Happy Birthday to Me ~ Brian Rowe review

My birthday's a good day to review a book with this title, right?

Happy Birthday to Me (#1)
CreateSpace
April 7, 2011
175 pages
Goodreads/Amazon

You've had someone ask you, on your birthday, if you 'feel any older,' right? Well, what if you didn't necessarily feel older but you looked older - a lot older?

Seventeen-year-old Cameron Martin has just about the perfect teenage life. He's a star on the basketball team, dating beautiful, popular Charisma, has applied to Yale and is only waiting on his acceptance. Cameron's friend Wes also loves birthdays - and the free things they can get you - and would celebrate his every day of the year if possible. Cam doesn't think it's as fun as Wes, but doesn't see the harm in it.

Until he wakes up the next morning and each day after that looking one year older. At first Cameron doesn't notice anything, he just thinks he's finally grown some facial hair, but after a few days he and his family become alarmed.

With Cam growing one year older with each day that passes, his time may be limited. Very limited.


This is a terrifically fun idea for a novel. The start reminded me quite a bit of Beastly by Alex Flinn: the popular, hot guy who's a little full of himself, has a bad relationship with his dad has something unexpected happen that affects his looks and things go from there.

Happy Birthday to Me is different though because Cameron is a very different person and the journey is also vastly different. It's interesting to me to see how Cameron reacts to his predicament - it might not have been the most logical reaction, but it worked well for a story. It was nice to see the way the family's relationship with each other developed of the story.

I would have liked a little more character growth with Cameron, to get just a little more insight into how he was dealing with things. There seemed to be not a lot of introspection from Cameron about a huge situation - or maybe I just wanted him to have more.

One of the characters - as well as the other characters reactions (or lack thereof to that character) seemed kind of inappropriate - and in one scene - a little squicky. I wasn't quite sure how to react to them.

It's a great idea for a series and now that I know the 'how,' too it might be possible to enjoy the sequel more - in the beginning of this one I wondered about the 'how' a lot.

7/10



thank you to the author for sending me the ebook for this title for review