Playing it Cool
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“I always know what I’m doing.”
So says 18-year-old Sebastian Montero, who is famous around town as a problem solver of the subtlest kind. Want a date with the girl of your dreams? Bastian can make it happen. Have a friend threatening suicide? Baz can talk him off the ledge. But as popular as Sebastian is, no one really knows him. Thanks to his intricate network of favors and debts Sebastian controls the world, manipulates it—and hides from it. It isn’t until his best friend asks him to track down his long-missing father that Sebastian is forced to face the most challenging problem of all, the solution to which will change his life forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sebastian Montero, 18, is the go-to guy when there's trouble. On the first day Dorfman's (Burning City) story takes place, Sebastian sets up a date for a lonely friend, delivers another to and from her appointment at an abortion clinic and talks a jumper down from a rooftop. His major project is reuniting best friend Jeremy with his long-lost father, Dromio, who abandoned him years earlier. Sebastian, also fatherless, has called in favors to track down and assemble a dossier on Dromio, a Robin Hood style do-gooder (like Sebastian?) who runs a restaurant where anybody can eat for 25 cents, but most people vastly overpay in order to distinguish themselves from those who can't. In a cockamamy scheme, the two buddies switch identities before meeting Dromio, just in case he turns out to be a cad. If all this sound a tad implausible, it is. Like his main character, Dorfman's narrative has too much going on. Everybody speaks in clever repart e (at one point, Sebastian asks, "Is there anyone in this town who can't quote Ambrose Bierce?" and the answer is, apparently, no). Still, there's a hipster cadence to Sebastian's present-tense narration, and a window into the adulterated world of grown-ups that might appeal to teen voyeurs willing to ignore the abundance of coincidences that fuels the plot. Ages 12-up.
Customer Reviews
Perfect for a teen who thinks outside the box
I read this book my sophomore year in high school and it was one of the first few books I actually enjoyed reading. I have a habit of putting off work but for our mandatory independent reading assignment I didn't hesitate to pick this book back up when I got home. Good book!