Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman
My rating: 3/5 cats
what if the son of the mob boss fell for the daughter of the FBI agent investigating his father and bugging his house??
it is a cute conceit—a romeo and juliet tale with fewer suicides. i thought the opening scene, where our young hero is at the beach, at night, with a (different) girl, and finds a severely beaten man trapped in the trunk of his car as he is reaching for his romance-blanket was the best scene in the book. tip: if you have a capital-f family, don’t let them borrow your car.
i have nothing useful to tell you about this book, and i am only reviewing it because of my mental housekeeping; once it is “reviewed,” i feel like i can put it behind me—i feel a sense of restoration. right now, there is so much jumble as i plow through these teen fiction books like one of those death race 2000 cars: teen paranormal romance: 50 points!!! teen survival story: 70 points!! blammo!!! i am carradine!!! but i don’t really have much time for reflection, not for books i was only just “eh” about. so i fall behind and my anxiety grows.
this book was cute and amusing, but if i were machine gun joe viterbo, i would probably give it a pass to get to run over peak or shackleton’s stowaway, which are more to my taste…
maybe that is my problem: whenever someone asks me for “just something funny” at work, i get the panic-sweats. for some reason, that is my fucking blind spot. and part of it is that humor is so subjective, more so than any other human reaction. want a sad book?? someone dies in this one—most people find that sad. want something romantic?? these characters “fall in love”—done deal. funny?? ummm garrison keillor funny?? david sedaris funny?? martin amis funny?? douglas adams funny?? it is a nightmare question, especially when they preface it with: i need a book for a friend who is very depressed/in the hospital/just lost someone close to them. no pressure, right?? hence, the panic sweats.
none of this is very useful to someone considering reading this book, and i apologize. but it makes me feel better to have released my own shortcomings into the wild.
500 points.
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