A review by katyanaish
Alien Education by Gini Koch

4.0

***3.5***

Honestly... it was too much to buy that they'd let themselves get bullied by a moronic head of the PTA in such an obvious way. It's firstly just not who they are. Secondly, it makes them look weak and ridiculous - how can they handle galactic war and not this uppity sniffing bitch who is so inept that they have her on camera starting a food fight? With their PR machine, they could have destroyed this woman - and the school right along with her, if the school was part of the problem - by laying out how they'd been treated from the outset with the surprise bake sale, and showing the video of her team starting the fight. That along with the security risk of advertising to the world, for weeks, that the First Lady was there... it was just stupid. Way, way beyond any ability to suspend disbelief. And it was so wrapped through the book that it dragged everything down.

Also, man, I'm so tired of Reader. The way he lectures and blames Kitty for ridiculous things that she is in no way responsible for... Kitty needs to stop putting up with it, and start throwing some of Reader's fuck-ups into his face the way he tries to do to Kitty for everything that goes wrong in her general vicinity. Like
Spoilerhow his team utterly missed that Kitty had been set up for this bake sale, for weeks. How they even went along with her being bullied into it, rather than handling the petty bullshit so she can stay on stuff that really merits her attention. How the whole thing was a spectacular security fail - they had busloads of people coming to a place where they had light security because it was supposed to be private!!!
This could easily all have become an assassination attempt (and it was frankly shocking that it wasn't), and that would ALL have been on Reader... Mr. I-am-in-charge-and-you-people-need-to-stop-doing-my-job. Maybe Kitty wouldn't do Reader's job so much if Reader actually gave even the smallest hint that he was capable of doing it himself. But no, he's too busy pissing in his territory to actually do shit.