I hate to throw up qualifiers but if you actually take the time to put yourself in the positions of these young women and really bask in the story rather than try to rush through it, this might be one of the spookiest Fear Street books of the lot.

It’s good.

Really good.

And you should read it.

But can we talk about this cover? Does this feel weird and kind of… I don’t know… icky to anyone else?

No? Just me?

I mean, there’s nothing misleading or disingenuous about this cover - I would actually say it does a good job portraying the sisters’ appearances. But the whole nightgowns and horror-stricken faces feels a little… I don’t know. Exploitative? Definitely SOMETHING. I just can’t put my finger on it.

What do you think?

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I read Florida Roadkill and came away from it unsure of how I felt. It was funny at parts, not funny at others, entertaining here and there, and seemingly very random elsewhere.

I came away neutral.

So I figured I would read the next in the series and I think I developed an opinion:

Tim Dorsey is fine, but not for me. His stories are a little too random and the jokes are funny but often overshadowed by his critiquing of Florida (fair critiquing, mind you) which reminded me too often about how I don’t really like Florida in the first place.

It’s just not enjoyable enough to continue.

If that sounds harsh, well, I don’t know what to say. Florida is integral to the plot of these books.

And *I* have a lot of mixed feelings about Florida, having spent so much of my life there. It’s got some good to it, but there are too many snakes (literal and figurative), idiots, and assholes for me. I’m not saying there aren’t good people there but the bad ones shine so much it’s overwhelming.

I will say that one part that stuck with me was when the protagonist thought about how when you were a kid you’d bring out your cool stuff and just… LOOK at it and how cool it was.

Really brought me back to my trading card days when I would try to assemble all the clear cards from the Spider-Man set.

One day! One day they’ll all be mine! I just need the rest of the clear cards and I think there’s two hologram cards and that will be it!

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I think I’ve reached the point where I’m beginning to look beyond Stine’s penchant for characters who don’t use much (if any) logic or rational thought.

It’s best to just… give in and go with the flow. It makes the story way more enjoyable when I’m not getting hung up on why anyone would, I don’t know, start fires for funsies.

For instance.

And, once I got over that hurtle, I enjoyed the story as a whole.

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This is a SUPER interesting book about an American who lives in Paris with her French husband and consists of compare/contrast pieces about the cultures.

A critique I read of the book said she was constantly down on the French which is obviously not true (see: paragraph above).

But there IS a… defensiveness to this book. At one point the author talks about a woman who was in basically the same situation she was in when she wrote the book - married to a Frenchman in Paris - and she said she felt that every day was a fight for her to maintain her American-ness and it was exhausting for her, not giving in to the culture surrounding her. That every day was a fight to maintain her identity as an American.

I don’t get it. Why would you move to another country, marry a resident, and then insist that none of that culture encroach on your day-to-day? Why would you WANT to do that? If you want to maintain that way of life, why not just stay in America?

But the woman divorced the Frenchman and hooked up with another American living in Paris and now she’s fine.

The book has moments where you feel the author has similar feelings, but goes along with other parts when they make sense.

I just don’t understand the idea that someone’s identity can consist of their nationality to such an extreme that they actively resist alternative approaches to things because it isn’t - in this case - American. Do they really lack so much personality that they have to lean on the vague and massive trait of “American?” What would that even mean? And it makes me curious as to what they were trying to preserve exactly in a city like Paris and a sensible culture like the French’s.

Again, I don’t think the author is down on the French and I think the Goodreads reviews of this are harsh and unwarranted. It’s an interesting book with good insight into another culture.

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I was told Tim Dorsey writes like Christopher Moore so I had to check him out.

And the writing style is similar, but where Moore’s characters are a lovable bunch of misfits in a city he obviously loves, Dorsey’s characters aren’t as they are far, far more murderous and ambivalent, and Florida is painted in an unflattering light.

Not that Florida has a lot of stuff that could be shown in a POSITIVE light…

I think it’s the difference in characters that really got me. Dorsey’s characters - even the primary that I hear is supposed to be the hero (or antihero) of the series isn’t so much lovable goof as goofy sociopath.

And sociopath ≠ lovable.

Honestly, a lot of the characters feel like sociopaths or at least homicidally selfish and that made it less fun to read.

And yeah, while I think Florida kinda sucks after living there for too damn long, it’s undeniable that Moore uses his love of settings to make you the reader want to spend time there with the characters and Dorsey doesn’t.

I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I wanted to, but I didn’t hate it enough to stop and I want to see if these characters grow on me in subsequent books.

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