Originally posted at The Wandering Fangirl.

Well, if there’s one thing I can say for this book, it’s fast. We get a few smallish chapters to introduce us to Perry Stormaire, our narrator, and Gobi, a foreign exchange student who turns out to be an assassin when she steals Perry and his father’s car for one crazy night in New York City.

One thing I did really like: each chapter title is a college essay question that somehow ties into the theme of the scene, which I thought was kind of neat.

The likes sort of end there, I guess. Au Revior is incredibly engrossing and a very quick read — I think I clocked in at about an hour and a half — but there isn’t much substance to it, no matter how hard it tries. You can’t get much backstory that means anything in 190 pages, when about 100 of them are pure action scenes. Perry, bless his heart, tries his best to stay sane as he’s dragged along by Gobi. He’s a teenage boy with very little backbone who really wants to be in a rock band, but is trying to get into Columbia just to please his dad. Gobi is a complete mystery until we get the real story behind her murderous rampage — and her story isn’t that impressive, or something I haven’t seen a million times before.

Spoiler

The more I think about it, the more I believe this book is an attempt at a teenage version of Taken.

Apart from the non-stop action, there’s not much to this book. Maybe if it was a bit longer, it could have had a bit more emotional weight to it, but all that mattered were the explosions and dudes dying. It excels at being a book aimed right for the teenage boy jugular, but falls short in every other aspect.