If slacker Zak Duquette hadn't talked up the geek fan fest so much, maybe Clayton wouldn't have broken nearly every school rule or jeopardized Ana’s last shot at freedom from her uptight parents.
Now, teaming up with Duquette is the only way for Ana to chase down Clayton in the sea of orcs, zombies, bikini-clad princesses, Trekkies, and Smurfs. After all, one does not simply walk into Washingcon.
But in spite of Zak's devil-may-care attitude, he has his own reasons for being as lost as Ana-and Ana may have more in common with him than she thinks. Ana and Zak certainly don’t expect the long crazy night, which begins as a nerdfighter manhunt, to transform into so much more…
I thought this book was actually pretty good. To be honest, my thoughts on the book are probably affected by the fact that I’m super chilled out at the moment - I’m on holiday on the Isle of Wight and it’s raining and I’m spending literally every minute of the day tearing through books - but I think even under normal circumstances I’d enjoy it.
The two characters, Ana and Zak, attend the same high school, but don’t really have anything to do with each other. Ana is a straight-A control freak and Zak is an uber-gaming-geek. Their worlds collide when Ana’s little brother goes missing when they are on a quiz bowl trip out of town and what ensues is a screwball comedy-adventure which borrows a lot from eighties classics such as Adventures In Babysitting.
I liked Ana and Zak - probably Zak more than Ana, if I’m honest as I liked his super-geek tendencies. They both had problems, and their friendship/romance developed at a good pace. The plot is all set around WashingCon (Seattle Comic Con) and is high on action and has more geek references than you can shake a quarterstaff at as Ana and Zak try to retrieve her brother without their teacher or her parents finding out where they are and what they’re doing.
There were a couple of things that irked me: like why on earth did Zak copy and paste an entire essay from Wikipedia, complete with hyperlinks? I mean, I know he had to in order to move the plot along, but still. What an idiot. And the whole problem Ana had with her parents just seemed to be completely solved by a quick hug at the end.
Despite this, I still enjoyed it. I think I’m being a tiny bit generous in giving the book 4 stars, but what the hell. I’m on holiday.
4 stars