It sounds like a novel but The Boy in the Book is more properly a memoir which is aping the pretensions of a novel. At times it is like a confessional, at other times like long-form journalism or general non-fiction, but for the greater portion of the book, Penlington employs the conceit introduced a few chapters in that, like the Choose Your Own Adventure books he loved, his story will henceforth be continually in the present-tense (though he doesn’t go so far as to write in the second person; first person as befits a memoir).

You can read my full review at the Winnipeg Free Press.