Sick in the Real World

Hey peoples, this is RR reporting from.. well, who are we kidding, I'm not actually going to tell you.
I am sick. Have been since six this morning. Lotsa ickiness. But I have had a lot of spare reading time on m'hands. Since I woke up, I've completed the following list:

SICKY PERSON TO DO LIST
(Special Holiday Edition - oh, yeah. Christmas book review coming up soon.)

1. Watched Bad-but-Good TV show. (CHARMED, what! Power of Three! Prue! Piper! Phoebe!)
2. Brushed teeth. (Oh, the forbidden luxury. Ya gotta be sick to truly understand how delicious clean teeth are.)
3. Eaten candy canes. (Yummmm.... best candy ever. Also, these are stale. Chewy. Freaking awesome...)
4. Read Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork. (I read fast.)


So, moving on from my general ick factor, a review!
Marcelo in the Real World! By Francisco X. Stork!
Marcelo Sandoval is that around seventeen, and he's labeled as autistic, even though he does not technically fit under the Umbrella of Autism (or so the book says). He's fairly high-functioning, enough so that when his father demands he enroll at the regular high school in the fall or work at his law firm's office for the summer, it's not crazy hard for Marcelo to adapt to the routines of the office. At first, he starts off in the mail room, working under (get yer minds outta tha gutter!) Jasmine, an apparently gorgeous girl (Marcelo doesn't get "hot" or "beautiful" or even "remotely good-looking", so we have to rely on hearing how horny Dad's Partner's Jerky Son is for Jazzy). Then one day, Marcelo finds a picture in the trash - his father's firm is defending a company being sued for their windshields injuring people when they break, instead of shattering into millions of tiny, safe pieces as advertised. The picture is of a girl, of Hispanic descent, with half a face. The other half of her face is shrunken, burnt, and deformed. Marcelo connects with the picture, and the girl in it, and starts to investigate, wanting help her.
Jasmine was pretty much what I expected: callous, but reasonable, nice but not in a romantic or touchy-feely way.
Marcelo was okay. Kind of hard to connect with, but it was hard to tell if he was written that way on purpose as a symptom of his personality, or if the writing was just a little off.
I'm glad I read it - it was a nice distraction from Ickiness. But I have to say that I don't actually remember a heck of a lot of the plot, the legal stuff wasn't engaging enough, and several plot pieces felt like they never got picked up again. A one-time read, for sure.

Yours from the front line of the Holiday Ick War,
Radical