Treasure Island!!!

by Sara Levine

When a college graduate with a history of hapless jobs (ice cream scooper; gift wrapper; laziest ever part-time clerk at The Pet Library) reads Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, she is dumbstruck by the timid design of her life. When had she ever dreamed a scheme? When had she ever done a foolish, overbold act? When had she ever, like Jim Hawkins, broke from her friends, raced for the beach, stolen a boat, killed a man, and eliminated an obstacle that stood in the way of her getting a hunk of gold?

Convinced that Stevenson's book is cosmically intended for her, she redesigns her life according to its Core Values: boldness, resolution, independence and horn-blowing. Accompanied by her mother, her sister, and a hostile Amazon parrot that refuses to follow the script, our heroine embarks on a domestic adventure more frightening than anything she'd originally planned.

Treasure Island!!! is the story of a ferocious obsession, told by an original voice-intelligent, perverse, relentlessly self- extricating, and funny.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Novels, Contemporary, Book Club, Audiobook, Literature

172 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 2011

About the author

Hi! My novel THE HITCH is available for pre-order now and will be published January 13, 2026.

I am also the author of the novel TREASURE ISLAND!!! and the short story collection SHORT DARK ORACLES.

If you haven't read Robert Louis Stevenson's TREASURE ISLAND, I recommend the Penguin's Mass Market paperback which includes my Afterword.


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https://delusionsofgrammar.substack.com/

Reviews

[Gena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this little book is a burst of brilliance, but I honestly wonder how comic I'm supposed to find it. The reviews I've read all say things like WITTY, IRREVERENT, HILARIOUS!!! but I don't think this recognizes the depths of the comedy's darkness. The narrator distills Treasure Island down to a set of "Core Values"—BOLDNESS, RESOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, HORN-BLOWING—and proceeds to demonstrate how a particular cultural ideal of "motivated selfhood" is actually, quite clearly, a form of sociopathy. By the end, I wasn't even laughing nervously anymore; I was just sad and frightened. That we are a society of bold, resolute horn-blowers, convinced of our independence as individuals, and that this is not just "immaturity" but a form of madness—this realization has in the past made me tired, or angry, but Levine makes it terrifying.

[Eileen · Rating 2 out of 5]

In theory, I should like this book. In reality, it reads like a series of real-life episodes of Alvin and the Chipmunks, with a horrifically unlikeable narrator blundering forward into scheme upon wacky scheme, each of which are apparently intended as farcical comedy, but which instead crumble into one huge cumulative sad mess.

I think the real keyword here is "unlikeable." The narrator--first-person, so there's no escape--is completely unlikeable. She has no redeeming qualities. Her actions are idiotic, and stay idiotic over and over, and she stays blind. I can't imagine having the willpower to write this character.

She made me feel bad about myself. Why? I am not her. My actions are not like hers. On the other hand, it's easy to identify with the very current authorial voice. It could be dangerously easy to fall into just such a series of stupid, destructive choices. I too could become just such a colossal fuck-up. It's incredibly depressing.

On second thought, maybe this isn't intended to be farce at all. Maybe the comedic elements are just the trappings.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can’t wait for Sara Levine’s follow up. Will it be Bleak House!!! or maybe A La Recherche du Temps Perdu!!!....

One thing I figured out immediately, having recently failed to finish The Shipping Gnus by E Annie Proulx – the one that won the Pulitzer - Treasure Island!!! is clearly not literature because I had such a good time reading it and I finished it in two days. Sorry, Sara.

Well all right, it was kinda like a 172 page long standup comedy routine, say for instance Julia Sweeney’s long performance called Letting Go of God (that’s one I saw recently) - British comedians do this all the time - you take a stretch of normal life and spin it into wild ridiculousness and pepper it with savage asides about the contemptible folly of all human desire. So, Treasure Island!!! is about a 25 year old woman who isn’t doing too well, crap jobs, crap boyfriend, no apartment, living with parents, and she – as you do - reads Treasure Island and realizes – quite rightly - that it is a mine of pure gold about How to Live a Bold and Independent Life. So then she tries to put these lessons into practice.

This doesn’t work out so well.

Some readers appear rather to take offence at the various vile and frankly borderline actions not to mention the vicious language of our heroine. They think she crosses the line. But I was okay with all that, in fact I wanted more.

Three screechingly loud stars.

[elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5
Next time someone says they don't mind unlikeable protagonists I'm going to give them this book to see if they're full of shit

[Oriana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's a text conversation I had with my friend Megan:

M: Have you read Treasure Island!!! by Sarah Levine?
O: No! What is it?
M: Um, a book. You may like it.
O: Ha, okay.

[Megan brings me the book, which I dutifully add to my terrifyingly high, teetering to-read stack. A month passes. I read this and that and the other, and then I pick this up.]

O: Holy fuck, why didn't you tell me this book was endorsed by both Adam Levin and Aimee Bender??????
M: Um, because I don't know who they are.
O: AAAAAHHHH they're like two of my most favorite authors ever I am starting this book right the fuck now. Also I will loan you The Girl in the Flammable Skirt right away.

[And I did.]

So this book is pretty fun. It's kind of zany, kind of silly, kind of light. It's about a girl who becomes obsessed with (duh) Treasure Island and reevaluates her entire life based on its principles—which she distills to "boldness," "resolution," "independence," and "horn-blowing," so that should give you an idea of the book's flippant, somewhat sarcastic tone.

It's a great idea, and it's pretty fun to read, with sometimes really shocking moments of fantastic language or great musings. But the big problem is that the main character is just a HUGE dick. She's a dick to her boyfriend, she's a dick to her boss, she's a massive dick to her sister and her parents and her best friend. She's mind-blowingly self-centered and narcissistic and conniving and cruel.

I guess you could call this success on the part of the author, because she created an awful character and then made her awfulness extremely consistent and more or less believable. But it's a fail for the reader (assuming that reader is me) because I kind of hate people who are dicks, so it was kind of hard to get excited about going on a journey with this absurdly dick-ish character.

So I dunno. A+ for effort, and I'm not sorry I read it or anything, but I can't really say I loved it.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. A college graduate floating though life working crappy jobs you would imagine high school kids work until they go away to college reads Treasure Island and becomes obsessed with it. She believes it was intended for her and tries to live by what she believes are the book's core values: boldness, resolution, independence and horn-blowing. She even gets an Amazon parrot (using stolen money from work) so she can teach him to quote the book. Sounds funny, right? But it's not.

This is the sort of anti-hero I hate. Annoying, borderline sociopathic, irresponsible, selfish, needs the shit slapped out of her. She annoyed me like Ignatius J. Reilly annoyed me. Even so, I thought this was going to be a three-star read - I laughed when she stalked her sister to a secret boyfriend's house and busted them having sex. I was okay up until the part when she poisoned the bird because he preferred to quote commercials rather than lines from Treasure Island. She ground up a mixture of xanax, allergy pills, and vicodin, put it in a dish of macaroni and cheese and fed it to the bird. I cannot get behind any form of animal cruelty, even if it is done for laughs in an absurdist novel. It's not funny. At all.

[Natalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a disappointment to me. I hated the protagonist who started out sort of quirky, then moved on to mildly annoying, finishing out dreadful, and unbelievable. The story kept getting more and more impossible and hard to believe--why did this narrator have any friends? Does anyone without some sort of mental illness actually behave this way? I admit that the premise was interesting, for a while, but the book felt more like an experiment that went on for about 100 pages too long.

At the beginning, I felt I could identify with the narrator. I'm a little older, but, like many of my generation, can certainly understand the feelings of restlessness, unfulfilled in our professional lives, confused and frustrated about where to go from her. That feeling of identification last, oh, about 40 pages. Then I saw some of my worst students--bored, entitled, put out by the world and full of excuses--appear. I get enough of that in class; I certainly don't need to read it in a book.

I only have time to read two, maybe three books, over break. I'm sorry I wasted one of those selections on this.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just one of those books that feels like it was written for me! For fellow fans of weirdo women protagonists with questionable judgment a la The Pisces and My Year of Rest and Relaxation, this book is such a fun little flash of brilliance and you should read it! I laughed a lot and will definitely read this again.

[Hollowspine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange book, and it evoked a strange response for me. First of all, I'm not sure whether or not I liked the book. The first chapters did not impress me and in fact I did not think that my review would be more than two stars. However, as I read the book grew on me.

I began the story, of course, finding our narrator to be a self-absorbed, vain idiot. And moreover, I didn't find her likeable as a protagonist, I wasn't rooting for her. I was hoping that something really terrible would happen to her...not so that she would realize how wonderful her life was and the people who she was taking for granted, but only for my own gratification. It seems I have something in common with her after all.

As that would indicate soon I was reading with a smile, wondering what mishap could possibly happen next.

