'There was no togetherness, no blending – just five separate flavors of an indigestible dish called Dumb.' Which means that now, Dumb has five members. Without meaning to, Piper winds up becoming Dumb's manager, and she finds them a drummer (her friend Ed Chen, whom I adore), and then Josh drags the beautiful (but possibly talentless) Kallie into the band, mostly because he wants to get with her. Oh, and her best friend just moved to San Francisco. Her younger brother, Finn (a freshman), won't usually sign to her, her father never bothered to learn, and her parents just raided her college fund to pay for cochlear implants for her sister (something that made M cry, and M almost never cries, y'all). She has hearing aids that help her a bit (in a quiet room with only one person talking) and the ability to read lips, but she has to work hard in order to understand what's going on around her. Lots of teenagers feel invisible, of course, but Piper even more so because she is deaf.

Piper is smart and sassy and tired of being invisible. They've just won a local Battle of the Bands, and they do a set on the school steps, which is where the main character, a girl named Piper, first encounters them. At the start of the novel, Dumb has three members (all seniors in high school): twin brothers Josh and Will and a semi-punk girl named Tash (short for Natasha, if memory serves). reading this book because I absolutely could not put it down, and I therefore insist on reinventing the wheel, even though Ana's enthusiastic review (which I found this morning) pretty much says it all.ĭUMB is the name of a rock band. I could seriously just point you to this review by Ana over at The Book Smugglers and cal it day, but I won't, because I stayed up until, I dunno, 3:45 a.m. It's one of her favorite tropes, although of course that element alone isn't enough to win her over. *headdesk*) Plus, M loves books that involve people who are deaf or blind. (Have I told you that M reads the end first? Well, she does. I was a bit nervous about the purchase since M isn't always easy to buy books for, but she took to it immediately upon reading the ending. I bought it because it caught my eye at the bookstore, and I liked the premise (shortest version: deaf girl decides to manage a rock band), and I read the first chapter while in the store to assess the writing and (a) forgot where I was, (b) lost track of time and (c) wanted to read on. Kellyrfineman For Christmas, I bought M a copy of Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John.

Five flavors of dumb by antony john