mikerickson reviewed Sign Here by Claudia Lux
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3 stars
For as much as I consider a book that markets itself as "humorous" to be a giant red flag, I do keep reading them for some reason or another. And while this one hit the mark more times than it missed, it doesn't take away from the fact that this is actually two separate plots from two different genres that were squeezed into a get-along shirt. If you like tonal whiplash, you'll love this one.
We bounce back and forth between Peyote (works in hell, first-person narration) and the four members of the Harrison family (upper-middle class spending the summer at their lake house, third-person narration), and chapters are short and digestible. There's never any confusion about who we're following at a given moment because the vibes between these two stories are so distinct from one another. Peyote's chapters feel like a surreal version of a corporate drama with schemes …
For as much as I consider a book that markets itself as "humorous" to be a giant red flag, I do keep reading them for some reason or another. And while this one hit the mark more times than it missed, it doesn't take away from the fact that this is actually two separate plots from two different genres that were squeezed into a get-along shirt. If you like tonal whiplash, you'll love this one.
We bounce back and forth between Peyote (works in hell, first-person narration) and the four members of the Harrison family (upper-middle class spending the summer at their lake house, third-person narration), and chapters are short and digestible. There's never any confusion about who we're following at a given moment because the vibes between these two stories are so distinct from one another. Peyote's chapters feel like a surreal version of a corporate drama with schemes against coworkers and strong, cutthroat personalities eager to fuck each other over for a promotion. Whereas the Harrison chapters feel like your standard chick-lit domestic thriller with buried family secrets we don't talk about.
Which isn't to say that I can't enjoy something this daring and experimental, but I found myself disproportionately more interested in Peyote's journey than the other 50% of the book. Both plotlines do end up culminating at the same time and tie together, but the very very ending started jumbling up so many threads that I was getting confused.
I didn't love it, but I can't deny that it was ambitious for a debut novel.
