The True Meaning of Smekday

"The True Meaning of Smekday" by Adam Rex is an interesting and inventive book. It' a fun read, and I finished it in about a day. It has a very quirky sense of humor, but also manages to be dark and sometimes even scary.

The book takes the form of a series of essays that the main character, a young girl with the improbable name of Gratuity Tucchi, writes about the title subject, the meaning of the day when Earth was invaded by an alien race called the Boov, who renamed the planet Smekland and sent all the humans in America to Florida. Gratuity, along with her cat, Pig, encounters a rogue Boov mechanic on the run named J. Lo who fixes her car so it can fly. The rest of the book is the trio's many wild and crazy adventures. The plot is very unpredictable, as where the Americans must go changes just as Gratuity reaches Florida, and the invasion by the Boov is overshadowed by a subsequent invasion by a different and much more intimidating alien species. While few plot points seem contrived, the story manages to go in directions one wouldn't necessarily expect.

And it's also a very funny book. Gratuity is a very witty narrator, and is quite snarky and impatient with the BS that's thrown her way. J. Lo is a bit of a Cloudcouckoolander, and his difficulty at grasping Earthling culture is another source of comedy, but Rex doesn't use it to make J. Lo a butt of jokes, but to emphasize the alienness of his character. rex also illustrates the book, both with Gratuity's photographs of everything, which manage to both look realistic and like caricatures, and J. Lo's explanatory comics, which are easily the funniest parts of the book. Other characters, like Gratuity's not-very-smart mom, the Chief (an old Navajo man with a very fake UFO in his junkyard), and the crazy UFOlogists the main characters encounter when they pass through Roswell, add just something more that makes this such a fun book.

All in all, I really quite liked this book. It's funny, clever, and unpredictable. Read it for a good time.