This book is worth reading if you're looking for a clean, Christian YA novel, and you don't mind recycled plotlines or overdone character tropes. Crazy Dangerous had some good components to it, don't get me wrong. Schizophrenia is not something I've ever seen addressed, and this was a nice take on that. I appreciate Jennifer being a legitimate character instead of just a label of mental illness. Andrew Klavan has been my favorite author since I was in high school. Unfortunately, I've read too many of his books, and they're all starting to look the same. (Granted, I only read the YA ones, so maybe this doesn't apply to his adult novels.) Observe:
White middle class male. Is bullied. Gets into trouble. Cops don't believe him. Runs from cops. Does a thing that saves everyone. Is a hero. Gets the girl.
I was disappointed when the story started with bullying and the kid getting "on the wrong side of the tracks," if you will. While he uses these skills later, I feel like I wasted 100 pages reading something I could've just seen in a short flashback or two. Especially when none of those scenes seemed to add anything different to this narrative to set it apart. Jennifer, while a solid character and the main premise of the story, seemed absent for much of the book. I wanted more of her and more of the dad. More of any character except Sam and Sims, who both pulled from the page of a generic character creator.