Thanks to Simon & Schuster for providing a copy of this book. This has not influenced my review in any way. 
 I read someone describe this as a 'weird book'. And I thought to myself 'exactly!'. It is a weird book and they do turn up from time to time and the only question is, is it a good weird or bad weird? Because good weird books feel special, while bad weird books leave you thinking 'what the hell was that?' And sometimes weird books are filled with cliches and that just makes them annoying by the time you're done. 
 Parker is a teenage boy just a bit lost in life. He doesn't speak, routinely skips school and people watches in hotels. It is in one of these hotels that he meets Zelda who is DIFFERENT and UNCONVENTIONAL because she has silver hair and wads of cash. She decides, ten minutes after meeting him, she's going to change his life and send him to college and then jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Because Zelda is actually - so she says - a couple of hundred years old and she's quite had enough of it all. 
 To Parker, she's the most beautiful and incredible human being to ever exist and - you guessed it - he falls head over heels in love with her. She is life-changing. He is obsessed and by the end of this book I wanted to throttle him. Ugh, I just could not put up with him and his self-pity and the 'what about me' and all the other crap. It was one weekend out of your life, come on! And I don't believe he actually loved her - it really read more like obsession and it was a tad disturbing. He didn't seem at all concerned about her and what she wanted, and even still in the end neither the reader nor Parker knew much about Zelda at all. 
 Unfortunately, within this 'adventure' where Zelda wants to spend all her cash and Parker wants to convince her to live, the pair don't really do interesting things - it's all a little bit dull to be honest. What I would have really loved to see would be Parker being more than just a floundering dropkick on his own, without needing someone to save him. It would have been nice to see him take some control over his life and fix himself because he wanted to, but then there would have been no manic pixie dream girl, would there? 
 I am getting cynical. I do think Wallach writes well but have just not been overly impressed with the stories themselves. And I knew it may sound like I did, but I actually didn't hate it or love it - making it so much harder to review. So middle of the road for this weird book - 3 stars.