I think that Levine had an interesting idea and she wrote a good and very rich story out of it. Taking a classic work and using it as the trigger for this dysfunctional family drama created this hilarious and black book. And using this book obsession, in the end, made me sympathize with this utterly crazy narrator.

Our unnamed narrator wants to embody these themes from Treasure Island, to be Bold, Resolute, Independent and a horn-blower. Whatever she tries always turns out terribly though. Partly because she is a vain, self-absorbed idiot. But the ways in which she fails are so interesting and funny. And the results of her actions create this environment where the other bizarre characters of this novel flourish.

I found that many other reviewers couldn't enjoy (or even read it seems) the book because of it's first person POV with such an unlikable narrator. At first I was of that opinion also, but as I read I stopped being bothered by the tinted view of the world through our narrator and realized that there is so much more going on. The story is rich with detail and all of these really funny situations, if only the reader pull out a little to see the wider picture.

From the beginning I realized that our narrator was more John Silver than Jim. Like Silver she is constantly changing her colors to best fit her present needs. She is obsessed with something, and will do anything to achieve success. She is prone to violent outbursts, yet she has a charisma that draws people to her (even when she has hurt or betrayed them).

Poor Little Richard, I thought, was like Mr. Arrow. Although everyone on the crew liked him, he didn't fit into the role Silver needed so one night he mysteriously disappears. Unlike Treasure Island though Levine leaves nothing to suspect.

Besides having our narrator quote and refer back to Treasure Island and having these parallels between the two works she creates this world where a young boy inspires a 20-something woman, but no one sees that as a good thing at all. Everyone encouraged Jim when he left home, his mother, at 10 years old for a sea adventure. Our narrator has tried independence, but failed and returns around 20 to her mother's house. Truly a book for our current world. Like John Silver we come back from Skeleton Island (college) with not much to show for it, and our colleges are glad just how cheaply they rid themselves of us.

In the end I was sympathetic to the narrator. I couldn't help it, hasn't everyone had the experience where a book (or etc.) has really touched them, yet when they try to spread that inspiration, that touching moment with someone else no one understands or cares. What had such an impact to them barely registers to anyone else. Going on about it, trying to make the person understand only brings further annoyance for both parties. Levine uses this alienating experience to really bring out the worst (and the best) of all her characters and for that I give this book four well earned stars.

[Kwoomac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, I was definitely along for the ride as this wacky, 20-something girl decides to base her life choices on the tenets she's extrapolated from her obsessive readings of Treasure Island. These beliefs are 1)boldness, 2) resolution, 3)independence, and 4)horn-blowing. Horn-blowing is my favorite! I was right there with her until the unfortunate incident with Little Richard. She lost me as a cheerleader after this. I was done with her long before her family decided to have an intervention.

Great idea for a story, as who hasn't thought at one time or another that a book has a particular message just for them! I'm not alone here, am I? So I went into this thinking the protagonist was going to have a life-transforming epiphany, in a good way, when what I got was a completely different animal. Until she lost me she totally had me. She's snarky, judgmental, more than a little flaky, and completely delusional. At one point, she has her sister take a bite of her possibly undercooked chicken sandwich to see if she might get salmonella.

Here's a peak inside her delusional head: I've never liked Long John Silver, but reading about him vigorously stumping around on his wooden leg prepared me to see the positive side of a crippled life. I shudder to think of it, but I know my strengths: I could lose a limb and, with the right wardrobe, still come off as sexy.

There's more but you've got to read it for yourself. Oh, one more thing: run, Lars, run!

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really thought this was going to be a fantastic book based on the first few minutes of reading. I enjoyed the snarkiness of the main character and the crisp, punchy prose. I even enjoyed the concept behind the pet library, which is a completely hilarious concept and where I think the story should have stayed.

Then, the character turned into a completely reprehensible human being. Worse than Machiavellian, not even a character you love to hate, just a character you want to punch in the face as you read on about her sucking the life (and money) out of everyone she meets. And it ended by completely falling on its face, which I guess makes as much sense as the complete lack of plot.

If you're really into reading about awful human beings with zero depth, then this book will be right up your alley.

Kelly I. Hitchcock
Author ofPortrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook

[Phoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

such an insane little book, i loved it!!! it rips along at an unbelievable pace and is hugely funny. i felt it took a turn from hilarious to deeply unnerving about 80% through, which both felt like whiplash and the only natural conclusion. it reminded me of the pisces what with a main character going through a period of obsession and a mental health crisis while ignoring everyone else in her life but imo was the much, much stronger book.

