"Thanks to Vera's searing voice, "Please Ignore Vera Dietz" is one of my top choices for 2010. I was hooked by the opening scene at Charlie's funeral where Vera imagines him inside the casket laughing and lighting paper on fire with his Zippo.

This funny, smart, offbeat novel compares favorably to John Green's "Looking for Alaska" and Jay Asher's "Thirteen Reasons Why" as stories about teens dealing with the death of a friend."