Stupid and Contagious - Caprice Crane

Stupid and Contagious
Caprice Crane
5 Spot

Chick Lit

It’s that age-old story. You know how it goes. Boy moves into new apartment, sans furniture. Boy spends night testing the echo effects in his new, empty place by yelling “Hello!” over and over again. Girl next door responds to this by banging on the wall at 2 a.m. and telling her new, insane neighbor to shut up, already. Boy and Girl resent each other instantly. How can it not be magical?

Brady Gilbert is an aspiring music producer who spends a lot of time going to indie music conferences and gloating over his incredible record collection. The horror of his existence really gels for him on a flight full of guys who look, think, and act exactly. like. him. And what he sees isn’t pretty. This is just not the future he envisioned for himself back in his college radio days.

Heaven Albright went from rising star in a PR firm to waitress, literally overnight. Now she spends her days balancing trays, fending off offending customers, and dealing with her annoying managers. This is clearly not what she envisioned, either. The fact that, weeks ago, she was making huge money at a job she loved? And that today she actually pre-emptively spit into a mean customer’s salad? So very not pretty.

Then Brady comes up with a scheme that may save them both. You know that milk that’s left in the cereal bowl after you eat cinnamon-flavored cereal? That sort of cinnamon-y milk? Brady decides to pitch this as a new, and very obviously needed product, to the founder of Starbuck’s in Seattle. He calls it Cinnamilk. Heaven agrees to make the trip with him. What could go wrong?

While the results of both the trip and the relationship are almost predictable, they’re also very funny. This debut author writes with wit and flair, walking that line between fluff and deep-thought stuff with ease. Brady and Heaven alternate narrating duty on a chapter-by-chapter basis. While this could have been confusing in less skilled hands, here, it works perfectly. The pop culture references are thick on the ground, and that, too works quite well. Pick this up for a fun summer read.

Rating: 8
May 2006
trade paperback isbn# 0-446-69572-6

Rating Scale = 1-10