When a highly hyped novel pulls it off, it's good. This is a collection of stories about an interconnected group of friends with a music and culture backdrop. It's sort of a novel, sort of a collection of short stories. It weaves its characters together the same kind of way Crash did on film, though Goon Squad moves back and forth in time, shows how people begin and end and begin, shifts point of view and narrator, and plays all kinds of funky tricks. Including, as you may have heard, a whole chapter written in Powerpoint slides - and that's the best chapter of the book.

By page 18, I was recommending the book around. It wasn't QUITE what I thought it would be, and it was really hard to keep track of who we had seen before (to the extent that I think I'll reread the book again very soon and keep notes on names and bands and places just to draw the map for myself). That epic confusion is a bit challenging, but also gloriously inviting.

In the end, it's a 4.5 star book, but easy to round up to 5.