Butter

This book has the most grabbing synopsis I've ever seen. As soon as I read the synopsis, I ran to my library to get it, absorbing it in two nights. I went into it honestly expecting a somewhat exploitative dark comedy. And in some ways, that's what I got–but it was wrapped in a safety blanket of standard YA fare. The characters (aside from the main character, who is called Butter throughout) are largely indistinguishable from those in other YA books. They all speak in that not-quite-true-to-life-but-close-enough way. Butter, however, has quite a unique voice as the narrator. I enjoyed the fact that Butter was an imperfect character, and that Lange didn't make him an untouchable martyr. He makes mistakes, he does awful things, he's sometimes mean and a liar and misogynistic. But he's unique; I knew it was him talking throughout the story. Where the other high school characters were interchangeable, Butter stood out from the crowd in how he was written. The was quite a bit less preachy than I thought it would be. I didn't walk away thinking the message was “Don't be mean to fat people!” If anyone learned a lesson in this book, it was Butter himself. I would have given the book that extra star if it'd hadn't been so “YA predictable.” Despite its dark premise, the book isn't that shocking. It has elements of dark comedy (the other students rallying around Butter to kill himself), but I'd enjoy it more if the author had gone all the way with the humor. It's like she was trying to shock the reader only halfway. Other than that, I enjoyed the book. I'm a seasoned horror consumer, so this didn't come close to turning my stomach. But, of course, not everyone is me. It's an easy book to get through and I'd recommend it.