This week's review is brought to you by my buddy-read group (run by the amazing Christina Pfeiffer and #SmithSeptember
DEAD STRIPPER STORAGE by Bryan Smith
1. This was my first foray into the mind of the great Bryan Smith, and I don’t think I could have selected a better book for my first of his. This is nowhere near his most gory or brutal book, but I found it to be both psychologically horrifying and hilarious.
2. I felt so bad for our poor main character, Pete Adler, as he seemed like a bit of a bumbling idiot; a gentle soul just lost in the land of adulthood, bored and unremarkable. Feeling a bit bad for him didn’t make reading his misfortune any less enjoyable! Pete gets mixed up with a pair of diabolical geniuses who make a game of completely ruining lives. I know I shouldn’t have liked these sociopaths as much as I did, but I found myself kind of cheering for them. Why? I’m a unsure outside of their sheer creativity and an appreciation for how well thought out their scheme was. This was the psychologically horrifying part -how pervasive their evil was; there was nothing safe for poor Pete. As an introvert, nothing makes me more uncomfortable than the thought of my home, my safe space, becoming anything but safe and secure.
3. As Pete’s life got worse, the situation got more hilarious. Darkly hilarious. There’s one particular scene that had me cackling as I thought about getting up during the night to get a drink and looking out my window to see my neighbor in the midst of shenanigans with a car and a dead stripper…
4. The ending wasn’t my favorite, but I also didn’t hate it. I’m not sure what would have made it better in my mind, perhaps I simply wasn’t ready for the post-mortem mischief to end!
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