Book Review: Life in Outer Space - Melissa Keil

Title: Life in Outer Space

Author: Melissa Keil

Release Date: February 1st 2013

Publisher: Hardie Grant Egmont
Age Group: Young Adult

Source: NetGalley
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Sam Kinnison is a geek, and he’s totally fine with that. He has his horror movies, his nerdy friends, World of Warcraft – and until Princess Leia turns up in his bedroom, he doesn’t have to worry about girls.

Then Sam meets Camilla. She’s beautiful, friendly and completely irrelevant to his life. Sam is determined to ignore her, except that Camilla has a life of her own – and she’s decided that he’s going to be part of it.

Sam believes that everything he needs to know he can learn from the movies... but now it looks like he’s been watching the wrong ones.

There are a lot of great books out there, but only a few are stand-outs, gems within their genres. Life in Outer Space is one of those rarities. For some reason - well, it's obviously the title - I actually thought this was a sci-fi book, and that's just the first of the many amusing oddities this book has. I have Dianne of Oops! I Read a Book Again to thank for making this one known to me. God knows how it pulled me out of a weeks-long reading slump.

Right from page one, I knew this book would turn out to be something completely different from what I'd thought it would be (sci-fi expectations aside). It's not hard to relate to Sam, the awkward and realistic and a tad bit cynical main character, and his geektastic group of friends who supplies what little color his otherwise dull life has. Victims to the Mean Boys and Girls of their school, they stick together and hide in their own safe haven, counting down the days until they get out of the hellhole that is high school.

I guess some people enter your orbit and get stuck, and there's nothing either of you can do about it. 

At least until Camilla, the nerdy girl who's cute and connected-to-famous-people enough to be inducted into the cool group on her first day at a new school, barges in on their monotonous life. Sam knows they should stay away from her and her attempts at friendship because what would a girl like her want to do with people like them? But that proves hard to do when Camilla invites him to play World of Warcraft and wears her hair a la Princess Leia to school. Slowly but not-so-subtly, Camilla alters his life from existing to truly living.

We watched Dirty Dancing. Mike fell asleep, but I had to admit I kind of liked it, which made me question my own sexuality, raising a whole heap of other questions I chose not to examine.

See, what I loved most about this book was how it dealt with heavy issues in a light way. I kept laughing at the weirdest, most inappropriate parts, earning me weird looks from the people around me. It has the kind of humor that's so brutally honest it's hilarious, and combined with the peculiarities of the characters, Life in Outer Space makes for one adorable, feel-good book that I recommend for anyone looking for something fresh. Oh, and can I just say how much I loved the friendship and romance in this book? Because aww.

MY FAVORITE PART was Sam's karate intervention :))

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