Customer Reviews

The Annoyance Bureau

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ISBN 0689849036 - The bright, shiny, even sparkly!, cover might possibly serve as evidence of my periodic "ooo, shiny..." fascination. There wasn't anything else about the book to attract my attention so I blame the sparkliness. Allow me to remind us all - don't judge a book by its cover. Or its sparkly, shiny dustjacket.

Lucas visits his father's new family for Christmas. While in New York, he runs into... Santa? Santa, it turns out, is actually a guy named Izzy and Izzy works for The Annoyance Bureau. The Bureau's job, Izzy claims, is to limit the annoyances found all around us. Only Lucas seems to be able to see the multitudes of people in green coats, running around the city and talking into walkie-talkies, cleaning up annoyances. The trouble is that Izzy is really the only one doing his job the right way; everyone else at the Bureau is far too interested in statistics. The Bureau sees Izzy as yet another annoyance... to be gotten rid of! Can Lucas help his new friend? And, while he's at it, can he stand his rude and obnoxious stepsister, avoid the haircut that his stepmother Claire is determined for him to get AND put up with his young half-brother Calvin's nanny calling him "Lukey Dukey"? Talk about annoyances!

The book isn't terrible, but the first chapter is so poorly written that it's a reasonable bet that some folks won't get past it. Lucas arrives in New York and is immediately in the middle of some weirdness with some guy in a bookstore - and there's no explanation. Later, you get clued in, as does Lucas, but for that one chapter, it's bad. From there the story is only silly. Lucas, new to this enormous city, runs around it without an adult for the bulk of the book, but we ARE talking about a book with hoards of invisible men and women and a secret tunnel system under the city that they use to transport annoyances, so silly is to be expected. Just a very "eh" tale.

- AnnaLovesBooks