can’t fit in the crucial pee break without being late for class.
Such starts the downward spiral of Danny’s high school career. From there, it just gets funnier, as inept school administrators and educators use Danny’s first challenge to authority to derail his model high school career and potentially his future.
Problem is, after Danny gets beyond the high school issues, he doesn’t have a lot of conflict to deal with–unless you want to count deciding which girl to spend time with. That’s where the book lagged a bit for me, because the conflict didn’t keep pace with the rest of the story: it came on strong in the beginning and then waned. Because Danny is pretty much a genius, he is able to easily meet most of his challenges. I wanted to see his resolve tested more.
Despite that, Plan B kept me turning the pages, and I found it to be a quick, light read that I believe many teens will enjoy. I would definitely be interested in reading more from Verrier in the future.
Rating: 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
The Children's and Teens' Book Connection 