Reviews

I started out really enjoying the humor in this book...clever plays on pop culture and an interesting "diary" format with questions for readers at the end. The characters were funny in a twisted way, but then nothing happened...repeated scenes to show us how cool and wicked and awful they all were. I got the point. Then finally what we knew was going to happen all along, happened, but just not in the way we expected to. It was o.k., but I probably would have enjoyed it more when I was younger.

stinamirabilis's review against another edition

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3.0

As a kid I really enjoyed Daniel Handler's later works "A Series Of Unfortunate Events", written under the moniker Lemony Snicket, and I was really interested in how he would write for an adult.
It wasn't what I was expected - completely different, I guess - but still as enjoyable. I didn't see the end coming at all, although I wish he'd spent more time on it, rather than just kind of abruptly ending. I don't know. This review sounded a lot more eloquent in my head. I really liked this book, though.

petitecourtney's review against another edition

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4.0

I've always been a huge fan of dysfunctional teenage school novels. This fell right into that niche, and was recommended to be after I read The Secret History. Now, this book is no Secret History, but is still a good book from and author who was a novice at the time.

I thought all the characters in this book were fantastically written, all- even minor characters- were well developed and interesting. Even though this book does have such a large pool of characters, I found myself enjoying all of them and their personalities.

The dark humor is this book was done quite well, and Flannery's POV served for an interesting read, angst included. I loved how this book was laid out, in a journal style- with flans annotations included- this proved for a very entertaining read and was fun to look back on after you finished the book.

The only thing I didn't love was the big

Spoiler

reveal at the end, that Natasha wasn't real, I was accidentally spoiled and knew it was coming. I may have loved it more if I hadn't known but I still felt it was a little messy plot wise. Again, it was fun to look back on the plot and catch the little hints about this. It did make me feel a little cheated, as a lot of conversations that took place throughout the book had to have either not happened or happened very differently. So that was a little strange.

Overall, I did really enjoy this book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves angsty teens or dark academia.

revellee's review against another edition

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5.0

This was a surprisingly great read. When I saw that is about high school seniors, I almost put it down. I've become a little jaded to the YA genre, romances too cheesy and dramatic for me. This book, however, does it all so well. The way it is written is so smart (too smart for me apparently, since I didn't realize right away that the study questions at the end of chapters are part of Flan's rewrite). I was hesitant to read a bunch of teenage female characters written by an adult man, but Handler pulls it off quite well. I would love to write more about this, but I don't want to give ANY spoilers. The experience of reading this book without foreknowledge of the characters or plot is so worth it.

banrions's review

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3.0

I am not at all sure how I feel about this book yet. I do know that that 3 stars is really more like 3.5ish because while I still don't know if I liked the book, I sure as hell am glad I read it. This is one of the most unreliable narrators I think I have ever come across and for that alone it gets two stars right there. I had guessed a bit of the twist near the end a little earlier on, but I wasn't sure if I was right or not up until they said it; because of the completely unreliable narrator you really couldn't be sure of anything.

The only reason I am not giving it four stars is that the beginning took a while for me to get into. The setup too a bit too long, you know from the beginning there is a murder and Flannery did it and all this other unimportant banal things are being talked about instead. It DID manage to really capture my attention though, so I can't rate it lower I only wish the author had gotten to the point a little quicker.

Also, holy shit, these kids are all assholes. Every single one of them whines and gripes and are so fucking pretentious it is laughable. Part of hating all of them makes the novel good though.

hafsa's review

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4.0

I've read all the books by Lemony Snicket, but this is the first time I read a book published under Daniel Handler's real name - his debut back in 1998. I really enjoyed this book, and finished the entire thing in two days - it's been a while since I've lost sleep to reading. I loved the likeably unlikable unreliable narrator; my head spun trying to keep track of what was real and what wasn't, the narrator changing things as she saw fit almost as if she was laughing at the reader. The plot kept me so intrigued I snuck some reading into the work day, unable to wait more than I had to.

It was really interesting to see the early stage of what would become Snicketisms (referring to characters by only their initial, dictionary definitions etc). It was less fun to see the odd descriptions of Black characters, visit Handler's Wikipedia page, and come to the uncomfortable conclusion these descriptions were likely coloured by Handler's own views rather than that of the narrator's.

Other than that, though, I really did enjoy this book! I guessed the plot twist about halfway through but it only added to the suspense and horror. I was a bit disappointed to get to the end and still have questions I needed answering, though that's definitely not a new experience for me after reading a Snicket/Handler book.

jpark414's review against another edition

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4.0

Ehhh about the Natasha ending. But long form jokes paying off over 200 pages... that I can dig.

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