BDCHS Advanced Reading discussion

Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley is about Katie, a 29 year old who started the beloved restaurant, Seconds, four years earlier. Seconds is one of the most popular places to eat in town and while Katie had originally started with a staff full of friends, all of them have moved on since then. Now operating with a fresh staff comprised of infinitely younger adults, Katie feels that it's time to move onto bigger and better things, like her new restaurant Katie's, for starters.

Between running Seconds with the co-owner Raymond, having a fling with her so-called successor Andrew, and trying to get her second restaurant off the ground, Katie has pretty much got her hands full. Everything is running (semi-) smoothly until Katie remembers her dream about a weird girl in a black coat sitting on her dresser. When Katie reaches inside her dresser drawer, she removes a box with three things inside:

- a small notebook titled "MY MISTAKES"
- one small red-capped mushroom
- a printed instruction card

Upon reading the instructions, it is revealed that Katie must write down her mistake, consume a mushroom, and then go to sleep. Deciding to prevent a waitress' injury from happening, Katie writes her mistake, ingests the mushroom, and falls asleep. When Katie wakes, she finds that the accident never happened and only she remembers what originally happened.

Completely baffled by the shift in reality, Katie seeks knowledge from Hazel, a waitress at Seconds, about what could have caused the change. Hazel tells Katie about supernatural entities called "House Spirits". House Spirits dwell in establishments and are kept happy by the residents. Later on, Katie finds herself on the floor in the pantry. Through the cracks between the wood paneling, Katie sees the same red mushroom growing in a cluster. After picking one, Second's house spirit appears and ambiguously warns Katie about the dangers of using too many mushrooms.

Katie ignores this completely and eventually consumes all of the mushrooms one by one. One unintentional invitation of a second house spirit later, Katie is confronted by a witch who feeds off of the empty worlds Katie leave behind. Katie ends up being transported to her original, unchanged world and dealing with reality instead of bidding her time by creating alternate timelines.


I rate Seconds 5 out of 5 because the story, theme, and characters really appealed to me. I found myself sinking into the plotline. The message I received from the story is that you have to deal with what life flings at you. You can't just ignore something or else it'll spin into an even uglier problem which'll be even harder to get rid of. Seconds is definitely one of my favorite books and I hope to read more from Bryan Lee O'Malley soon.