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    How to Win at High School
    Unavailable
    How to Win at High School
    Unavailable
    How to Win at High School
    Ebook500 pages3 hours

    How to Win at High School

    By Owen Matthews

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Adam Higgs is a loser, and he's not okay with it.

    But starting as a junior in a new high school seems like exactly the right time to change things. He brainstorms with his best friend, Brian: What will it take for him to take over Nixon Collegiate? Adam searches for the A-listers' weak spot and strikes gold when he gets queen bee Sara Bryant to pay him for doing her physics homework. One part nerd, two parts badass, Adam ditches his legit job and turns to full-time cheating. His clients? All the Nixon Collegiate gods and goddesses.

    But soon his homework business becomes a booze business, which becomes a fake ID business. Adam's popularity soars as he unlocks high school achievements left and right, from his first kiss to his first rebound hookup. But something else is haunting him—a dark memory from his past, driving him to keep climbing. What is it? And will he go too far?

    How to Win at High School's honest picture of high school hierarchy combines with an over-the-top, adrenaline-charged story line, and Adam's rocket ride to the top of the social order (and his subsequent flameout) is by turns bawdy and sweetly emotional.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperTeen
    Release dateMar 3, 2015
    ISBN9780062336880
    Unavailable
    How to Win at High School
    Author

    Owen Matthews

    Owen Matthews studied Modern History at Oxford University before beginning his career as a journalist in Bosnia. He has written for the Moscow Times, The Times, the Spectator and the Independent. In 1997, he became a correspondent at Newsweek magazine in Moscow where he covered the second Chechen war, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. His first book on Russian history, Stalin's Children, was translated into 28 languages and shortlisted for The Guardian First Books Award and France's Prix Medicis. Owen's first book on Russian history was Stalin's Children, a family memoir, which was published to great critical acclaim in 2008. The book was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Orwell Prize for political writing, and selected as one of the Books of the Year by the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator. It has been translated into twenty-eight languages and was shortlisted for France's Medici Prize and French Elle Magazine's Grand Prix Litteraire, as well as being selected as one of the FNAC chain's twenty featured titles for the Rentree Litteraire of 2009. Owen is currently a contributing editor for Newsweek magazine, based in Istanbul and Moscow.

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    Reviews for How to Win at High School

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    • 4/5
      HOW TO WIN AT HIGH SCHOOL shows the rise and fall of Adam Higgs. Adam is a self-proclaimed loser with the self-esteem to go with his perception. When he enters a new school as a junior, he decides that he wants to be part of the in-crowd. He wants to make his older brother Sam proud of him. His older brother was on his way to high school popularity when he was injured in a hockey accident and paralyzed. Now he's in a wheelchair and working at a donut shop.Adam begins his rise to fame and fortune by starting a homework business. He'll do assignments for the in-crowd at $10 a page with a $20 bonus for an A. His business booms. In fact, it expands so quickly that he recruits other students as employees to help ease the load. But that isn't enough for Adam so he starts dealing booze and fake IDs. Pretty soon he has met a sophomore girl named Victoria who actually likes him and he's being invited to all the right parties. The he decides to start dealing pills and things start changing. He begins to use a lot of the product he's selling. He has the outward success that he always wanted but it costs. He isn't happy; he loses Victoria who can't deal with the drugs; he damages his relationship with his brother.As I read the short chapters - most of which were less than a page long and several which were only a sentence - I could feel Adam spirally out of control and getting farther and farther from what he really wanted out of life. I could also see that there had to be a major crash before he could find his way out of the life he had built.The story was fascinating and fast-paced. I think it would also be best for older YAs because of the themes of the story.
    • 4/5
      Review courtesy of Dark Faerie TalesQuick & Dirty: This was an easy read and I related to the main character.Opening Sentence: Adam Higgs is a loser.The Review:Adam Higgs is a loser. His brother, Sam Higgs, is a cripple. The only one in the family that is getting what she wants is their sister, a freshman, already the top of the food chain at their new high school. Adam is ready to become popular, and with a few parties and more than a few risks, he thinks he can be upgraded from Pizza Man to The Man. He’ll step on a few people. But nothing will get in his way.I’ve been in a contemporary phase, which means I’ve been tearing through this genre. This also means this is the last of my review books that is contemporary, so I can no longer be productive about my contemporary binging. Sigh. Since I do follow Twitter, I was surprised to see that no one I followed had read it before me. Weird. I had no expectations except the Goodreads reviews, which were generally complementary. Therefore, I had a lot of hope riding on this book, which I saved for last, a final contemporary. I am happy to report back to you that I finished all five hundred pages within a few hours. It was good — very good. I’m going to let everyone know that this is definitely worth the read.This book was an interesting form of prose. The style was third person. Usually, that might turn me off, as first person allows more connection with the character, in my opinion. But for this story it was definitely the right course of action! Anyway, the writing was like poetry in the uneven spacing and sometimes fragmented thoughts. I loved it. I have to admit, those five hundred pages (seven hundred on my e-reader), were it condensed to normal paragraph form, would have been shortened considerably. No one should be turned off by the size of the book. I promise, it isn’t as daunting as it first appears. The poetic writing style was raw, simple, but touching. It could break me with a single sentence.In the book, Adam goes from loser to the most popular in school with a series of steps. He takes chances — he takes risks. I liked that about the character, that he was nervous, but not nervous enough to back down. Now, from a student’s point of view, a lot of what he did was not moral or ethical (in any way, shape, or form.) He does a lot of stuff I did not approve of. It starts off as a goal — he needed to get to the top, he needed to prove that he was more than a loser, but by the end, it was more of an obsession. The more harmless tricks he’s using to get in with the crowd get tossed aside for worse things — stealing finals, selling drugs. Strangely enough, I still found him likeable. One thing that I wish that the book had delivered better was development. He doesn’t really learn his lesson until the last ten pages, and even then, it isn’t fully explained what he’s learned.Altogether, this book pleasantly surprised me in it’s interesting narrative form and well-paced plotline. I liked the subplot of Adam’s brother, Sam. He started out as Adam’s motivation to become more popular and well-liked. Then he became an excuse, as his risks became, well, riskier — “I’m doing it for Sam!” One of the moments for me that made me the most angry, the most disappointed, was a scene with Sam. But this book definitely toyed with my feelings, and it did it well. I think that people who enjoyed Falling Into Place (a novel with a character that can be considered unlikeable, and a popularity pyramid similar to Adam’s) might find a good read in How to Win at High School as well!Notable Scene:a) He doesn’t really want to hurt anyone.b) He doesn’t really want to be dead.That destructive shit, it’s the wrong vibe. Not even an option. It’s like, your thirsty, you don’t blow up the water fountain. You sure as hell don’t slit your wrists.You’re thirsty? You fucking fight your way up to that water fountain and you drink, motherfucker. You quench your thirst.Adam’s thirsty.He’s ready to drink.FTC Advisory: HarperTeen provided me with a copy of How to Win at High School. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.