How to Win at High School

by Owen Matthews

Overview

Adam Higgs is a loser, and he's not okay with it.

But starting as a junior in a new high school seems like exactly the right time to change things. He brainstorms with his best friend, Brian: What will it take for him to take over Nixon Collegiate? Adam searches for the A-listers' weak spot and strikes gold when he gets queen bee Sara Bryant to pay him for doing her physics homework. One part nerd, two parts badass, Adam ditches his legit job and turns to full-time cheating. His clients? All the Nixon Collegiate gods and goddesses.

But soon his homework business becomes a booze business, which becomes a fake ID business. Adam's popularity soars as he unlocks high school achievements left and right, from his first kiss to his first rebound hookup. But something else is haunting him—a dark memory from his past, driving him to keep climbing. What is it? And will he go too far?

How to Win at High School's honest picture of high school hierarchy combines with an over-the-top, adrenaline-charged story line, and Adam's rocket ride to the top of the social order (and his subsequent flameout) is by turns bawdy and sweetly emotional.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062336866
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/03/2015
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.70(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Owen Matthews was raised on rap music and violent video games. He is a graduate of the University of British Columbia's creative writing program, has worked on fishing boats and in casinos all over the world, and currently writes critically acclaimed crime thrillers under a secret identity. A fan of fast cars and sugary breakfast cereals, Matthews lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Editorial Reviews

03/02/2015
Starting his junior year at new school, Adam Higgs is a loser, and he knows it. He barely has any friends, has never been kissed, and has started working at Pizza Hut. After Adam devises a lucrative homework-selling scheme, suddenly he has an adorable girlfriend and is getting invited to the best parties, but this taste of fame and wealth leads him down a path of escalating risk, selling fake IDs and drugs. In chapters often no longer than a few paragraphs, Matthews (who writes adult thrillers as Owen Laukkanen) employs an irreverent narrative that makes it seem as though readers are seeing Adam through the shrewd perspective of a slacker sitting in the back of class ("You probably figured this out already, but, our boy doesn't get to many parties”). Witnessing Adam's descent into delinquency is both painful to watch and addictive. Straddling poetry and prose, the funny, unforgiving narration will have readers glued to this story about the rise and fall of an unlikely high school kingpin. Ages 14–up. Agent: Stacia Decker, Donald Maass Literary Agency. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Short, intense chapters, some of which read like poetry, capture snapshots that lend a visceral immediacy to the action.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

12/01/2014
Gr 7 Up—As a junior transfer student, Adam Higgs is just another high school loser. Influenced by his younger sister and older brother's high school popularity and wanting to make up for a tragic accident, Adam pulls inspiration from Scarface's Tony Montana in his quest to become one of the "gods" of Nixon Collegiate. Adam's first step to popularity is a job at Pizza Hut to earn money for stylish clothes and the nickname of "Pizza Man." After a few missteps, Adam climbs the social ladder while making money doing homework assignments for the popular kids. Throughout the book, the teen raises his stakes by going to a clubs, getting a pretty girlfriend, hiring a team of loser nerds to assist with his increasingly popular homework business, selling fake IDs, going to parties, selling pills, and abusing drugs and alcohol. All the while, Adam's siblings and girlfriend, Victoria Lemieux, are the quiet voices of reason trying to assure him that being happy with himself is the real key to happiness. While Matthews's debut YA novel has a fast plot with gritty content and dialogue that will appeal to teens, his characters are flat and Adam's quest for popularity and attitude of, "Money is money. Power is power. Prestige is everything" fail to bring much depth to the protagonist's cautionary tale.—Adrienne L. Strock, Nashville Public Library

School Library Journal

2014-12-06
An enterprising loser hustles his way to ultimate popularity, at a cost.Adam's older brother, Sam, was a star hockey player in his high school years, and by all rights, his younger brother should have been a high school god. Instead, Sam is paralyzed after a nasty body slam, and Adam is a wannabe in off-brand clothes who can't score an invite to a single party. Tired of sitting at home playing video games and watching Scarface—the plot of which is handily and self-consciously summarized for readers who haven't seen it—Adam launches a scheme to make himself useful to the school's elite, initially by doing homework for pay. As his empire of term papers, booze and fake IDs grows, so does his status. The third-person narrative voice is slick, breezy and highly stylized, littered with hashtags and phrases like "our boy" and "Achievement Unlocked." Chapters are short—none more than a couple of pages and some only a single line—creating a fast-moving and suspenseful tale. The unquestioned intensity with which the narrative voice despises Adam's nerdiness and pities Sam for his disability is at first troubling, but it soon becomes clear that these views are Adam's and that the overall story offers a more complex view. For all its slick hipness, surprisingly substantive. (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews