Book Review / Shut Out by Kody Keplinger

Most high school sports teams have rivalries with other schools. At Hamilton High, it's a civil war: the football team versus the soccer team. And for her part, Lissa is sick of it. Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is always ditching her to go pick a fight with the soccer team or to prank their locker room. And on three separate occasions Randy's car has been egged while he and Lissa were inside, making out. She is done competing with a bunch of sweaty boys for her own boyfriend's attention.

Lissa decides to end the rivalry once and for all: She and the other players' girlfriends go on a hookup strike. The boys won't get any action from them until the football and soccer teams make peace. What they don't count on is a new sort of rivalry: an impossible girls-against-boys showdown that hinges on who will cave to their libidos first. And Lissa never sees her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling, coming.


Published:     5th September 2011
Publisher:  Poppy
Author Website:  Click here
Goodreads :  Click here
Series:  Standalone
Source:  Review Copy from Publisher
Review:   10 out of 10


MY REVIEW

What I loved about this book...
One of the things that I have to come to know and love about anything Kody Keplinger writes is that she has a perfect sense of comedy mixed in with drama.  After reading two of her other books, I was highly anticipating this to be a fun 'beach' read and I couldn't wait to get started.  This book definitely did not disappoint.  It was so much fun following Lissa and her friend go on a hookup strike and seeing what the boys would do about it, whether they would figure it out and what they would do about it if they did.

This book was such a fun read I really could not put it down.  A couple of the characters in this story really stood out for me, Lissa who is the main character who leads the girls into the strike and Chloe who is the side kick best friend that is the complete opposite of Lissa but the mix of personalities balances each other for the best.  You also have other characters that I enjoyed which I won't mention in this review as I don't want to spoil the story.

What I was not fond of with this book...
The only thing that slightly bothered me with this book is the fact that we are talking about High School sex strikes, which at first bothered me as I thought it might be glorifying it in some way, making it seem like its the thing to do, but reading the book this does nothing of the sort.  It actually promotes empowerment, choices and doing what is right for you and not caving into peer pressure, which I fully support 100%.  It also talks about the ages of the characters in this school being 18, which made me worry less that it would be a younger character base. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 
Kody Keplinger was born in raised in small-town western Kentucky.

She wrote her first novel, The DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) during her senior year of high school. She now lives in New York City with her German shepherd, Corey, where she writes full-time and teaches the occasional writing workshop.

When she isn't writing, Kody is probably exploring the city, eating Thai food, or creating a new plan to become Tina Fey's best