Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: How to Be a Normal Person
SERIES: How to Be #1
AUTHOR: TJ Klune
NARRATOR: Derrick McClain
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2016
LENGTH: 11 hours, 7 minutes
BLURB:
Gustavo Tiberius is not normal. He knows this. Everyone in his small town of Abby, Oregon, knows this. He reads encyclopedias every night before bed. He has a pet ferret called Harry S. Truman. He owns a video rental store that no one goes to. His closest friends are a lady named Lottie with drag queen hair and a trio of elderly Vespa riders known as the We Three Queens.
Gus is not normal. And he’s fine with that. All he wants is to be left alone.
Until Casey, an asexual stoner hipster and the newest employee at Lottie’s Lattes, enters his life. For some reason, Casey thinks Gus is the greatest thing ever. And maybe Gus is starting to think the same thing about Casey, even if Casey is obsessive about Instagramming his food.
But Gus isn’t normal and Casey deserves someone who can be. Suddenly wanting to be that someone, Gus steps out of his comfort zone and plans to become the most normal person ever.
After all, what could possibly go wrong?
REVIEW:
How to Be a Normal Person is unique. Okay, it’s a book written by Klune, so you know that it’s not going to be like anything you’ve ever read or listened to before. And this book holds true to form in the best way. It’s not as insane as Klune’s books can be, not as outrageous. It’s gentler and quieter in a way, but with plenty of colourful characters that brightens your day.
Gustavo Tiberius is not like everyone else. He’s not what you’d call a people person and he loves his routines. Every day is the same as the last, he wakes up, exercise, takes care of his ferret Harry S. Truman, read the inspirational quote of the day before opening his video rental store. He gets his coffee from Lottie’s Lattes and read encyclopaedias before bed. One morning it’s not Lottie serving him his coffee, but an asexual hipster stoner taking selfies with him and posting them to Instagram. From that moment on Gustavo’s life turned upside down, and not even his beloved encyclopaedias can help him understand this new world that opened up.
I loved Casey and Gus together. I loved how Casey brought Gus out of his shell, taught him about the world and its possibilities. To try new things. Gus never changed, he was still the same adorable guy we first fell for, but he wasn’t as limited and set in his ways as he was in the beginning. At the same time Gus grounded Casey. Their love might not have been sexual, but it was potent and all-consuming and in a way it healed them both.
This book is told solely from Gus’ POV and I don’t think that could have been an easy feat for Derrick McClain. That with every sentence, every word convey Gus’ bewilderment of the world and the people in it. One of the more hilarious moments is when Gustavo tries to buy the Internet to look up how to be a normal person so he could understand an asexual hipster stoner. I mean that phone call was … epic. It makes me wonder how many takes Derrick McClain had to record of it, how many times he burst out laughing. Because how he could deliver it in that no-nonsense serious voice is beyond me. It was fantastic, fun and really shows his talent for narration.
How to Be a Normal Person was a great book to listen to. It was a book that’s outside the norm in every way. It teaches us to love us for who we are, to love our differences and that there’s no such thing as normal.
RATING: 
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