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A review by see_sadie_read
Bite Club! by Hal Bodner
3.0
I don't always consider a book being cheesy as a bad thing. There have been plenty of cheesy stories I've really enjoyed laughing along with. Bite Club is unabashedly cheesy, purposefully camped up and totally over the top, and I mostly enjoyed that about it. I liked the fat, Jewish heroine. I liked that the rest of the cast was diverse. Mechanically the writing is fine and the narration by Kitty, that I listened to, is well done.
However, there is a thin line between having characters play up to and with their stereotypes and writing a stereotype. On several occasions I felt Bodner crossed the line into making fun, whether purposeful or not. I cringed more than once.
But my biggest problem with this book, and if I'm honest it barely made 3 stars because of this, is that Bodner frequently goes off on long, descriptive histories of characters that divert the plot. If a character is being introduced for the sole purpose of dying immediately, I don't need 15 pages of their life story. I certainly don't need that for a dozen or so victims that play no active part in the book, plus all the actual characters. It broke the story up into small chunks between long sections of unneeded exposition, making it feel very jagged.
All in all, I'll call this an all right read, not bad but not too good either.
However, there is a thin line between having characters play up to and with their stereotypes and writing a stereotype. On several occasions I felt Bodner crossed the line into making fun, whether purposeful or not. I cringed more than once.
But my biggest problem with this book, and if I'm honest it barely made 3 stars because of this, is that Bodner frequently goes off on long, descriptive histories of characters that divert the plot. If a character is being introduced for the sole purpose of dying immediately, I don't need 15 pages of their life story. I certainly don't need that for a dozen or so victims that play no active part in the book, plus all the actual characters. It broke the story up into small chunks between long sections of unneeded exposition, making it feel very jagged.
All in all, I'll call this an all right read, not bad but not too good either.