From the first words of this book I was drawn in-- the voice is that strong. It reminds me of my first time reading The Catcher in the Rye, when I was much, much younger. "Can he really say that?" I kept asking, and yet the voice was so compelling that I believed everything John said.

There's a conceit here that made me a bit uncomfortable-- that "John Kennedy" and his brother Joe are somehow offspring of the famous Kennedy clan. I don't think the book needs that hook, because the characters are so strong and the voice so compelling that I would have read it without that overlay. Of coursed that would mean a different title...

I can't rave enough about this book, which I think captures the zeitgeist in the same way that Catcher did, with many of the same conceits (alienated prep school boy on a wild weekend).