Teen Henry 1994 (Henry Bins #0.5) by Nick Pirog

 

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult, Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery
Content: Nothing I can remember

 

Henry Bins has a rare sleep disorder where he's only awake for sixty minutes a day, from 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. His meticulously regimented life—three minutes to shower, five minutes to eat, seventeen minutes of school, four minutes to play Zelda—is turned upside down when his dad leaves for a week-long cruise.

Just days into his newfound freedom, Henry's carefully structured hour explodes into adventure after a chance encounter with the audacious and beautiful Alice leads to the discovery of an abandoned puppy and a suspicious puppy mill.

As they team up to care for the mischievous pup, Trout, and work to shut down the cruel operation, Henry and Alice stumble upon a web of secrets involving her father—the principal of the local high school—and a shady new technology company. With each precious minute ticking away, they find themselves entangled in a high-stakes game of corruption, daring escapes, and a first crush that makes Henry's heart race faster than his limited time.

With the help of Alice's best friend Nicole and her brother Greg—or "Cipher" as the teenage hacker insists on being called—they embark on a mission to expose the truth before time runs out.

Full of heart-pounding adventure, first love, late-night daring, unbreakable friendship, and '90s nostalgia, Teen Henry 1994 is a hilarious and heartfelt coming-of-age mystery that is a bold reminder that sixty minutes is all it takes to change everything. 

 

This was an enjoyable prequel novel to the Henry Bins series. Fourteen year old Henry is left to his own devices for a few days, with the neighbor looking in on him periodically, while his dad takes a vacation. I enjoyed the characters in the book a lot and the plot was also ok. One of the most enjoyable parts of this, at least for me, was seeing how close Henry would cut it getting home in time before he fell asleep. But that was also a frustration as well because he certainly never seemed to learn! Another enjoyable part of this book was going back to 1994 and reliving all the things from that time period. Dial-up, AOL, cordless phones, the music, etc. 

I did find it a bit far-fetched that so much happened at 3 a.m. for Henry to get involved with, and sometimes there was just no way that all that happened in just one hour. I thought at times the author did a good job with this aspect of the book, showing us how Henry crammed everything he wanted to do in the one hour he had each day, and others not so much. This ends kind of on a cliffhanger with one of Henry's friends hacking into something he shouldn't, so that leads me to believe this isn't just a one time prequel. I was actually hoping it would be because I honestly just want the author to publish what I assume will be the last book in the main series.