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The OC #2
The Misfit
Must-see TV becomes gotta-have-it teen read!
Break the Rules . . . Or Make Some New Ones
Seth Cohen has grown up among the beautiful rich kids, but he's never been one of them. Cohen? He's the geek, the weirdo, the misfit. But not anymore. Suddenly Seth's got a friend, Ryan Atwood, who's got his back. The popular girl next door, Marisa Cooper, is talking to him. And he's got not one but two girls on the line. Seth's not playing by the same rules anymore, in fact, he's out to break them all.
From the beaches to the boutiques to the parties, what you wear and what you drive matters more than who you are--welcome to the O.C.
Break the Rules . . . Or Make Some New Ones
Seth Cohen has grown up among the beautiful rich kids, but he's never been one of them. Cohen? He's the geek, the weirdo, the misfit. But not anymore. Suddenly Seth's got a friend, Ryan Atwood, who's got his back. The popular girl next door, Marisa Cooper, is talking to him. And he's got not one but two girls on the line. Seth's not playing by the same rules anymore, in fact, he's out to break them all.
From the beaches to the boutiques to the parties, what you wear and what you drive matters more than who you are--welcome to the O.C.
208 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2004
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163 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 19, 2020
Worse than the first one; this feels like someone adapted short TV guide episode summaries into chapters. It jumped around randomly, and had me thinking I'd missed pages by referencing events that never happened in the book.
April 3, 2008
I admit this was a funny choice, novlizations of TV shows can't really be called great literature. Then again they don't pretend to be. I mostly picked up this book because I adore Seth Cohen. Was a bit disappointed it wasn't as centered on Seth as I thought it would be. It's basically a novelization of a part of the first season, from the time they come from Mexico upto the Oliver incident. The thing that most surprised me that it made me warm up to Marissa as a character as her inner motivations were really well conveyed, something that Mischa Barton and probably the writers of The O.C. totally failed to do.
May 1, 2024
This is exclusively for The OC fans. I think anyone who hasn't seen all of Season 1 past Episode 7 (the part of the season this book was based on) would be highly confused. This cuts out all the adults plot lines, and you really need to fill the gaps in yourself sometimes to get what's going on. For example, Sandy and Jimmy open a restaurant. Great! However, in the show we actually see them working on it. In the book? It just happens. They've suddenly opened a restaurant.
Apart from that, this is written like good Wattpad fanfic. This isn't a great book, but it was at least written well enough that I wasn't rolling my eyes at every page. It's also really short - I read it in about 2 hours. It is, however, a pretty pointless book. It's basically a recount of Season 1 with none of the adults plot lines, and through the eyes of people like Marissa instead of through Ryan's eyes like on the show.
If you've seen the show (like me), there's no need to read this. But anyone who hasn't seen the show will most likely have no interest in it and would faster just watch the show than read the book.
Apart from that, this is written like good Wattpad fanfic. This isn't a great book, but it was at least written well enough that I wasn't rolling my eyes at every page. It's also really short - I read it in about 2 hours. It is, however, a pretty pointless book. It's basically a recount of Season 1 with none of the adults plot lines, and through the eyes of people like Marissa instead of through Ryan's eyes like on the show.
If you've seen the show (like me), there's no need to read this. But anyone who hasn't seen the show will most likely have no interest in it and would faster just watch the show than read the book.
June 4, 2020
Bits of this are nice -- very nice. If you take it apart in pieces, it's like a bag full of individually wrapped bite-sized chocolates. As with the first book, it's largely a novelization so you get more delicious unpacking of canon scenes, my favorites being Ryan visiting Marissa in the hospital post-Tijuana, the iconic Ferris Wheel moment, the unholy joy Ryan takes in casually revealing to Seth how many girls he's been with, and analysis of the Seth-Anna-Summer triangle from inside it (poor Anna, always and forever; this show never could quite get the ratio of Quality Boys to Quality Girls balanced at any given point).
There are some excellent segments of original material as well, from Ryan's early struggle with academic demands to laying the groundwork for Marissa's drinking problem. Possibly one of my favorite descriptions made possible by the text medium: "Drinking made all the sad feelings fuzzy and abstract, as if she were watching a movie of herself, the sort of soggy tearjerker that you use a whole box of Kleenex crying over, but can still turn off when it's done. Alcohol let her turn off her life for a little while."
I am also fond of a particularly gratuitous mention of Sandy taking Ryan out to dinner and a basketball game as a reward for good grades, and the surprising number of times I get to listen to his inner monologue be amazed that "Marissa was his and he could hold her as long as he wanted," because I am mushy and romantic like that.
