When Bee comes home with straight A’s she reminds her parents of the little promise they made to her at the beginning of the year: Anything she wants she can have. So naturally she wants a family trip to Antarctica. This surprises her seriously smart TED-talk star father and her seriously eccentric mother. But a promise is a promise. Thanks for yours.

So begins this hilarious novel.

If you didn’t have ADD before, you might after reading this book. And I mean that in the best, most creative and daring of ways. Told through letters, emails, documents, and what one suspects are diary entries, this book just never stops (you know, until the end of course.)

Coming from Arrested Development, we would have expected nothing but clever from Semple. But the truth is, she over-delivers. Anti-social, unimpressed and a hundred percent dedicated to her family, Bernadette Fox is one of the most entertaining characters to ever escape from someone’s head. And that’s what it feels like – that she’s escaped from Semple’s impossibly hilarious brain. The rest of the cast is equally weird and simultaneously normal. Bee, a perfectly rendered teen daughter, captures the reader’s heart despite her frequent sarcasm because well, sometimes she’s got a point. And Elgie… you can’t help but feel sorry for the guy, despite his disappointing indiscrimination. I mean, Bernadette? She’s a handful.

So while this book may cause a few people to get a speeding ticket of the brain, it’s quite worth the risk. Move over Oprah, Bernadette is my new hero. Or maybe it’s Semple, I can’t be sure.