Goy Crazy

GOY CRAZY by Melissa Schorr
Category: Contemporary
Age Recommendation: Grades 9+
Release Date: 9/1/06
Publisher: Hyperion
Reviewed by: Randstostipher "tallnlankyrn" Nguyen
Rating: 5 Stars

All a girl wants to do is find the love of her life, or in this case a high school sweetheart. Fortunately for Rachel Lowenstein,
she has just found the guy at her brother’s bar mitzvah. He’s handsome, a basketball player, and his name is Luke
Christiansen. Which is the only problem she has with Luke--his last name. All Rachel hears from her grandmother and family
is how she should find a respectable Jewish boy to date and marry. But crushing on Luke may not be the best choice for
Rachel since he is far from being Jewish; he celebrates Christmas! So Rachel decides that she is tired of all the problems that
she faces, from bad hair to having hardly any friends, and makes up her own teen commandments, which she occasionally
changes, and which she hopes to break.

So Rachel begins to change the way she does things. She starts acting dumb in math class, lies to her family, and tries her
best to keep Luke a secret. Besides that, Rachel also has to deal with her only best friend, Jen, who is trying to get into the
popular crowd; Leah, her only other real friend who keeps on warning Rachel about her wrongdoings; and Howard,
Rachel’s neighbor turned enemy.

Yet Rachel starts to second-guess her decisions and wonders if they are really worth all the lies and deception when the
ultimate tragedy happens to her. Is Luke really the guy for her; is acting dumb in math class worth the “popular” points?
Rachel ends up discovering her true self and sees that change just isn’t for her.

GOY CRAZY is sweet, tragic, and laugh-out-loud hilarious. With her first teen novel, Ms. Schorr successfully makes her
main character understandable, relatable, and, above all, realistic. By the end of the novel, readers will be glad about Rachel’s
final decisions, yet sad that the novel is over. GOY CRAZY was a fantastic read that left me wanting more. I just hope there
will be a follow-up to this novel.