Castration Celebration by Jake Wizner

A guest review from Teen Room Staff Brandon!

For Max, summer arts camp at Yale University is another opportunity to hone his acting skills, both on the stage and with the ladies. For Olivia, it is an opportunity to escape her home life and write her musical, based on her current hatred of men, thanks to her father, who she walked in on while he was fooling around with one of his students. A true ladies man with a plan of conquest for summer camp, and a young woman who has sworn off men for the summer? These two have to run into each other; and they do, quite literally. Max and Olivia meet on the train to summer camp, when Max accidentally runs into Olivia. He falls in love, and she figures she’ll never see him again.

Once they arrive at camp, they meet their roommates, for Max, the eccentric guitar-playing Zeke; and for Olivia, (who is staying in a suite) Mimi, Callie, and Trish. As it turns out, Zeke and Trish are from the same town, so the guys end up spending quite a bit of time with the girls, and Max uses it to try to get to know Olivia better.

As the story progresses, so does Olivia’s musical. Her musical, Castration Celebration, is strikingly similar to the events of real life, and no one but her knows until she asks Zeke to write the music for it. While Zeke has Olivia’s manuscript, Max reads it and realizes that Olivia has feelings for him. As the summer ends, Olivia accepts her feelings for Max and they get together. They continue a short correspondence via email, but that’s were book leaves the story, and their relationship, up in the air.

Castration Celebration was a hysterical novel. It employed two separate stories, the novel, and the musical being written by Olivia (which was distinguished by a different font), and wove them together nicely. I thoroughly enjoyed C.C., but I do believe it is a title geared towards older teens; with many sexual innuendos and jokes more appropriate for older ages.

--Brandon

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