Please Don't Kill The Freshman, often abreviated PDKTF, is the first novel by Portland, Oregon author Zoe Trope. Written while she was a freshman and sophmore in highschool as a zine, the book started gaining attention and was picked up later by HarperCollins for a large advance, and was unleashed with full publicity on the world.
Unfortunately, the literary quality of the book is overshadowed by the publicity and controversy surrounding Zoe Trope, especially in the Portland area, where Zoe Trope frequently contributes and is a topic of conversation in various forums, especially LiveJournal. Although intially popular among many local youths because her story spoke for them, there has been some backlash against her success.
Separating the hype from the story is only done with difficulty, especially since much of the book is recursive, where Zoe talks about writing her own book. The book was written in two parts, the first part being written in her freshman year, and published as a zine, and the second part written after she was contracted to write a full book. Aside from dealing with its own writing, the book talks about Zoe's various sexual and romantic fixations, as well as her anger at her school's authorities (her High School goes unnamed during the book, although it is a fairly open secret), and other ruminations on life.
All of this sounds like typical zine\livejournal topics, and in some places the book seems like melodramatic teenage whining, but in some places, my personal feeling is that Zoe Trope has managed to hit on some real universal themes in her writings.
Whether this book will be remembered twenty years from now, or once it will be forgotten once pissed off bisexual teens are no longer a novelty, remains to be seen. I, however, would not discount that this book will be remembered, or that Zoe may make later contributions to the world of literature.