The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Something I hate to admit to my adult friends is that I loved the Harry Potter books. Every last one of them. Yes, I am a 25 year old nerd…I have accepted it, so I suggest that you, dear readers, accept it too.

So, when I received James Patterson’s latest book,
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X to review, I was pretty excited…despite the fact that it’s meant to be a YA Fantasy book. Patterson, being a father himself, wrote the book to inspire young boys to read more. A noble effort on his part, I believe.

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X is about “a boy who has always used his hidden superpowers to survive, but he carries with him a deadly secret and the fate of the world rests on whether he succeeds at his mission”. Now, if you’re anything like me, this quote won’t do a whole lot for you. Essentially, it’s about a boy with serious superpowers who is on a quest to avenge the death of his parents…and save the world while he’s at it.

This book (available here on amazon.com) was a very quick read for me and the number one praise I have for Patterson are the short chapters. In a world of ADD kids, these short chapters make reading easy and enjoyable again. Especially for pre-teen boys, who we all know aren’t typically big readers. It’s definitely the kind of book your son (or daughter) will enjoy but won’t make you cringe while reading it with them.

At times, it was a little cheesy with some dialogue that was hard for me to swallow. Yes, I know I’m an adult and that’s why the use of the word “butt” instead of “ass” feels forced to me. However, I probably wouldn’t feel the same way about the language back when I was 10 years old…nor would I feel it was too tame if I had a 10-year old reading said tame language. Also, some of the supernatural lingo took a while for me to pick up and understand…but again, I blame the fact that I’m an old fart.

These two very small criticisms aside, I still feel strongly that this book was very clever and at times I found it so suspenseful that I didn’t even want to put it down at some chapter breaks! The plot is sharp and the ending was actually unexpected…something I find can be rare in YA books.