I really enjoyed this book. If you get offended by 'white trash' and teenage sex, maybe you should skip this one. The hero of this book is a 13 year Sam Callahan. He lives with his 28 year old alcoholic mother, Lydia in GroVant, WY. The part have been banished from their home in North Carolina by Lydia's over-bearing father. Sam meets 13 year old Maurey. They are both bright and enjoy reading. Maurey is curious about sex and talks Sam into experimenting with her. When they can't figure out how it works, Lydia explains the mechanics to the children... and the experiments begin. When Maurey ends up pregnant, Lydia helps her set up an appointment at an after-hours abortion clinic. As Maurey lays on the table awaiting her procedure, she notices the person on the next table is her MOTHER! She screams and rushes out of the clinic. Furious with her mother she runs away from home and moves in with Lydia and Sam. Maurey opts to keep the baby, but she wants to date other guys. The story is a roller coaster ride of laughs, shock, and extremely interesting characters, including a Blackfoot Indian, a dog that winks, the local waitress with a heart of gold, the overbearing father/grandfather that made his fortune from manufacturing carbon paper.

I'm not sure how I feel about this coming of age story when the two coming of age are 13 years old. A kid and his mom are moved to this little town by grandpa who hopes they will stop messing up their lives. They mess it up even more but find "family" in the town. The story has it's moments but also some moments that are a bit uncomfortable given their ages.

I enjoyed this book a lot. At times, I thought it was pushing the envelope with some of the sex scenes. I have no problem with teens being sexual and acting on their behavior, but I guess the extent to which the author chose to carry the scenes out was a bit over the top. Even then, when I realized that this book was a YA read and not necessarily intended for adults, it actually made me feel better that teens had a book that explained the what-went-where, which is exactly what Sam and Marley hated about books. I plan on reading the rest of the books in Sandlin's series after this.

You might think you've started reading teen lit with Skipped Parts, but quickly you realize you're in the throes of one of the most twisted coming-of-age stories you've ever read. One of the comments on the cover referred to Holden Caufield, and I didn't get that vibe - the only similarity was age and gender of the main character. As my friend Cory said, "I cannot recommend this to everyone," but this book is good for someone who enjoys reading dark and well-written literature. I look forward to the rest of the series.

I thought this book was brilliant. It captured the full emotional spectrum in me and made me feel sad, and fearful and ultimately happy for the main characters, even though as expected the road that they travelled was quite tough, they still made the best of the bad situation and stood up for what they believed in.

This book was about a boy and his mother growing up together in Whyoming during the 60's. There are lots of times that the boy is almost more of a parent then his own mother is. As the course of the book goes on you get to know this young man along with a few of the residents in town, including some of his mother's boyfriends and the woman who works at the diner, he and his mother frequent several times a week.

In some ways the boy is more of a grown up then his mother and in a lot of ways he's still very much his age. Over the course of the book you discover the reason why his mother has so many issues and in some ways hasn't completely grown up. If you can get past some of the parts of the book like young teenagers having sex, it is a book that does make you think a little bit.

A coming of age tale full of shocking, raunchy, childish discovery. This book made me laugh aloud at times, disgusting at others, and sad all at the same time. Truly, the sadness comes from the realization that the story depicts a modern-day cyclical reality of teen pregnancy: children are having children! And the way the general public view this reality and the way these children cope with their situation is all these things--shocking, raunchy, childish, funny, disgusting and sad.

It started out quirky, and curious. It was funny in a sad way and sad in a funny way and I felt I could kind of relate to that. I enjoyed the voice of a 13 year-old acting as grown up but still very much a 13 year-old.

And then it just got weird. And I get that 13 year-olds have a fascination with sex. And I get that when you know nothing about something everyone else seems to know you "study" whatever clues you can find (in this book they study what the characters in books do before the author "skips over the sex details" to try and figure out the mechanics). And then it seemed that that was all the book was about. No thanks.

It is refreshing to find a book that does not ignore unintended consequences or uncomfortable subjects. Even so, the author makes it most amusing at times. But the self-destructive and cruel behavior portrayed does occur in real life. It shows up regularly in the news. Some parts have still been skipped. Insane presidents with a penchant for mass destruction are absent along with mass murderers armed with perfectly legal machine guns. For such entertainment, one must still rely on the news. I see this is a series. None of the characters are particularly endearing. They are all quite stupid. I wonder if I should read the subsequent books.

Wow...I am so disturbed that this got any good reviews and that even the negative reviews barely call attention to the pedophilic voyeurism this book is. This old man author details, at great length and detail, prepubescent & barely pubescent sexual encounters explicitly...YET in this day & age we put "trigger warnings" on mentions of self harm or the word "rape". This is unbelievable. An adult woman says to a 13 year old boy that she would love to feel his young tongue on her and NO ONE IS COMPLAINING?@!!! What if that were a male character to a female. This world & this book are disgusting.

This is a hard book for me to rate. I don't quite know how I feel about it.

Sam is a 13 year old boy who, along with his mother Lydia, is banished to GroVont, Wyoming by his grandfather because his mom messed up somehow. He doesn't fit in at school and is pretty miserable until he finds a friend in Maurey. Together they explore things beyond their maturity level and learn a big lesson the hard way.

It was hard to get into the book in the beginning. It was pretty slow but I thought it was well written so I kept on. I had a really hard time remembering that Sam was only 13. The way the book is written and by Sam's "voice" you would think he was an adult or at the least late teens. I just couldn't find it believable that a 13 year old talked this way. Then there were times where he was so ignorant to a subject that you were reminded of his age.

I liked the characters, for the most part. They were developed well and interesting. Well, interesting doesn't really cover it, they were down right dysfunctional. There were a lot of really funny moments in the story, and I loved those parts. I love a story about funny, dysfunctional families. Lydia was my favorite. She was crass, vulgar and irresponsible. She made the story fun.

There were parts where I just got bored and I skimmed over them. The writing was good, though. There were parts that I didn't care about.

The part that disturbed me, and will disturb a lot of people, is the fact that these 13 year olds are having sex. I'm no prude, but I didn't enjoy reading such graphic descriptions of these kids exploring each other. If it were toned down a bit, I would have liked it a lot better. Then, it wouldn't have been the same book, though.

It made me sad when I really thought about it. In this day and age, 13 year old probably think very closely to this now. It's different from when I was 13, and that wasn't all that long ago!

In some of the reviews this book is compared to "Catcher in the Rye". This book cannot compare to "Catcher in the Rye" in any way, shape or form.

I just learned this is the first book of a trilogy. I won't be reading the rest of them.

The book was well written and brought out a lot of emotions. I just didn't like it as much as I wanted to.

2.5 stars

Tim Sandlin is becoming one of my favorite authors. This is the 2nd book I've read of his. Characters are great! Interesting reads, humorous, poignant, just great all around. I loved the characters of Lydia, Dot, Sam etc.