♥ Summary: 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.
♥ Favorite Line(s):
First lines>
"There is nothing more humiliating than being topless in the backseat of your boyfriend's car when someone decides to throw an egg at the windshield."
"It's not silly," he said. "What's silly is my deep-seated and unreasonable fear of fish" -- replace fish with birds and this is real, this is me.
"There is nothing more humiliating than being topless in the backseat of your boyfriend's car when someone decides to throw an egg at the windshield."
"It's not silly," he said. "What's silly is my deep-seated and unreasonable fear of fish" -- replace fish with birds and this is real, this is me.
♥ My thoughts:
I think the fact that I've flipped through and almost marked this Very Borrowed* copy with my favorite little bits of dialogue and cattiness says enough about my feelings for Shut Out. It's fun, smart, a little eye roll inducing at times, but completely engrossing.
Shut Out takes place while Lissa is a senior in high school. She's the anal, smart, stoic girlfriend of football player, Randy. At first I thought I'd hate her to be completely honest. I usually can't take the whole Queen Bee Bitch character, but thankfully Lissa was nothing of the sort. Sometimes I still hated her for other things, but I usually hate every MC at least a little. But that means she wasn't perfect and, ya know, a real person, which was refreshing. Lissa is the kind of MC I love to read about.
Chloe, her best friend, can totes be my best friend any day. I'm one of the non-confrontational, "hey, I'm the doormat!" types, which means I loved living vicariously through tell it like it is characters like Chloe. The rest of the cast of characters were appropriately frustrating/endearing/swoon worthy/etc. and I ate all of the drama their various personalities brought out. ;)
The 'battle of the sexes' plot started out somewhat weirdly for me. I just wasn't interested at first. Boy, did that change. By the end I wanted to smash Randy's face with an egg rather than his car, cheer Lissa on from the rooftops, and er...stand and sigh a safe distance from Cash. The views everyone takes on the sex strike were varied and all had valid points. It's definitely a story to make readers think about a few issues.
Overall, Kody's second novel was just as fun, thought-provoking, interesting and real as The DUFF. A refreshing light read that I'll definitely flip through again.
*Very Borrowed = from an ARC tour/I will be torn to pieces if I write in it.
p.s. I'm in another review writing slump if you couldn't tell so...have a Charlie>
...and for my two dude readers>
Shut Out takes place while Lissa is a senior in high school. She's the anal, smart, stoic girlfriend of football player, Randy. At first I thought I'd hate her to be completely honest. I usually can't take the whole Queen Bee Bitch character, but thankfully Lissa was nothing of the sort. Sometimes I still hated her for other things, but I usually hate every MC at least a little. But that means she wasn't perfect and, ya know, a real person, which was refreshing. Lissa is the kind of MC I love to read about.
Chloe, her best friend, can totes be my best friend any day. I'm one of the non-confrontational, "hey, I'm the doormat!" types, which means I loved living vicariously through tell it like it is characters like Chloe. The rest of the cast of characters were appropriately frustrating/endearing/swoon worthy/etc. and I ate all of the drama their various personalities brought out. ;)
The 'battle of the sexes' plot started out somewhat weirdly for me. I just wasn't interested at first. Boy, did that change. By the end I wanted to smash Randy's face with an egg rather than his car, cheer Lissa on from the rooftops, and er...stand and sigh a safe distance from Cash. The views everyone takes on the sex strike were varied and all had valid points. It's definitely a story to make readers think about a few issues.
Overall, Kody's second novel was just as fun, thought-provoking, interesting and real as The DUFF. A refreshing light read that I'll definitely flip through again.
*Very Borrowed = from an ARC tour/I will be torn to pieces if I write in it.
p.s. I'm in another review writing slump if you couldn't tell so...have a Charlie>
...and for my two dude readers>
Anyone looking for a fun read! Shut Out is out now, so pick up a copy! :)
"Someone Like You"-Adele,
