“You mean ‘chill out’. No. I mean ‘be more chill. As per rap slash hip-hop.” This quote describes Jeremy Heere’s problem – he wants to be “Cool”. He is not. Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini describes the unspoken struggle of teenagers to be “Cool’.
The main character of Be More Chill is Jeremy Heere. Jeremy is a highschooler who is desperate for social attention and girls. The author has done a great job in creating a real teenager with real, raw emotions. He shows the sheer wants of a highschooler and how they view the world. All in all, he is so real that the reader feels what he would have felt.

The plot revolves around the “squip”. The squip is an ingestible supercomputer with all the information one needs. Jeremy purchases a squip, hoping to become “Cool”. This pulls the reader into the story on the “what if?” factor. People like to imagine what it would be like to be in the place of the main character. In this case, the reader thinks about what it would be like to be able to know everything, and get almost anything he ior she wants.

The theme of this story is based off of the idea of repercussions. There are always adverse reactions to any action performed. In this case, the adverse reaction of the pill is that he takes drugs and makes bad choices. He discovers that life is not just about the material things.

In conclusion, Ned Vizzini has created a pop culture masterpiece in his book, Be More Chill. Being a teenager is hard, and add to that a bad influence, and you get the interesting tale of Jeremy Heere. This thought-provoking story should be read by 8^th graders all around. I give it 4 stars out of 5.