Marc Acito: "This is how I paid for college. This is how I misspent my youth."

How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (Amazon) by Marc Acito is a unique coming of age story, set in the eighties, about a boy named Edward Zanni. His dream is to go to Juilliard and become a famous actor. As if typical of a high school theater student, he's fairly eccentric and runs with a very eccentric pack-Paula, a girl with strong morals and shoes that never match, Kelly, his surprisingly preppy girlfriend, Doug, a jock turned theater nerd, Natie, an annoying tag along computer geek, and Ziba, a snobbish girl unfazed by anything. What better group of friends could a person have?

So, overall life is good for Edward Zanni. That is, until his father decides to marry Dagmar, a gold digging, outright evil woman. Then his father suddenly decides that he doesn't want to pay for Juilliard, leaving Edward-about to start his senior year of high school-in quite the lurch. Lucky for him, he has friends willing to do anything to help.

I really enjoyed this book. I think it captured the essence of being a teenager very well. Besides the main plot line, there is also a lot of discussion of sexuality, which is definitely something on the forefront of a lot of teenagers minds. I think that this book is worth a read by almost anybody, parents included. Perhaps especially parents, because the various parent-child relationships throughout the book are something that parents might be able to appreciate from the other side of the fence, so to speak.

The author does not have an email posted on his website, just a twitter account-which looks like it doesn't exist anymore-and a facebook page. However, his website is definitely worth checking out-the About Marc Acito page is fairly humorous-so check it out here!

Tomorrow or the day after, expect a review of Hairstyles of the Damned! If a review isn't posted, an author reply will be.