Crazy Dangerous Blog Tour

TITLE Crazy Dangerous
AUTHOR Andrew Klavan
PUBLICATION May 1, 2012 by Thomas Nelson
READ May 29 - 31, 2012
BUY IT Amazon / The Book Depository

"You probably want to hear about Jennifer and the demons and how I played chicken with a freight train and—oh yeah—the weird murder and how I found out about it—you're definitely going to want to hear about that. But first, I have to tell you about the stupidest thing I ever did . . ."

Sam Hopkins is bored with his status as a preacher's kid. So when a group of guys notorious for being in trouble offers him friendship, he accepts. Before long, he has several new skills—including hot-wiring cars.

At school, there's an eccentric loner named Jennifer. When Sam defends her from being bullied, she begins to seek him out as her only friend. Her ramblings often seem illogical . . . but then start to contain grains of truth. One leads Sam to discover that one of his new friends has been killed. And then she tells him, "I'm looking for the devil." Sam doesn't know what that means, but he knows it's a matter of life and death that he figure it out.

Everyone else thinks Jennifer is suffering from schizophrenia. But Sam is starting to wonder if there could be something prophetic in her words. Discovering the truth is going to be both crazy and dangerous.

A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Crazy Dangerous starts off with a bang.  When I read the opening page of this book I found myself grinning and knew I was in for a wild ride.  We start off in the mind of Sam Hopkins the local preachers kid in the small town of Sawnee, as he explains how he became the bloodied, mangled, almost dead body on the side of the road.  That's a bang if ever there was one, right? He explains to us how he is sick of being known as the PK (preachers kid) in town and of people acting differently towards him because of it.  So Sam makes a bad decision and he starts running with a group of local thugs to show that he is not just an innocent PK.

Sam Hopkins was a great MC, through him the novel is written in a very informal way, it felt as if I was simply having a conversation with him throughout.  The story had a great flow and I found myself eating up the pages really fast.  He felt real, and I believed the predicament he was facing in trying to get out of the mold he grew up in.  I knew that he wasn't going about any of it the right way, but I totally understood his motives.  Come on, if the characters in stories always did the right thing, they wouldn't be very interesting. 

The POV is shared with Jennifer Sales, a loner from Sam's school who talks in tongues and acts strange.  The parts from her perspective were haunting to say the least.  She is constantly bothered by demons lurking and telling her about terrible things to come.  I was fascinated by Jennifer, every time she talked we got to try to decipher what she was seeing and saying and it really added a depth to the mystery of the story. The whole time you know there is truth in what she is saying, but unravelling where it is coming from made for an intense read.

There are religious undertones here, but I found that they really added to the story in a good way and it didn't feel as if the author was beating me over the head with a bible. All in all I really enjoyed Crazy Dangerous, it's well written and has some great mystery. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an Alluring Read.

Award winning author, screenwriter and media commentator Andrew Klavan is the author of such internationally bestselling novels as True Crime, filmed by Clint Eastwood, and Don’t Say A Word, filmed starring Michael Douglas. Andrew has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award five times and has won twice. His books have been translated around the world. His latest novel for adults, The Identity Man, has been praised by Nelson Demille as “fast paced, intelligent and thought-provoking; a great read!” Television and radio host Glenn Beck says “Andrew Klavan never disappoints…one of the best illustrations of the power of redemption that I’ve ever read.” His last novel Empire of Lies was about media bias in the age of terror, and topped Amazon.com’s thriller list. Andrew has also published a series of thrillers for young adults, The Homelanders, which follows a patriotic teenager’s battle against jihadists. The books have been optioned to be made into movies by Summit Entertainment, the team behind the mega-successful Twilight film series.

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This has been a part of the Crazy Dangerous Blog Tour brought to you by YA Bound. To see all the stops on this tour click here.