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| TAC book 2 |
Most high school sports teams have rivalries with other schools. At Hamilton High, it's a civil war: the football team versus the soccer team. And for her part,Lissa is sick of it. Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is always ditching her to go pick a fight with the soccer team or to prank their locker room. And on three separate occasions Randy's car has been egged while he and Lissa were inside, making out. She is done competing with a bunch of sweaty boys for her own boyfriend's attention.
Lissa decides to end the rivalry once and for all: She and the other players' girlfriends go on a hookup strike. The boys won't get any action from them until the football and soccer teams make peace. What they don't count on is a new sort of rivalry: an impossible girls-against-boys showdown that hinges on who will cave to their libidos first. And Lissa never sees her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling, coming.
Tastes Like: Year-old Halloween candy.
Smells Like: Cotton candy body spray and unwashed socks.
Looks Like: Laura Prepon getting ready to kick Topher Graces ass over who gets to be on top.
Analysis: I think Kody Keplinger is a talented young wordsmith. I think there's a lot of reason to be excited for her and her work as both she and it grow. But I also think there's a lack of maturity in her characterizations and ability to narrate fully dimensional characters.
Two chapters in, I hated the characters. I found them to be shallow and flat, and while comedic writing does seem to allow for less intensive development of personalities - the abuse of stereotypes seems to be de rigueur for comedy - I thought it was a very bad way to introduce your characters. Personally, I need more than an unusual or impressive set up alone to get involved in a story*; I don't necessarily need to like a character, but I should feel curious about them and be interested about how their lives are changed. And the first couple chapters of Shut Out did not sell it to me successfully.
I did not finish this book and probably won't pick it up again - in a world with so many wonderful books, why waste time on the ones you know you aren't interested in? However, I will still check out Keplinger's future books. I think she's a talented young writer and I want to see how that skill develops with time and experience.
My Rating: No mushrooms, since I didn't read the whole book.
Release Date: September 5, 2011
Now children, play nice or Nanny will have to pull out the plasma cannon,
- Maria
*And at 22, a battle between the sexes over a high school sports team rivalry runs the risk of being more irritating than amusing.
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