Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan

Sam Hopkins is a pretty good kid. A preacher's kid, aka a PK. However, he has found himself mixed up with the wrong crowd. Hanging around with car thieves and delinquents, Sam knows it is only a matter of time before he makes one bad decision too many and gets into real trouble.

But one day, Sam sees these thugs harassing a troubled schoolmate named Jennifer. Finding the courage to face the bullies down, Sam loses a bad set of friends and acquires a very strange new one.

Jennifer is not just weird. To Sam, she seems downright crazy. She has terrifying hallucinations involving demons, the devil, and death. And here's the Really crazy part: Sam is beginning to suspect that these visions may actually be prophecies -prophecies of something terrible that is going to happen very soon. Unless he can stop it.

With no one to believe him, with no one to help him other than one crazy girl, Sam is now all alone in a race against time. Finding the truth before disaster strikes is going to be both crazy and very, very dangerous.

Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan was an extremely quick yet enjoyable read. The book is clearly directed toward young teens, and it only took me a couple of hours to read. Despite that, I enjoyed the book a lot. The plot moved rather quickly, and I was actually surprised when I reached the end of the book. I felt like the book was weighted too heavily in background information and once it reached its climax it ended too quickly. Overall though the plot was interesting and kept me glued to the novel. The tone and language of the book were very well done and fit the age and character of the narrator, Sam Hopkins. The supposed supernatural element of the novel was fascinating and added to the spooky tone of some portions of the book. Even once the true cause came out, there were still frightening elements that were made even scarier by their validity.

The characters of this novel were well developed and had both their strengths and their quirks. The true enemy in this book turned out to be quite the shock and clearly shows how well some people can hide their true nature. I really liked both Sam and Jennifer, and I enjoyed their interactions, as weird as they turned out to be.

Overall, the plot was pretty good, the characters were well developed, and the tone and language were well written. Crazy Dangerous is certainly a novel directed to teenagers, and I would not recommend it for really young children because of the violence. However, despite the age group that this novel was directed towards, I still enjoyed it as a quick and distracting read.

I received this book for free from Thomas Nelson Publishers through Booksneeze.com in exchange for an honest review.