Review of "College Collage" by Scott Haworth

College Collage by Scott Haworth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Do you feel like you are missing out because you're not in College? Don't worry, this book can give you an almost play-by-play of the experience.

I can't decide whether this book is pure genius, or if it's a bad attempt at a new adult read. I honestly can't. Never in my life have I been more annoyed at a book's character's as I was while reading this. No seriously, my friends had to tolerate my rage all through the day.

The following review may contain spoilers. Proceed only if you don' mind.

The story is told from Nick's POV. We follow him, from his first day of college and until graduation. Here we're introduced to his roommates, and the otherwise agony pleasure of his college days.

At first, he completely loathe his two roommates. One, Chris, is a christian guy, who seems to be Nick's favorite victim of passive aggressive behavior. But not to worry, the party-boy, Drew, also receives quite a spectacular amount of Nick's sarcasm.

Out of the three characters, the only one who seems like a straight-up guy is Chris.

Nick hates almost anything. And if he doesn't hate it, he strongly dislike everything else. Throughout the book, he's annoyed at pretty much anything. The college, his roommates, his classmates, his teachers, the teacher assistants, the parties, religion, non-religious people, the girl's he deem slutty and even the girl's he deems too uptight. He's annoyed at the two girlfriend's he ends up having, and he's even annoyed at himself on a few occasions.

Basically, Nick is a major pessimist.

Before the half-way point of the book, he meets a muslim girl, Adara, at a Halloween party, and somehow ends up hooking up with her on the same day. Adara is a sensible, adventurous girl who wants to experience american culture to the fullest. I'm not too sure how her character is a correct portrayal of Muslims, but I gathered it could happen--and probably has--that a muslim would experiment with another culture. On several occasions, she doesn't wear her scarf, and she has sex with Nick quite a few times, along with partying hard. Around halfway through the book, she is discovered by her brother, who pulls her back to Saudi-Arab, and she sends an email to Nick, explaining she had fun but that she won't be coming back to College.

(view spoiler)[Then Nick shows his first real feelings for her. At earlier points in the book he seemed to be with Adara only out of convenience--she wasn't as bad as the rest. I felt bad for him for at least a minute before he turns around and acts like a dick to Drew who helped him get home by postponing his own return to his family.

After that, the book shifts a bit, and Nick's own pessimism is pushed to the background. Now, instead we're introduced to a horn-dog version of Drew. He sleeps around, and nothing is sacred--not even Chris' girlfriend Candy. I got annoyed at that, because Drew had seemed like a straight-up friend, despite using the word "slutty" to describe any girl he meets.

All while Nick finally gets a new girlfriend, Amanda, who he doesn't like at all. In fact, the only reason he's with her is because she says she's been raped. We later find out she's been lying about this.

The Climax of the book seems to be after Drew chooses to sleep with Candy. In response to figuring that out, Chris shoots himself and moves out of the apartment. After hearing that Chris survives, we suddenly shifts a year into the future. (hide spoiler)]

The book is riddled with Nick's opinions, and while I agree with many of them, it often seemed like a tool to shove opinions down my throat. Also, as we follow Nick around to his classes, I personally think there are way too many filler scenes where we hear Nick being annoyed at his school life. Complete with direct dialogue from a class that has no importance to the actual plot of the book.

I think I would have enjoyed this book a lot more if it wasn't so... bleh. A lot of the things I cared for was skipped. Like the tender moments that made Nick and Chris friend's for life.

With that said, I adored Chris, though. His character was definitely the person I saw develop most in the book, and he made me crack up the most. Chris was the entire reason I finished the book, and he bumped this book up from a one-star.

Chris was awesome. More Chris, please!

I don't know if I would recommend this book to anyone I know. If you have nothing to read, I suppose you wouldn't be completely off with this book, but I wouldn't recommend it over so many others.

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