I borrowed this book from the library (digitally, on my NOOK color!) a couple of weeks ago and really loved it. The first novel from DC Pierson of Derrick Comedy and Mystery Team fame, it’s a really sentimental look at the high school experience.

It’s about a kid named Darren, a loner artist in school who ends up befriending a weird kid named Eric and writing an epic series with him. They spend their nights just dorking out about possible films and comics and all sorts of spinoffs that could come from their creation, really fleshing out this world and getting excited about their project. Eric’s a weird kid but he’s fun and actually seems to appreciate Darren’s art, so he doesn’t mind hanging with him. It’s not till Eric reveals that he’s never slept once in his life that Darren realizes that his buddy has superhero powers… of a sort.

It’s a fascinating story, and certainly gets you thinking about how much better (and worse) your life would be if you never had to sleep, if you could do everything you wanted because you had all the time in the world. There’s also the horror of your entire life being one seamless day, though.

Like most great books it’s deeply rooted in familiar situations and characters to better prepare you for the more fantastical stuff to come, and here is where it really shines, with authentic sequences of the kid’s first experiences with alcohol, drugs, betrayal, and- most importantly- sex.

I really loved the book and am glad to see that Mystery Team director Dan Eckman will be adapting it for a film. It’s much more serious than his last film but I feel like it could be a really incredible coming-of-age flick. More over at Collider who broke the news, along with the announcement that Eckman will be directing an episode of Community. Awesome.