Happy Birthday To Me – Brian Rowe

Happy Birthday To Me is the first instalment of new paranormal romance YA trilogy by American author Brian Rowe. The second instalment Happy Birthday To Me Again is now available, while the third instalment Happy Birthday To You is coming soon. I was introduced to this trilogy by the author himself who was kind enough to send me a free e-copy of both Happy Birthday To Me and Happy Birthday To Me Again, in return for a review here. To find out more why don’t you check out Rowe’s blog, here.

Cameron Martin is seventeen years old, handsome, athletic, and popular, what more could he possibly ask for? However one morning Cameron awakes to find that he is now aging a whole year in just one day, doctors are baffled by the condition, his family and friends are mortified, while his peers are disgusted. Cameron must now face not only his graduation, prom, and state championship basketball match but also the fact that he will age from seventeen to seventy in a matter of weeks. Through this condition though Cameron will learn his life isn’t as perfect as he first thought as his family and so-called friends are really put to the test. He will also discover a new love in the form of the mysterious Liesel….a girl who may be the only one who can save his life.

Before I read Happy Birthday To Me what really grabbed me about it was the intriguing concept, and after reading the book the concept certainly didn’t disappoint. I’d heard of the idea of people aging a whole year in just one day before but in this book Rowe has also thrown in the element of magic to make it paranormal instead of a straight forward YA novel. As much as I enjoyed the paranormal elements of the novel, they actually weren’t what made the book for me. What I really loved was the character development of Cameron. He started off as a bit of a buff air-head really, frustratingly though you could see his potential, and through this severe condition we really start to see Cameron fulfilling his potential as he feels his life slipping away. By the end of the novel we see that Cameron isn’t really a self-centred person if anything his selfish behaviour was more down to his naivety rather than spite.

Happy Birthday To Me is a well written character driven YA novel with the added bonus of magic, and I look forward to seeing what Cameron does next in Happy Birthday To Me Again.