"Croak" by Gina Damico (Z2)

Unorthodox and The Five Stages of Grief

Croak

By Gina Damico

The Croak Series, Book 1

# Pgs: 320

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Overview:

Fed up with her wild behavior, sixteen-year-old Lex’s 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 shoveling manure. He’s a Grim Reaper. And he’s going to teach Lex the family business.

   She quickly assimilates into the peculiar world of Croak, a town populated by reapers who deliver souls from this life to the next. But Lex can’t stop her desire for justice—or is it vengeance?—whenever she encounters a murder victim, craving to stop the attackers before they can strike again. Will she ditch Croak and go rogue with her reaper skills?

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Review:

Upon finishing this book, I threw it at the wall.

You know, like literally threw it at the wall.

I mean, it wasn't thrown in malice or anything (unlike Mockingjay in which I gladly threw it at the wall in anger). I had just finished reading the book, was somewhat devastated, extremely frustrated, realized just how much I was feeling of both of these two things, and threw it lightly at the wall.

I'll describe this as going through the five stages of grief, which, given the exact nature of the book, is quite fitting I think.

1. Denial and Isolation:

I was a quarter of the way through the book when I predicted what was going to happen throughout the rest of it. Other than the surprising demise of one of the side characters at the end, everything that I thought was going to happen did. I was right about the relationship between the two main characters and how it would develope (obvious), I was right about the picture that one of the main characters always carried around, I was right about who the murderer was (it was easy to put the clues together-he/she was so defensive the entire time, and at the beginning we were already given a somewhat bad impression of him/her), I was actually right about the main character (Lex's) side power and how it would relate to the history given to us, I mean, not to brag or anything, but I was mostly right.

That said, it doesn't mean that when I was actually reading and being proven right that I wanted to be proven right or that I was at all prepared for it. So when things started to go down south, I sat in an obscure corner of my library, on the back seat of my bus, and locked in my bedroom to finish reading it. When I read books like this that are faintly amusing and make me smile, or frustrate me or make me frown or something, I don't like to be around other people. Around others I feel like I need to constrict my emotions, otherwise I might blow up obnoxiously laughing or bawling my eyes out in the middle of school or public. When that kind of things happens and people ask what's wrong or what I'm laughing about, there's not exactly any sympathy for you when they find that it stems from a book.

So I denied being right and locked myself away.

2. Anger:

And then, once I finished reading it, I resisted as long as I possibly could before I ended up throwing it at the wall. So it kind of was in anger, maybe I lied earlier, but I just hated being proven right! (just as much as I enjoyed it...) Plus the ending character death reminded me of another book in which another seemingly innocent person (who we all loved even though there was no apparent reason other than said character being completely awesome) was killed. Why is it the innocents always die?

I mean, it makes good literature, and in the end it makes us love the books all the more--

But that doesn't mean I can't  hate it either.

I'm blond. Just go with it.

3. Bargaining:

I told myself that I wouldn't throw it at the wall as hard, and just threw it at the area above my bed so that it had somewhere soft to land. I also told myself that the way that the book ended made complete sense, and that there was probably some kind of "back door" to the situation, that it wasn't all that it seemed. I agreed that since the first book was so frustrating, that I'd have to find relief in the second book. As it turns out...

Our library doesn't have the second book in the series.

I wasn't happy.

4. Depression:

As I mentioned earlier, a character that I wasn't exactly expecting to die (though I had my suspicions) did. I didn't cry, but I pouted for an hour afterwards. I also flopped on my bed in self-pity.

5. Acceptance:

More like reluctant acceptance. I'm still upset, but I've accepted the fact that things happened and I think that the only way to move on is to read the next book in the series. Which my school doesn't have. So maybe I'm still depressed.

Overall I enjoyed this book. There was light humor, in spite of the whole "Grim Reaper" aspect, that often made me chuckle here and there. I loved how Lexington is portrayed, and the origin of her name. As the main character, it was fun to see how she developed from this angry, confused, troubled teen into, well, not as confused or troubled or angry. It was more like Lex became focused and those lovely traits of her personality merged to become the rebellious, determined traits she carried towards the end of the book. Regardless of what she became, there was one thing that remained consistant: she isn't someone that you wanted to mess with. Lex is fierce. She is witty as a character, and it was easy to become sympathetic with her. I mean, her parents tied her to a chair at the beginning of the book. I'm sure you can understand. I ended up loving and hating her.

Her sister's name is Concord. As in the Battle of Lexington and Concord. They're twins. I just thought I should point it out.

Drigg was fun to read as well. He's Lex's partner.Throughout the interactions between him and Lex, you could see the chemistry they had. He is kind of mysterious at the beginning, yet it was also easy to feel sympathy for him because of his backstory, which we learn about half of the way through the book. He is sarcastic and strangely charming. It was fun.

In the end, the pace stayed consistant, the book was entirely predictable, and if it weren't for the humor and my curiosity to find out how exactly in would all play out I wouldn't have loved in nearly as much. The humor really was great though, and each of the characters had their own personalities and were well developed. So I'm going to have to rate this book as a three or four out of five; I'm on the fence because I actually enjoyed it, but it really was predictable...

I'd recommend it to those who like unorthodox, humorous, somewhat serious books. I mean, it's a book about Grim Reapers, so death is involved, so it has to be somewhat serious. The romance aspect doesn't really happen until towards the end, and there are points in the story where things are left fill in the blank. This means, you're on your own to figure out what happens.

With that said, thanks for reading--sorry if it seemed all over the place today, but I didn't really get a lot of sleep last night. Follow the blog, leave a comment below, or just send me a message to tell me how awesome I am. Any of these will work. ^^ Thanks again~