{Review} Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan

ISBN #: 978-1595547934

Page Count: 336

Copyright: May 1, 2012

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Book Summary:

(Taken from Amazon)

Sam Hopkins is a good kid who has fallen in with the wrong crowd. Hanging around with car thieves and thugs, Sam knows it's only a matter of time before he makes one bad decision too many and gets into real trouble.

But one day, Sam sees these thugs harassing an eccentric schoolmate named Jennifer. Finding the courage to face the bullies down, Sam loses a bad set of friends and acquires a very strange new one.

Because Jennifer is not just eccentric. To Sam, she seems downright crazy. She has terrifying hallucinations involving demons, the devil, and death. And here's the really crazy part: Sam is beginning to suspect that these visions may actually be prophecies - prophecies of something terrible that's going to happen very soon. Unless he can stop it.

With no one to believe him, with no one to help him, Sam is now all alone in a race against time. Finding the truth before disaster strikes is going to be both crazy and very, very dangerous.

Mandy's Review:

I was surprised by this book. I thought for sure that it would be a cheesy Christian novel about demons. It was not.

Sam is a 16-year-old high school student who's training to join the track team at his high school. Although he's the son of a preacher, his smart mouth lands him in favor with the bad boys of the high school. At first Sam thinks this is cool because he's tired of people not being normal around him just because of him being a preacher's kid. Especially Zoe, a girl who only has eyes for Mark, the high school track star and Jennifer's older brother.

Jennifer hears voices that she believes to be demons. She only hears them at night when it's dark and she's all alone in bed. Along with the voices are the strange visions she has. When she meets Sam, she's out looking for the devil.

Through some strange circumstances, Sam befriends Jennifer causing him to get an "in" with Mark and the cool crowd. During his friendship with Jennifer, Sam considers Jennifer's crazy talk and realizes that there may be something to it.

Although Sam's a preacher's kid and is held to a higher standard of conduct than most, he steals a car, breaks into a hospital, breaks out with a patient and runs from the police ... all to save a huge crowd of people and to prove the truth behind Jennifer's visions. A truth that is shocking and completely unexpected.

Crazy Dangerous is definitely crazy, but a great read. The majority of the novel is from Sam's perspective with the remaining parts from Jennifer's perspective. Reading her rendition of the voices she hears and the visions she sees can be heart-pounding. Andrew Klavan has proven that you can have a suspensefully thrilling novel without any vulgarity or crude language. Well done, Mr. Klavan. I am now a fan of your work.


*An ecopy of this book was provided by BookSneeze in exchange for an honest review.