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A review by audreychamaine
Croak by Gina Damico
3.0
Lex has been having trouble at school and at home lately. In fact, she is trouble, with the uncontrollable rage and beatings she doles out. For that reason, her parents decide to send her away for the summer to work on her Uncle Mort's farm. However, when she arrives at the town of Croak, she finds out that there is no farm. Instead, this is a town of reapers who cull the souls of the dead, and Lex is the newbie. Everything's going great until the mysterious deaths begin, which just happen to align with Lex's appearance in Croak. She's determined to solve the case, before even more are killed.
Overall, Croak is a good time. The writing is lighthearted for a book about grim reapers, and it was fun to imagine a town like Croak. From the funny titles of stores, to the silly drink called Yorricks they have instead of alcohol, served in a skull mug, you can tell that Damico had a ball thinking about this place. I also loved getting to know all of the characters. Lex meets a diverse group of friends, and the friendship dynamic is great to read. My favorite part was the huge board game they invented by mixing a ton of other board games together.
While the plot moves fairly quickly, the mechanics of the culling and the world got in the way of the mystery for me. I kept getting lost on exactly what was going on. Why were jellyfish important again? And what was it that they milked from black widow spiders? I felt like I should have been taking notes on these details, since they got in the way of my enjoyment of the story. It didn't help that I was reading it on my Nook, which made it harder to flip back and forth. It might have made more sense if I'd have been reading a paper copy.
Even if I had a hard time following the plot at times, I did enjoy Croak. Although, sometimes with the massive amount of puns it might have been better titled Groan.
Overall, Croak is a good time. The writing is lighthearted for a book about grim reapers, and it was fun to imagine a town like Croak. From the funny titles of stores, to the silly drink called Yorricks they have instead of alcohol, served in a skull mug, you can tell that Damico had a ball thinking about this place. I also loved getting to know all of the characters. Lex meets a diverse group of friends, and the friendship dynamic is great to read. My favorite part was the huge board game they invented by mixing a ton of other board games together.
While the plot moves fairly quickly, the mechanics of the culling and the world got in the way of the mystery for me. I kept getting lost on exactly what was going on. Why were jellyfish important again? And what was it that they milked from black widow spiders? I felt like I should have been taking notes on these details, since they got in the way of my enjoyment of the story. It didn't help that I was reading it on my Nook, which made it harder to flip back and forth. It might have made more sense if I'd have been reading a paper copy.
Even if I had a hard time following the plot at times, I did enjoy Croak. Although, sometimes with the massive amount of puns it might have been better titled Groan.