I had a conversation with my book club kids a couple weeks ago about the power of one summer. We’d just finished reading Siobhan Vivian’s Same Difference and I was curious whether they believed one person could change radically over the course of one season. I’m a believer in the notion that people can, given the right situations and right circumstances, and I was pleased to hear my teens thought the same thing. In fact, they believe people can change completely, even in just a couple of weeks.

The reason I bring up this idea is because it’s the big thing at play in Geoff Herbach’s debut novel Stupid Fast. This book might easily be at the top of my 2011 favorites list, with its fantastic story line, strong voice, well-played themes, and for its incredible appeal for both guys and girls.

Felton Reinstein is a loser. I mean, the kind of guy who loser movies and books are written about. He’s never been the biggest nor the strongest and he’s even earned himself the nickname of squirrel nuts (for reasons I hope I don’t need to explain). Fortunately, Felton’s got about the best friend he can have in Gus — that is, until Gus’s family takes a summer away in Venezuela and things tumble inexplicable out of control.

But in a good way.

Suddenly, Felton’s no longer the scrawny guy. He’s no longer the guy that people pick on. He’s become, in his own terms, stupid fast. He’s become a jock extraordinaire, and he takes his talents out to the football field, where he suddenly becomes the MVP. For real — this guy can outrun and outplay anyone, and now there’s even the possibility of being scouted by big name university football coaches.

And lucky for Felton, despite his best friend moving away from the summer, he’ll be making a new friend. But not the kind of friend Gus was. No, this time he’ll be making a girlfriend in Aleah, the girl who, along with her family, is renting Gus’s house for the summer. And maybe, just maybe, Felton might fall in love for the first time.

Stupid Fast is the kind of story I love, as it tackles the challenges of growing up in such a realistic, funny, and honest way. But more than that, this story delves into some really heavy issues, including interracial dating and social class. Herbach’s story takes place in a small town in western Wisconsin (which, by all my bets and knowledge of western Wisconsin, is modeled after Platteville). It reminded me a lot of one of my all-time favorite books, Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s The Dairy Queen, incidentally also set in small town Wisconsin.

Let me start by digging into the structure of this novel. It’s told in a diary format. The thing is, since it’s told through the “diary” entry of a guy, it’s nothing like a typical diary. Instead, it’s much more candid and much less reliant on what Felton was feeling. It’s, if you will, a play-by-play of the events that led up to the moment he started writing. The entire diary is the set up for the story, and the entry is written over only the course of one night. But the book itself chronicles more than one night — it chronicles the entire summer before (and then some). Felton’s at a turning point in his life, and he knows it. That turning point is one he knows he has to face head on, and the only way he can do it is by reflecting upon the events that helped turn him from the class joke to the class jock. Herbach gets this sort of epiphany perfectly, and it’s entirely suited to who Felton is as a character. We learn with him as we reflect with him, and we’re able to appreciate the entire journey of his summer with him step by step. But the thing is, we’re not handed the story through Felton, either: we know there is something incredibly heart breaking that he is trying to figure out and understand as it relates to his family, and we’re not entirely privy to it. We have to work along with Felton to put the pieces together and come to understand why this reflection is necessary.

Felton as a character is one of the best male leads I’ve read in a while. Never does he sway into being too emotional and never does he sway into becoming too much of a joker. One of my biggest pet peeves in a story that’s male-voice driven is that it can too easily go one way or the other; often, I think authors rely too much on making their males too funny and too stereotypically “guy.” Felton isn’t. Felton has a good sense of humor but it’s never over-the-top, and he’s got the right balance of seriousness with emotional insight. We understand how Felton feels when it comes to romance, to his best friend, and to his staggering physical changes, and we understand why he feels so out of place in his family. It’s well paced and well developed. He’s a typical guy’s guy, and the things he goes through are, without doubt, relatable to the vast majority of guy readers. Moreover, though, this is the kind of male voice that appeals to female readers, too, since it’s not overly macho and not overly immature. Herbach strikes just the right balance.

Moreover, the character growth in Felton is enjoyable to watch. Although he’s fixated on the physical changes — which are naturally the most easy to see for him — as readers, we experience first hand the emotional changes, too. And this brings me back to a point I brought up earlier: what this book does so well is integrate huge issues into the story without making them Huge Issues.

Felton falls in love in this story. He meets Aleah, a girl who is a piano prodigy and who is spending the summer in this small town while her father takes a visiting faculty position at the local college. But Aleah is so different from himself. For starters, she’s African American. Not only that, but she’s in an entirely different social class than he is. Felton’s nervous to not only be attracted to someone so different from him and so different from everything he’s been exposed to in his life, but he’s also making himself more nervous by actually following his heart and getting to know Aleah better. Before that summer, Felton wouldn’t have had the nerve to do it. He would have let the opportunity pass him. But this summer? He goes all out for love, and in the process, learns that the things he thinks are hurdles to overcome are nothing but mental set backs he uses as excuses not to put himself out there and try new things.

The romance in this book is incredibly sweet and a little heartbreaking, too. It’s a very guy romance, as well, and I don’t think guys will have a problem reading it. I loved Aleah as a character, and I feel like she’s really the balance Felton needed. The setting, too, is pitch perfect for both the romance and for the transformative growth Felton experiences.

There is so much more I could talk about in this book, including the powerful family story that occurs, but I won’t because this is a book you need to read and unravel yourself. This is a richly layered story with huge reader appeal. It’s well paced, funny, and it will appeal to fans of realistic coming-of-age stories. It’s fairly clean, meaning that this is the kind of book I’d feel comfortable giving to readers 12 and up, and it’s one that I think would make an excellent book club choice for teen readers. It reminded me a lot of Murdock’s Dairy Queen series, both because of setting and because of the use of sports and family as a vehicle of growth. This book is one that I sure hope gets some Morris consideration this year, as it’s a debut of note.

Bonus: this is an original paperback release title, too, meaning it’s budget friendly.

Finished copy picked up at Book Blogger Convention. That means it’s available now!