Don’t Get Caught is the story of Max. Just-Max as he is known at school. He’s Mister Average and although he does okay, he’s not super popular and he doesn’t do too well with girls so when he receives an invitation to join the Chaos Club, a prank society so secretive that no one knows who they are or how they operate, he jumps at the chance. Unfortunately the meeting goes horribly wrong and soon Max is in a whole bunch of trouble. He manages to extricate himself and he and the other four students caught up in the prank vow revenge on the Chaos Club.
Man, I loved this book. You know when an author just seems to have exactly your mentality? That’s what I had here. The pranks in this book were brilliantly original and the humour was just spot on (like I said, knob gags).
The characters were really fun - I think they were supposed to mirror the five personality types in The Breakfast Club and although this is a bit of a trope in YA fiction it totally worked. Max was a good MC but there’s plenty of time given over to developing the other four characters as well. The only thing I found difficult to believe was that someone as funny as Max had never had much luck attracting girls.
There was a little bit of romance in the book, but it wasn’t romancey-romance - it was mainly just Max lusting after a girl and her not reciprocating. It tied in well as a sub-plot and didn’t overwhelm the action. Although that would have been difficult anyway, because there was masses of action! Sometimes an author will start off a book with a really good idea or scene but can’t seem to sustain it throughout the whole book, but that wasn’t the case here. Kurt Dinan starts off with a hilarious scene and the humour and action continue right through the book. It was great and it had me reading well past the time I should have been going to sleep.
The book ends on a big reveal (which I won’t spoil) and even though I suspected that this reveal would happen, it was still fun to read and left me clamouring for a sequel (come on, Kurt, there’s got to be a sequel, hasn’t there?)
I would thoroughly recommend this book. It was so funny and considering it is a debut novel, it promises great things in the future from the author.
4.5 stars