Teenager Ritchie Sudden has a lot to deal with. He's still getting used to his mom's girlfriend. He plays in a band called Celestial Embryo / Death By End-Stage Syphilis / Wise Young Fool. His sister died three years ago. Ritchie Sudden is in a detention center.

As Ritchie alternates between narrating his current life in a juvenile detention center, and the events that led him to that point, he tells a story that is in turns hilarious and heartbreaking. Wise Young Fool is getting ready to compete in Band Slam 2012 and Ritchie is growing to accept - and even love - his mother's girlfriend, but he can't forget what his sister told him a week before she was killed by a drunk driver...

Written with a razor-sharp voice, Wise Young Fool is a humorous yet authentic look into the life of a teen boy.

There are 464 pages in this book. This book was published 2014 by Little, Brown & Company .

Sean Beaudoin is the author of Going Nowhere Faster. and Fade to Blue. He lives in Seattle with his wife and daughter.