Book Review: Croak by Gina Damico

Overall: 4
Pages: 311
Spoilers: Medium
Summary from Goodreads:

Sixteen-year-old Lex Bartleby has sucker-punched her last classmate. Fed up with her punkish, wild behavior, her parents ship her off to upstate New York to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer, hoping that a few months of dirty farm work will whip her back into shape. But Uncle Mort’s true occupation is much dirtier than that of shoveling manure.

He’s a Grim Reaper. And he’s going to teach her the family business.

Lex quickly assimilates into the peculiar world of Croak, a town populated entirely by reapers who deliver souls from this life to the next. Along with her infuriating yet intriguing partner Driggs and a rockstar crew of fellow Grim apprentices, Lex is soon zapping her Targets like a natural born Killer.

Yet her innate ability morphs into an unchecked desire for justice—or is it vengeance?—whenever she’s forced to Kill a murder victim, craving to stop the attackers before they can strike again. So when people start to die—that is, people who aren’t supposed to be dying, people who have committed grievous crimes against the innocent—Lex’s curiosity is piqued. Her obsession grows as the bodies pile up, and a troubling question begins to swirl through her mind: if she succeeds in tracking down the murderer, will she stop the carnage—or will she ditch Croak and join in?

First I want to thank Doodle for sending me the book in Aprils' RAK!
Positives:

I would like to say thank you to the cover designer. I love it! You can't see it here but it's made of foil or something because it's shiny! And there's a badass looking chick on the cover not wearing a dress that has nothing to do with the freaking story!

Plus my ex-history major heart explodes because Lex and her twin sister are named Lexington and Concord after the Revolutionary War battle.

Next I would like to say that I really connected with Lex. She was sarcastic, hilarious, and didn't give a shit. Much like myself.

Driggs and Uncle Mort.

The Writing:

I haven't read too many books where death is such an important role to the plot. That is besides The Book Thief, which I hated. I don't know how others have done it but Gina Damico tells the story beautifully. Her world building, or shall I say town building, is really good and I didn't question too much about it. I love all the deathy names that Damico used to construct the town. Her use of imagery is great and I can eally visualize Croak and all the people in it. Damico writes side shaking, gut busting humor that really kept me going for the first part of the book. Because let's be honest the action takes a while to start.

The Plot:

The books starts with Lex getting kicked out of school for another violent breakout. She is then whisked off to Uncle Mort's "farm" for the summer that's actually a town for Grim Reapers. Lex is a bit different than the other Grims' though. It's not that she's super violent and aggressive. No, all Grims' are. It's that when she touches someone to kill them, she feels pain. And she can't seem to shake the feeling that she should help the people that were wrongfully or horribly killed. Then it starts to happen. Bad people are mysteriously being killed and it's up to Lex, Driggs, and their friends to figure out who is doing it. Many people think it's Lex who starts the killings. But it's not. It gets kind of obvious who is doing it, but not in a bad way. More of a "I'm pretty sure X is doing it, but why?" And that is tragic and amazing aspect to the story. Plus X kidnaps Lex and when she escapes X gets away!

Ugh and then the ending!

I typically feel that when an author kills such a character they are doing it for shock value only. But it's not like that in Croak. There's a reason that this person dies and though it hurts Lex, it helps her too. It allows her to have that drive to find character X and to keep being a Grim and live with Uncle Mort.

Negatives:

Not a whole lot of bad things. I don't understand why the school let someone who beat up half the student body stay so long.

Plus there's a lot of buildup. The plot doesn't start for a while. But Damico pulls it off with her humor and writing style. It doesn't get boring like you think it would.

The fucking spiders. Why spiders? I'm with Ron on this one.