I am normally a decisive reviewer, but this book was difficult for me to benchmark. On the one hand, I loved so much about it. On the other hand, I didn't like most of it. Also, the narrator was not good for this book. He turned all the jokes into sad, weird things, when they were hilarious otherwise.

CONTENT WARNING:

Spoiler

Serial killers, rape (detailed and horrific), spiders, loss of a loved one, domestic abuse, child abuse, cancer.

Things to love:

-The humor. It was so good. I was laughing out loud the first chapter, and shared so many quotes with friends that just killed me.

-The dialogue. On a similar note, the dialogue was sharp, fun, and felt like things real people would say.

-The characters. Odd, Stormy, Viola, Terri, Ozzie, Sheriff Porter and the rest, were so much fun. Varied, with no bleed in their personalities or conversation styles, and just really relatable.

-The world. Dead people, crying Elvis, bodachs...it's all interesting and you want to know more. It's also refreshing that Odd is strange, but not unloved, and his abilities are not only not a secret from everyone, but people seem to accept him as he is. That's really cool.

-The mystery. I liked overall how Odd went about trying to figure it out and how much detail went into explaining how he came to the conclusions he did. I really like when the thought process is spelled out for the reader, especially when us readers can at least see why the character would think that, given what we know of them and the situation. It adds a layer of credibility.

Things that made this difficult for me:

-The back stories. Everyone seemed to have a really tragic past and Odd told us all of them, so it was like funny banter followed by devastating revelations that colored the next section. It wasn't poorly done, just changed the tone enough for me that it was hard to get back to the meat of the story.

-The tone. Odd made it clear that he was hurting and just trying to make light of things that left him a wreck, and again it stole some of the humor when you know it's not really gallows humor but something that costs him to joke about.

-The triggers. There were things in here that were just personally hard for me, and there were multiple of them, so it kind of messed me up. That's a good thing, in that the emotional impact and the author's understanding of these things meant that I took them all square on the jaw, but it's not really the kind of thing you want to thank someone for.

-The narrator on audio. I briefly switched to audio, and his complete lack of wry humor totally changed the story into just one long, drawn out tragedy. His voice lingered in my head and I had to fight past it to hear Odd how I imagine him.

So, in a rare move, I think I really enjoyed this book, but don't know that I will continue the series. I've recommended it to several people, and am looking forward to hearing whether or not it's as funny as I think it should have been, had I not had such visceral reactions to certain sections.