[Patrick Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

The funniest book I've read this year, and a criminally underrated novel. The narrator, a nameless young woman, finds inspiration in the classic novel Treasure Island. She decides to use the book as a blueprint, a template for how to be a different sort of person. Drawing from Jim Hawkins' four core principles -- boldness, resolution, independence, and horn-blowing -- she sets out to remake herself. But what she succeeds in doing is unmaking her life. She essentially steals money from her employer to buy a parrot named Little Richard. She loses her job at the "pet library" (a business where patrons can borrow an animal for 48 hours), breaks up with her live-in boyfriend, and is forced to move in with her parents and her sister. There, she proceeds to destroy everyone's lives in horrific (and hilarious!) fashion.

As I read on, it became clear that the protagonist was possibly (probably?) insane. And even worse, she was probably tragically misreading Treasure Island (She barely remembers the character of Long John Silver). As she digs herself further and further into lunacy, the more it becomes obvious how terribly delusional she is, how woefully ill-conceived her sense of self is. And the crazier she gets, the funnier and more entertaining this novel becomes.

This was a fascinating book to read immediately after Gone Girl, as both books feature female narrators who have an idea of themselves that's radically different from the one the reader forms. Of course, in Treasure Island!!!, it's played for laughs (though there is some death in the book If you are a person who absolutely cannot handle violence against animals, you might want to think twice about this book), while in Gone Girl...well, fewer laughs, I guess. I was never sure whether the woman in Treasure Island!!! was a psychopath in the vein of Amy in Gone Girl. She has a bottomless capacity to trample other people's feelings, to be sure, but she seems to have some remorse about it, from time to time. More likely, I think, she's some sort of autistic. She can't read social cues and seems surprised when people react with horror to horrifying things.

Whatever her mental health status, she was a wonderful mind to inhabit for the few days it took me to read this book. Highly recommended.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are you a glutton for unlikeable narrators? Tired of tales that teach lessons? Do you often feel “big with book the way a woman feels big with child”? If so, check out Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine. Accompany its intrepid, viciously candid narrator into her single-minded obsession with a certain famous adventure novel, ill-fated employment at the local Pet Library, cultivation of the values of Boldness, Resolution, Independence and Horn-blowing, and self-induced spiral out of control. Be sure to order an extra helping of “Gratuitous Pancakes” because “it takes an awful lot of energy to give birth to oneself.”

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unexpectedly superb novel. A novel about a young woman who looks to the Stevenson novel of the same name as a guide to life, failing catastrophically every which way. Brilliantly like C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, Levine’s novel truly is a guide to life, but told in an opposite, inverted, upside down manner.

[Jillian Le · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this book is completely bat shit crazy. I loved it, what a delight. 3.34 rating on goodreads?? You cowards!!!

[Gemma collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the few books I have read where as soon as I finished it I wanted to see whether other people had read it and what they thought of it. It definitely stirred a lot of feelings in me and it seems to have in other people, either it is a loathing or a real like.
I can't say either way really but that I do think this book has an extraordinarily unique voice and is certainly the most original contemporary fiction I have read in a while.
The protagonist is a little like Ignatius J Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces - nasty, egotistical, obsessive, socio-pathic and completely detestable. Its odd to read a book where the protagonist is these things but to really enjoy reading it. For an author to create a character so detestable and yet keep you wanting to read is really clever. In some ways it was almost refreshing to have a character so appallingly blind to her own failings and not have the cliched resolution or self actualisation of so many stories. On the other hand you are waiting for this at the end - where is the justice and has she really learnt her lesson?
The pacing was brilliantly done, a quick read that escalates quickly into melodrama as worse and worse things happen so that I was laughing out loud, gasping and finally very disturbed.
Some of the descriptions were just perfect, particularly her moving back with her parents and the description of her parents daily life, the house being the same, finding little gadgets her mother has bought - having just moved back in with my parents this really got it for me
This is quite a disturbing read in some ways but also a very funny and fast paced one. It also interested me that the protagonist is female where often characters who are portrayed in the way she is are much more often male. There are definitely moments where I empathise with her and then am disturbed for doing so and feel better about my own, paltry short comings!
Really enjoyed this, enjoyed by being surprised as had no expectations of an author I had never heard of before.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like the anti-heroine of this grating satiric novel, I rediscovered the classic adventure Treasure Island as an adult, and found it hugely enjoyable. However, unlike the incredibly irritating, selfish, and possibly insane 25-year-old narrator, I did not convert it into a manifesto for personal growth. Working a strange, dead-end job in a pet rental store, and drifting in an amicable but mild relationship with her boyfriend, the unnamed narrator distills the classic adventure tale into four "Core Values" of Boldness, Resolution, Independence, and Horn-Blowing. Her natural self-absorption leverages these "values" in such a way that (semi-spoiler alert) in short order she has embezzled $1,000, lost her job, acquired a parrot she hates, lost her boyfriend, cut off her only friend, and is living back at home with her family.

