Sourpuss

When reading the description of this book, I was excited to grab a copy. After all, who doesn’t love a dark comedy? As I started reading, I felt the characters were neatly presented. Mallory is an Olympic hopeful runner who has a knee problem. She doesn’t get along with frat boy Graham; however, Graham is the on-campus trainer who can help her get her knee better so that she can run again. The storyline was very straightforward and quite simple. Mallory’s friends and Graham’s frat brothers each had their own well-described personalities. At one point I felt sorry for Wesley, the new kid on the block whose big brother, James, was a legacy at the frat house. It seemed like Wesley was trying to help everyone out during the story but kept being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting his teeth knocked out. Literally. The events that occurred with the main characters were very entertaining because they were connected to the main storyline. It was the repetitive and exaggerated use of the description of the campus happenings that was really quite disturbing and not funny in the least. In fact, when I found out this book was written by two sisters, I was completely surprised. Dark humor is one thing. Being gross is another. Scenes with drunk people falling all over themselves, human waste everywhere, and people knocking each other out littered this book on what seemed like every other page. These rather disgusting scenes started to turn me off of reading this book. I assumed the writers were going for shock value with their graphic descriptions. The only thing that really kept my attention was that I wanted to see what would happen to Mallory and her Olympic career as well as see if she and Graham would join forces and start getting along instead of bickering. I absolutely love the cover of this book with its bright yellow background and a lemon smack dab in the middle of it. Once I had finished the book, I had to think about why the book was titled Sourpuss. When I figured it out, it made me chuckle. This was the kind of humor I was looking for in the book. Subtlety like this goes a long way and doesn’t slam the reader with something so graphic that the reader can’t unsee it. Take the disgusting scenes out and put in more funnies and this would be a really great read.