On the other hand, trying to appreciate it as complete novel is kind of like hitting a chocolate bar with a hammer, putting the pieces in a plastic baggie, and calling it a bag of bite-sized morsels. The results are uneven, messy, and cheap-looking, because the book suffers immensely from what I'm sure is a publisher directive to cover waaaaay more canon content than 194 small pages can comfortably manage. This is shorter than the first book, yet is expected to cover 19 episodes vs. 7, and the end of the last book was already starting to rush.
Major plot points are reduced to hatchet jobs just to throw in that they happened, their endcaps clumsily stitched together (the entire Oliver arc? 9 pages). Sometimes things are just flat-out rewritten in order to make more sense with limited text (L.A. becomes a trip to the movies; Eddie is never explicitly abusive, just "bad news"). A particularly egregious change is when Ryan turns into Feely the Share Bear with Sandy at the end, complete with sobbing that has no basis in any reality I know, although it is a very nice indulgence to imagine and I guess I can't fault the author for trying. The dialogue is completely off-script throughout the whole conversation anyway.
In sum: I love this stupid book not quite as much as the first one, but enough that I am going to keep them together like a pair of precious little puppies and page through them whenever I need a hit of nostalgia. And also probably fight anyone who makes fun of me for it.
There are some excellent segments of original material as well, from Ryan's early struggle with academic demands to laying the groundwork for Marissa's drinking problem. Possibly one of my favorite descriptions made possible by the text medium: "Drinking made all the sad feelings fuzzy and abstract, as if she were watching a movie of herself, the sort of soggy tearjerker that you use a whole box of Kleenex crying over, but can still turn off when it's done. Alcohol let her turn off her life for a little while."
I am also fond of a particularly gratuitous mention of Sandy taking Ryan out to dinner and a basketball game as a reward for good grades, and the surprising number of times I get to listen to his inner monologue be amazed that "Marissa was his and he could hold her as long as he wanted," because I am mushy and romantic like that.
On the other hand, trying to appreciate it as complete novel is kind of like hitting a chocolate bar with a hammer, putting the pieces in a plastic baggie, and calling it a bag of bite-sized morsels. The results are uneven, messy, and cheap-looking, because the book suffers immensely from what I'm sure is a publisher directive to cover waaaaay more canon content than 194 small pages can comfortably manage. This is shorter than the first book, yet is expected to cover 19 episodes vs. 7, and the end of the last book was already starting to rush.
Major plot points are reduced to hatchet jobs just to throw in that they happened, their endcaps clumsily stitched together (the entire Oliver arc? 9 pages). Sometimes things are just flat-out rewritten in order to make more sense with limited text (L.A. becomes a trip to the movies; Eddie is never explicitly abusive, just "bad news"). A particularly egregious change is when Ryan turns into Feely the Share Bear with Sandy at the end, complete with sobbing that has no basis in any reality I know, although it is a very nice indulgence to imagine and I guess I can't fault the author for trying. The dialogue is completely off-script throughout the whole conversation anyway.
In sum: I love this stupid book not quite as much as the first one, but enough that I am going to keep them together like a pair of precious little puppies and page through them whenever I need a hit of nostalgia. And also probably fight anyone who makes fun of me for it.
April 17, 2017
The only reason I could read this was because I have seen the show so much. I took me back, and even moments that were horribly written (which was the whole book) like when Seth swept Summer off her feet, I couldn't help but smiling picturing Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson dancing to 'Wonderwall'.
This is the fourth OC book I've read and I feel like they make Marissa a more sympathetic character than the show's portrayal of her.
My number one complaint though is Seth saying that Anna was his first kiss! When we all know it was Summer! By the pool! At his grandfather's party!
This is the fourth OC book I've read and I feel like they make Marissa a more sympathetic character than the show's portrayal of her.
My number one complaint though is Seth saying that Anna was his first kiss! When we all know it was Summer! By the pool! At his grandfather's party!
August 18, 2012
Terrible. I thought there would be something beyond what they showed on tv but there wasnt. It was exactly the tv show in book form. I got this as a joke gift but it was still a waste of time to read. It gets two stars, instead of one, because I liked the show so much.
February 8, 2010
The rest of season one, following the outsider. The story was sort of rushed and skipped a lot of details, but it was ok.
August 19, 2009
Slow at certain points. Overall pretty good. And very dramatic. Alot like the show.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews