One of the best books I've ever read. Sharp, sassy, funny, dark, messed up; a geniunely love-to-hate character, who takes you on a brilliantly funny time. CATCHER IN THE RYE meets PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER, but BETTER!

Grow Up, by the absurdly talented 18 year-old novelist, Ben Brooks, is a vivid, dark, occasionally disturbing look at teenage life from the inside. Bearing the unmistakable stamp of Brooks' very own brand of sardonic humour, this quirky, short novel is loud with laughter in the dark, and marks the arrival of a unique new voice. Despite the sanctimonious, pseudo-intellectual opprobrium of some early reviewers, this book looks set to make its mark amongst the nation's teenagers, who will doubtless identify with many of the day-to-day tableaux that lie therein. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, with a teenage twist - and definitely one to watch.

Was recommended to me by a friend, funny and honest portrayal of teenage life in Britain. At times I did wonder if people actually do live like that but you can really see that the characters reflect what people are actually like rather than romanticising it, truly just a funny and enjoyable read

Meet Jasper. Jasper is 17. Jasper likes drugs. And girls. And, y’know, just hanging out. Doing stuff. Sometimes he chats to Thai prostitutes on the internet. Sometimes he goes to see his therapist, and tells her fibs about being gay and a neo-Nazi. It passes the time. But all is not well in Jasper’s world. Mum labours under the delusion that revising for exams is a more useful and important way to occupy one’s leisure hours. As if that weren’t bad enough, his step-dad’s a murderer. Probably. Maybe. Perhaps. What a palaver, eh? Oh cursed spite, that ever he was born to set it right! ‘Grow Up’ is a novel of impish brilliance and hilarity, which announces its nineteen year old author, Ben Brooks, as one of the most promising writers of the last few years. In theory, of course, his age shouldn’t matter a jot. In practice, some of the newspaper reviews for this one read more like school reports; you felt you were only a sentence away from ‘Ben must work harder on his hand-writing’. I suppose they had a point. There is a reason very few teenage novelists make it into print. Their detachment slides too often into solipsism, precocity into impudence. Brooks, wisely, plays to his strengths: a superb inventiveness with language, with a particular talent for the knock-out one liner. ‘Charity is like putting a plaster on a man with no skin’; ‘His hair is a nest composed of old wax, haunted by the ghost of a pillow‘; ‘The glass smells of dust and old, trapped sun’. Not everything here is a triumph. The dream sequence, where Jasper explains that the balaclava he is wearing is actually a metaphor to show how he ‘can be surrounded by people and still feel alone and anonymous’ is more arch than playful; ditto the faux-Shandean device of making him get into certain situations because it will be good for the novel he is writing. I’m sure they seemed inconceivably clever and original to the author when he thought of them though. They always do when you are 19, and king of the world.