Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse -- Lucas Klauss
Phillip Flowers is a sophomore in high school. He and his two best friends, Asher and Mark, have somehow attracted the notice of Randy Farragut ("Ferret"), assistant coach of their cross country team and d-bag extraordinaire. Which is less than awesome.
But, during cross country practice—while he's hiding from Ferret, actually—he meets the "unconventionally hot" Rebekah. To spend more time with her, he—the son of a militant atheist—starts sneaking out to go to her evangelical church:
I slide open the door. Asher and I look at each other and then at everybody else and then back at each other. Then we, the atheist and the Hindu, walk across the warm asphalt toward the church, listening to the bright sounds of the Christians.
Well. If you're looking for a male-narrated contemporary novel in the vein of John Green or Sara Zarr—read: thoughtful, searching, realistic, honest, and offering up no easy answers—then I'd suggest giving this one a spin. Phillip's relationships with his family, his friends, and Rebekah are all nuanced, complicated, and believable. While I didn't feel like I really got to know some of the characters—most notably Rebekah, actually, though as it's Phillip doing the narrating, that works—others are so real that they could play the lead role in their own novels**. It deals with serious, heavy stuff—death, religion, the apocalypse—but it's also understatedly funny at moments.
While seeing the implosion of the friendship of Phillip, Asher, and Mark particularly resonated on a personal level, it's Phillip's internal struggles—coming to terms with his mother's death, his fears about the future, trying to figure out not just how he feels about religion, but why—that really make this one shine.
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*Most notably Phillip's father, Asher, and Ferret.
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Book source: ILLed through my library.