City News

Swim the Fly, by Don Calame, takes off with Matt, Sean and Cooper who are best friends who have a goal for their summer vacation: seeing a woman naked in real life. When Matt volunteers to rescue his swim team by swimming the butterfly stroke race in competitions in order to impress a girl, his focus shifts. With a body built for freestyle swimming, it’s going to take everything he has to even complete the race, let alone place in it. Fortunately Sean and Cooper’s ingenuity when it comes to achieving their summer goal also comes in handy with helping Matt get through the competitions one by one. It’s certain to be a summer they will never forget.

Motivated by their overwhelming hormones, the three best friends decide to try to execute their master plan. It’s not easy, and leads to many embarrassing moments and misunderstandings. Nothing seems to go as planned as they try many creative options to achieve their goal. The story is told from Matt’s perspective, and him aspiring to get the girl by volunteering for an impossible task of swimming the fly also seems hopeless. Backed by his two best friends he makes his way through the competitions one at a time. If he can only win the last race, he is certain he can catch the eye of his crush Kelly, except getting to that point is harder than it seems. There are many, many hilarious moments in this book, but my favorites involved Matt’s grandfather. Trying to woo Matt’s newly widowed neighbor, Mrs. Hoogenboom, Matt’s grandfather seems to get him into one scrape after another. His logic when it comes to enticing her out of her grief is humorous, and when I read the scene where Matt is forced to play Mrs. Hoogenboom so his grandfather can practice asking her out I laughed pretty hard. Matt’s just such a great character. Although I was able to resonate with how teenage boys are, I was often grossed out by the antics of them, but Matt quickly separated himself from the pack, showing himself to have heart and increasing respect for women. Calame truly captured the voice and dreams of a group of teen boys, while managing to make them loveable at the same time. 

Calame delivers a fast-paced, well structured story that is laced with humor, sweetness and wisdom. If young-adults can get past the naughty stuff, Swim the Fly is, in fact, the sort of book that could tweak many boys to the fun of reading. There’s nothing here that boys don’t encounter daily among their peers, and it is all relatively innocent. Through the teenage boy’s perspective, Calame shows tremendous sensitivity to the awkwardness, insecurity, and frustration of being a 15-year-old boy, and nails the exhilaration of young love. For these reasons, I would rate this book a 5/5 stars because of all the humorous moments and how the writer does a great job of appealing to a younger audience. With that said, I would recommend this book to any teen males between the ages of 14-17 because I feel like they would have a great time reading and experiencing the book like I did. 

Check out Swim the Fly from NBPL!