I guess this is supposed to be a satire of the kind of self-empowerment memoir that seems to have sold quite well for the last several decades, but it never really worked for me. This may be because those kind of books seem to already satirize themselves, but I think the main problem is that the narrator is so single-mindedly selfish and obtuse that her antics are much more annoying and tiresome than they are funny. Which is not to say that there aren't a few funny scenes, because there are -- just not enough to justify the time spent reading. The book is 160 pages, which felt about 130-140 too many to me, I could imagine having enjoyed the same premise as a short story, but the same note is struck throughout, making it more tedious than I'm sure the author intended.

If the idea of riffing on Treasure Island appeals to you, check out Justin Scott's recasting of it as a World War II adventure with Nazi gold, or even better, one of the several novels written with Long John Silver as the protagonist, the best of which is Bjorn Larsson's Long John Silver.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A viciously funny book, and at its heart also a book about the desperate need to believe there’s a right way to go about life; a quest for a framework which purports to be self-empowering but is in essence a disavowal of autonomy. It is a kind of liberation for the narrator, her obsession with the dogmatic appeal of Treasure Island, because it feels like an active choice, like a thrown rope in a life of stagnancy. And there’s nothing especially funny about that. So what this book’s real achievement is, then, is wedding the hysterical and the bleak in such a way that they blend. Truly a marvelous achievement.

[idiomatic · Rating 4 out of 5]

quite funny, interestingly nostalgic in style, extremely claustrophobic. like if i capture the castle was narrated by the worst person you had ever met. we love to be deranged by an intertext.

[Karen Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

A protagonist so full of herself and her Treasure Island obsession that she both horrifies and entertains. An interesting, quirky read.

[Natasha Zaretsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel and have added three exclamation points to the end of this sentence as a paean to the author!!! Wholly originally, mordantly funny, and wonderfully deranged, it tells the story of a twenty-five year old woman who--frustrated by her own ostensible aimlessness--haps upon Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and decides that the boy adventure story holds the key to her own self-improvement. Determined to turn a new page and live by the book's core values of boldness, independence, resolution, and horn-blowing(!), the narrator ends up losing her job and her boyfriend, abusing an animal, alienating her family, and totally enraging everyone she comes into contact with. The disconnect between what the narrator thinks she's doing and the destruction she actually unleashes made for high comedy. The book made me laugh and smile the whole way through. And it also made me want to burn my collection of self-help books (and I've read quite a few!). A wonderful first novel that you will want to read in one sitting. I hope that Sara Levine gives us more!!

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don’t take anything in this book at face value; it’s all a farce of the highest order.

Either that or our main character and heroine is the most self-centered, obnoxious, hard-to-get-along-with human being on the planet. With family and friends who are not far down the path themselves.

This has to be one of the oddest books I’ve ever read.

Yes, odder than 1Q84. At least that book was set in an alternate universe.

Not so this story, with a main character who works at a pet library, who reads Treasure Island and decides it has changed her life, who buys a parrot with money stolen from petty cash at the pet library, with a sister who is having an affair with the same elderly man that her own mother once slept with…It just goes on and on.

I can think of a dozen people who would loathe this book. Abhor. Possibly set on fire.

On the other hand, I can think of a dozen people who might think this Treasure Island (don’t forget the !!!) has changed their lives.

You decide.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is about an obsession with a book that goes wayyyyyyy to far. The "heroine" of the book (who never gives us her name), a 25 year old just drifting about without any sort of ambition but a history of crappy jobs, gets goaded into reading Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island". She gets swept up in the sense of adventure and decides to live her own life based on what she deems are the "Core Values" of the book: Boldness, Resolution, Independence and Horn-Blowing. And so her own adventure begins--with some hilarious results and no few character quirks that left me alternately wanting to straggle her, laughing out loud or cringing--sometimes all at the same time. This is another interesting debut novel by an award winning essayist and well worth the time to read in the name of good fun.

