Be More Chill

Jeremy Heere is your regular, everyday nobody. His life revolves around staring at his beautiful crush, Christine, who he can never, ever have. He also keeps track of every embarrassing moment he experiences, convinced that by doing so he can keep track of his social status and somehow unlock the secret to being cool.

But when Jeremy hears about the “squip”, a pill-sized supercomputer that you swallow, he knows he has to have one. The squip is guaranteed to fulfill your utmost desires, by providing in-brain instructions on everything from one-upping your tormentors to talking to girls.

The squip isn’t exactly inexpensive, so Jeremy has to resort to desperate measures to get his hands on one. After exploiting his Aunt Linda’s Beanie Baby collection, he finally scrounges up enough money. And then, he gets a squip.

Instantly, Jeremy’s life starts to change for the better. The squip gets him a girl’s phone number, a buff body, and an in with the popular crowd. Jeremy couldn’t be happier. But soon, he starts to notice some rather unpleasant things that have happened. In order to be cool, he’s repeatedly ditched one of his good friends, lied to his parents, and managed to make an idiot out of himself in front of Christine on several occasions. Jeremy begins to wonder if he’s making a big mistake by continuing to use the squip.

When the squip helps Jeremy devise a plan to confess his feelings to Christine, Jeremy is thrilled. The plan seems foolproof, and both Jeremy and the squip are 100% confident in its success. So when things go horribly wrong, Jeremy, of course, blames the squip. Eventually, though, he calms down, and the device creates a new plan - a plan to get Jeremy’s life back to normal.

Be More Chill is hilarious, quirky, and refreshing. It makes light of the most painful high school situations and keeps the reader entertaining throughout the entire book. And it delivers a quite powerful message, too: maybe you don’t need to ingest a high-powered, ridiculously-advanced supercomputer to be cool. Maybe all you have to do is be yourself.