Eddie Holloway hates doing laundry, and when his mom and stepdad give him a summer of freedom, he decides to wear all of his clothes and put off doing laundry until after Beach Bash. His lawyer mom is aghast to find out about this plan and grounds him to do laundry all day the same day as Beach Bash. His laundry experience quickly goes downhill when the power goes out, his phone loses service, and, all of a sudden, he and a few friends left behind from Beach Bash have to figure out how to handle the end of the world, no matter what they're wearing. With Reynolds' signature witticisms and jump-off-the-page jokes, the writing style of this middle-grade novel perfectly captures the stream of consciousness explorations of a young boy facing the perils of laundry and of the end of the world. Equal parts friendship story, coming of age, and comedic apocalypse, this will be a great read for unengaged readers and kids looking to take their summers into their own hands.

Epic end-of-summer plans go awry for five kids in Ohio.Twelve-year-old Eddie Gordon Holloway is ready to have a blast at Beach Bash with his friends-it's the day when everyone in town heads to Lake Erie for great food and live music. However, when his mom unearths the mountain of smelly laundry that he's ignored for the entire summer, Eddie is left home in a literal funk, with nothing to wear but his glow-in-the-dark pineapple swim trunks. After a power outage, Eddie links up with four other left-behind kids, and they all enjoy fun times until the streetlights come on-but none of their families return from the party. The kids take action to prepare for whatever is happening in their new world without parents, gathering necessities from their neighbors' empty houses and trying to keep each other's spirits up with dad jokes and teasing, except in the truly gentle spaces where they admit their fears to each other. Ultimately, the buildup to the to-be-continued ending doesn't quite deliver. Long-winded digressions interrupt the flow of the storytelling, and it takes almost half the book to get to the zany situations that provide most of the laughs. Matter-of-fact scenes with Eddie taking his ADHD medicine and talking through school and home pressures with Trey, their school's all-star athlete, offer insightful representations of Black boys bonding on different emotional levels. All main characters read as Black.An unevenly paced celebration of wacky summer adventures. (Fiction. 8-12)

Gr 4–7 —Having worn every piece of clothing he owns, Eddie Holloway, a 12-year-old Black boy in Ohio, is stuck at home doing laundry in his swim trunks instead of accompanying his family to the town's annual Beach Bash. While an unlikely scenario, his plans are foiled when the neighborhood loses power. Eddie and the four other kids left behind must figure out how to survive when the rest of the community mysteriously disappears. Told from a first-person perspective, the narration has lengthy asides that interrupt the pacing and flow of the story. Heavy on personality, this book is light on plot and has an unsatisfying ending, though it is clearly set up for a sequel. Glimmers of depth come through in Eddie's feelings about dealing with his father's loss, mother's remarrying, and attitudes about his ADHD and therapy. VERDICT Recommended for purchase only where there are gaps in humorous middle grade offerings, especially with BIPOC leads.—Monisha Blair