Review: Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks by 'Nathan Burgoine

Being the kid abducted by old Ms. Easton when he was four permanently set Cole's status to freak. At seventeen, his exit plan is simple: make it through the last few weeks of high school with his grades up and his head down.

When he pushes through the front door of the school and finds himself eighty kilometers away holding the door of a museum he was just thinking about, Cole faces facts: he's either more deluded than old Ms. Easton, or he just teleported.

Now every door is an accident waiting to happen―especially when Cole thinks about Malik, who, it turns out, has a glass door on his shower. When he starts seeing the same creepy people over his shoulder, no matter how far he's gone, crushes become the least of his worries. They want him to stop, and they'll go to any length to make it happen.

Cole is running out of luck, excuses, and places to hide.

Time for a new exit plan.

It's best to go on this ride blind, in my opinion. However, I will say, simply put, this journey begins and ends with Cole; he narrates the entire slice of life/coming of age tale, so if you don't like him, you're probably not going to enjoy the book.

I loved him. I really did. He's adorkable with his lists and bullet journal and making up quirky names for people and love for Meeples which, P.S., is there a cuter name for a place? Every time I read the word even, I smiled. Cole is clever and funny and GAH! I just loved him. 

His relationships with Malik and his parents pulled on my heartstrings. The jock/nerd trope was utilized splendidly. Malik is a jock but not a dumb jock nor is he mean. His protectiveness of Cole scored MAJOR brownie points with me. Burgoine captured that high school vernacular and style of interacting and made it amusing and relatable. The interactions between him and his parents were just funny. It was a breath of fresh air to not just have supportive parents but parents that are still in love with each other and don't mind torturing their offspring with it!

Cole's father is hearing impaired so they all sign. This was my first experience with reading signed dialogue and I was fascinated by the syntax of it. It was also soooooo cute how Cole signed letters when he was nervous. I appreciate those details in my reads. 

This is a character-driven story with very little angst and a smooth writing style that is easy to get caught up in. The seamlessness of the inclusion was really impressive to me. Oftentimes it seems authors use diversity to show how "woke" they are which makes it feel contrived or forced. True, all of Cole's friends are queer but it still seemed like the natural order of things, that they were truly his friends which was evident on page rather than sticking an Asian person in here and jamming an ace person in there to meet some sort of tacit quota. 

There wasn't a lot of conflict in this narrative but I found the action storyline balanced the narrative and filled my quotient of action/suspense. Above all, this story is fun and entertaining with solid world-building and an adorkable main character who I couldn't help but be charmed by. In all honesty, this is what I was looking for out of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and didn't get so thank you Mr. Burgoine for filling that void.

Overall, I found this to be a cozy and refreshing young adult read and would LOVE it if there were a follow up in the works.

An ARC was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.