[Milla Surjadi]

I adored this book!! To the people that write it off because of the unlikeable narrator, I say you have not met a former English major having a quarter life crisis. Of course she’s annoying and cruel!! She’s obsessed with Treasure Island for god’s sake! I recognize the worst parts of myself in this character (who is notably nameless) — I was almost her a few months ago! I think the tide is turning on mean unreliable female narrators (a la My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a la Emma Cline’s The Guest) and she should have her moment in the sun.

I think this novel is perhaps not as funny as the blurbs make it out to be, but the writing is so wonderfully economical that you get the sense that below the sitcom-esque nature something more complex is lurking in the novel’s conceit. Ultimately I think Levine succeeds in skewering the American tendency for aimless self-improvement (Treasure Island as self-help book, but also the healer the narrator goes to see - critiques on self-help literature and commodified wellness that was ahead of its time in 2012!) and while her message is not revolutionary it’s clear: such an approach to life (independence, resolution, boldness, as the values go) can actually simply become an obsession with our own way of seeing the world. I think more interesting is what Levine is doing here flipping the man in nature fleeing from women adventure story and instead flinging our female narrator into the terrors of suburban domesticity (she has to move back in with her parents after losing her job and a breakup… hilariously she can’t drive). Our narrator’s quests take place in her mother and sisters’ emotional terrain — the world of women Stevenson’s Treasure Island notably lacks. A singular moment of clarity: “It was clear to me now, my mother possessed the pragmatism of a true adventurer.”

I found it so interesting to read this post-Martyr, in which you have a similar lost-in-life suburban character who refuses to accept interdependency as a necessary function of life and believes that there is a silver bullet to make his life meaningful. Instead of Treasure Island, he hyper-fixates on writing and reading about martyrdom as a way to get there. But Cyrus reaches some form of earthly redemption; our narrator here isn’t granted that. That feels right to me… not sure why…

***

“At first it seemed like a laugh. Then the laugh sort of fell down the stairs and became a wail. That intractable bird, that bird in whom I could barely wedge a useful phrase, has been studying my misery when I’d thought he was asleep.”

“Patty was a great find. In some ways I was more sentimental about her girlhood than my own … she was always calling up memories, whether she meant to or not.”

[Brian Grover · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of a 20-something loser who reads Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, becomes obsessed with it, and per the Goodreads blurb: "Convinced that Stevenson's book is cosmically intended for her, she redesigns her life according to its Core Values: boldness, resolution, independence and horn-blowing."

I have to say, this is one of the funniest books I've ever read. Which is why I'm giving it four stars even though the protagonist is the most narcissistic asshole you could possibly imagine. She's surrounded by people who love her and try to help her, and she just relentlessly shits on them for the entire book, then blames them when her (terrible) life choices explode in her face. I mean, Levine's writing is REALLY funny, but I think I was still too traumatized by a person like this being President of the United States to really lean into it. Still have to highly recommend, and will read more of Levine if I can.

[Divya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, 3.5 stars actually. This book can be classified as high comedy. I have never read about a protagonist who is so clueless and so self absorbed before. This is the anti self help book. It really dispels the notion of a single book creating a change in anyone's life, leave alone an already insufferable narcissist! Really enjoyed reading it!

[Hyun · Rating 1 out of 5]

The main character in this book was just utterly unlikeable and did not seem to have any redeeming qualities at all. I kept reading because I kept thinking that at some point things would change and she would stop being so self centered. I was very much let down. I think the author may have been trying to inject humor into the story with her character’s bad behavior, but it just came across as mean spirited to me and not funny at all. The author’s writing style did not appeal to me and I really did not understand the use of italicized words at some points in the book. There seems to be no purpose to this story and I would not recommend it to anyone. I only finished it because it was for a book club. The only good point is that now I can commiserate with others about how bad this was.

[Twofrontteethstillcrooked · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally, a modern woman narrator as unreliable as Jim (or Silver) himself!

This was hugely fun, although if you are the sort of person who needs to really root for a lead character...this will not be the book for you. I was just happy it justified my having reread the original TI as an adult for more reasons than Black Sails.

(Though don't get me wrong: Black Sails is well worth rereading a book for.)

[Aaron Eldridge · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started this book thinking it was the actual Treasure Island so please take my rating with a grain of salt. I did not enjoy the book but not because it was poorly made, but rather because I did not relate to the characters and was happy when the book was over. I would not recommend this book, but if you review the plot and think you might like it. More power to you!