Why You'll Love This
Three teenage boys chasing one ridiculous goal turns out to be one of the funniest coming-of-age reads in YA fiction.
- Great if you want: unfiltered teenage comedy with genuine heart underneath
- The experience: fast, fizzy, and laugh-out-loud — reads like a summer in one sitting
- The writing: Calame's screenwriting roots show: snappy dialogue, perfect comic timing, escalating chaos
- Skip if: crude humor and boy-brain logic aren't your thing
About This Book
Every summer, fifteen-year-old Matt and his two best friends set themselves a goal. This year's mission is exactly as ridiculous and hormonally driven as you'd expect from three teenage boys who've never worked up the nerve to ask a girl out. But underneath the scheme is something more recognizable and more honest: the specific agony of being young, wanting to be seen as someone brave and capable, and pursuing a crush so far out of your league that the whole effort feels doomed from the start. Don Calame captures that particular flavor of adolescent desperation — equal parts swagger and terror — with enough warmth that it's impossible not to root for these guys.
What makes Swim the Fly stand out as a reading experience is its pacing and voice. Calame comes from screenwriting, and it shows — scenes land with comic precision, dialogue crackles, and the story moves with the kind of momentum that makes chapters disappear. Matt's first-person narration is self-aware without being clever for its own sake, and the friendship at the book's center feels genuinely earned rather than convenient. It's sharp, funny, and surprisingly tender when it needs to be.