Every six or so months, my company has a giant book sale. Books come by the crate to our office, and the majority of them, I'd guess, go unread. I think some of the employees also donate books from home. They pile up in boxes in the office so that just before we move them to the sale space it looks like a band of children has built a fort to play in.
The sale is always a hit. Almost every book is priced at $1 and the proceeds go to various charitable, writing-related causes. (Part of this sale's proceeds are going to my cause -- the capital campaign for my college student newspaper. Yay!)
The point of telling you all that is that since the books are so cheap I feel I can choose one without knowing anything about it. I picked this one for the title alone.
It's the debut novel of Michele Young-Stone, who actually survived a lightning strike. The story flip-flops between Becca Burke, who is struck twice growing up, and Buckley Pitank, who has indirectly suffered the consequences of a strike and wishes to be directly struck to know what it's like. Interspersed with their stories are excerpts from the handbook itself (written, we come to find, by Buckley.)
Becca and Buckley's lives are connected but they don't discover it until they're both adults. The fun part of the book is knowing the connection before they do and waiting for them to find it.
The serious part of the book isn't about lightning at all. It's about these characters and how they shape their futures. They are special people, but it takes them a while to accept that. When they do, and when they finally figure out how to use what they've experienced over the course of their lives to their advantage, they realize that they've ended up exactly where they were always supposed to be.
It's a little formulaic, but I think for a first novel it's damn good. The characters are rich. The story is compelling enough to keep the pages turning. The ending is satisfying.
And it was only $1.
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