colossal's review
2.0
We join our extremely unreliable narrator Jordan as she's returning to Boston from a trip out of state. While she's traveling she picks up an initially friendly, but increasingly annoying, tag-along named Dee who introduces herself as the Devil. Jordan is a fairly awful person, and her life is enough of a trash-fire that having the Devil take an interest isn't that much of a downturn. In all sorts of ways she's been living with devils for years; it's all just a lot more literal now.
The merry way that Dee torments Jordan while Jordan basically holds her own against Dee's cheerful machinations makes this an absolutely hilarious book. What makes it even more interesting is the gradual unfolding of Jordan's damage and why Dee's involvement in her life isn't out of place. Laugh out loud funny, with the dark undercurrent of someone in pain. Granted, Dee does not help matters in that regard.
So why two stars?
For me it's the ending, and I can't talk too much about it without spoiling the hell out of it, but ultimately while I feel Jordan's story was mostly resolved, I never got a clear understanding of what Dee was actually doing in her life.
In brief:
Where I have a problem though, is where does Dee come in? Why is Jordan a VIP in hell? Why are Jordan's completely understandable sins so bad? Without any of this addressed I find myself more than a bit frustrated.
The merry way that Dee torments Jordan while Jordan basically holds her own against Dee's cheerful machinations makes this an absolutely hilarious book. What makes it even more interesting is the gradual unfolding of Jordan's damage and why Dee's involvement in her life isn't out of place. Laugh out loud funny, with the dark undercurrent of someone in pain. Granted, Dee does not help matters in that regard.
So why two stars?
For me it's the ending, and I can't talk too much about it without spoiling the hell out of it, but ultimately while I feel Jordan's story was mostly resolved, I never got a clear understanding of what Dee was actually doing in her life.
In brief:
Spoiler
We discover that Jordan's mother is in the Wailing Wood, where Dante had the location of suicides in Hell, and that the book had been Jordan telling the story too her up to that point. So the central point of the book is Jordan forgiving her mother for her various faults, strongly hinting that Jordan's issues with her mother were at the core of her life and her issues in the book.Where I have a problem though, is where does Dee come in? Why is Jordan a VIP in hell? Why are Jordan's completely understandable sins so bad? Without any of this addressed I find myself more than a bit frustrated.
jordanramirezpuckett's review
2.0
Hidden in this novela is a really good short story. Unfortunately it gets dragged out over about 200 pages and the voice of the narrator and the style of humor just gets tiresome. I was glad that by the end of the book, she clarifies who the narrator was talking to, but at that point I was so eager to finish I just didn't care.
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