Until the morning he wakes up on a random front lawn, and he meets Aimee. Aimee’s clueless. Aimee is a social disaster. Aimee needs help, and it’s up to the Sutterman to show Aimee a splendiferous time and then let her go forth and prosper. But Aimee’s not like other girls, and before long he’s in way over his head. For the first time in his life, he has the power to make a difference in someone else’s life—or ruin it forever.
Hrrhhhmmmnnm.
I didn’t like this book.
Sutter Keely is a character who is primed for development from page one. He is an alcoholic who continually puts himself and his friends in dangerous situations. His best friend decides to grow up a bit and do things other than just getting wasted all the time and all Sutter does is whine and complain that his friend is abandoning him. His girlfriend dumps him for being a selfish arsehole and he decides to try and wreck things for her in her new relationship (except he doesn’t even see it as wrecking things - he’s miles too selfish to understand how his action might impact other people).
He refers to himself as The Sutterman.
So basically, he’s a dick. And so develop-able. And yet, the author decides to not develop him one iota throughout the entire course of the book. The book ends with Sutter being just as much of a loser as he was at the beginning. In terms of whiny, detestable characters, this book ranks right up there with Catcher in the Rye.
The plot charts Sutter’s meandering life as he bumbles from one random situation to another - the only link being that in every single scene Sutter is in various stages of inebriation. Watching someone literally piss their life up a wall isn’t very interesting or fun, so the plot was a bit of a bust for me too.
You’d think that, being as Sutter is so clearly an alcoholic, his friends would have staged an intervention at some point. Spoiler alert: they don’t.
Towards the end, the author shoehorns in a sudden and entirely unbelievable meeting between Sutter and his absentee father in order to show the reader why Sutter is like he is. It was clumsy and forced and guess what? Not everyone who doesn’t have a dad acts like a complete arsehole.
And yet through all of this, I kept rooting for Sutter. I kept hoping he’d change, see the error of his ways. See that the way he was treating Aimee was utterly deplorable. Do something other than just drink and sing Dean Martin songs (I can’t stand Dean Martin, by the way). I kept hoping, even as I saw the page count on my Kindle increase and increase, slimming the chances of any character development down to zero.
Such a shame. This book could have been great, but it was just annoying.
2 stars (and that’s being generous)