If you remember, I told you that you can read Something Rotten by Alan Gratz online until the 30th of November. While I couldn’t tell you before if it was any good, I can tell you now: It is.

Something Rotten is a modernisation of Hamlet and it’s adapted to the young adult genre. It’s not easy to write a novel based on such a well-known play and still make me wonder how he’s going to end it, but Gratz pulls it off. I kept asking myself whether he’s going with the bleak original ending, which wouldn’t really fit the tone of the rest of the novel, or whether he’s going to change it. And if he changes it, how?

And Horatio, the main character, is funny. He has a knack for one liners and a nice, dry humour. And there were pop references everywhere. Like:

Candy stood in the passageway to the theater, GQ-ing it against the doorframe.

And if that wasn’t enough, Gratz won me completely over with the following half sentence:

Personally, I’m a little tired of every author without a bright idea of his own putting a modern spin on a “classic,” …

META! SELF REFERENTIAL! META! Any book that includes something like this has my heart. Forever. What can I say… sometimes I’m very easy.

Summarising: a very funny book, a quick, entertaining read and a main character I will be watching.