YA Sci-Fi: How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend by Gary Ghislain

David is a fourteen-year-old boy who spends his life getting shuffled between his psychiatrist dad in the French countryside and his self-absorbed, ridiculously wealthy, lawyer mother in Paris. He doesn't particularly enjoy either place (the villagers where his dad lives mistrust all the insane teens who get sent there to be "fixed"; his mother and her boyfriend care more about material objects than him), but David's life gets much more interesting when Zelda shows up at his father's place. Zelda claims to be an alien, sent from her (all-female, sexy warrior) planet to find the "chosen one," who just so happens to be Johnny Depp. When Zelda stows away in David's mother's car on the way back to Paris, who knows what wacky adventures will ensue?

I honestly expected very little from this book (sorry, Mr. Ghislain). An author I'd never heard of (this is his first book, though) being published by a company I'd never heard of (my bad on this part; Chronicle Books is apparently pretty well-established) with a ridiculous title for a weird plot. It sounded like some self-published thing that would turn out to be a poorly-written load of trash (no offense to self-published/small unknown press authors in general, but most of the books I've read from these places lately were a waste of time). Fortunately, I got a surprise with this one. Ghislain's writing was way better than I expected, and the story, while, yes, it was weird and off-the-wall, was enjoyable to read. I've read better science fiction, but I've also read much, much, much worse. There was never a point where I was so interested in the book that I couldn't put it down, but at the same time I was never bored. So, to wrap this up: How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend is a good read when you're in the mood for a short, occasionally humorous, wacky book.

Maturity Factor: Some bad language and sexual situations.

My ARC of this book was received through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. It is published by Chronicle Books and comes out in June, 2011.