You only live twice...at least if you have a new Noggin

Read what Gooreads has to say about Noggin by John Corey Whaley:

Listen — Travis Coates was alive once and then he wasn’t.
Now he’s alive again.
Simple as that.
The in between part is still a little fuzzy, but he can tell you that, at some point or another, his head got chopped off and shoved into a freezer in Denver, Colorado. Five years later, it was reattached to some other guy’s body, and well, here he is. Despite all logic, he’s still 16 and everything and everyone around him has changed. That includes his bedroom, his parents, his best friend, and his girlfriend. Or maybe she’s not his girlfriend anymore? That’s a bit fuzzy too.
Looks like if the new Travis and the old Travis are ever going to find a way to exist together, then there are going to be a few more scars.
Oh well, you only live twice.

The blurb makes the book sound really cute and fun and quirky.

I fully expected a book about the difficulties associated with cranial reattachments and weird symptoms related to that...a kind of Frankenstein-freak story. But Noggin isn't really about the new head. It is about coming back to life after five years and expecting everything to be the same as before, especially in the relationship area. It is about being sixteen when his friends are now twenty-one.

Noggin poses some ethical questions about medical advances and whether we should embrace all the things we "can" do medically. But it doesn't probe too deep or linger too long on this topic. I wish that it did more but I suspect that teen readers won't mind.

I read this book as part of my search for selections for our Mock Printz list. Based on the deficiencies noted it does not seem special enough to be on our list, but my partners on the selection committee may have other thoughts.