Customer Reviews

Die Like a Girl

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"Die Like a Girl" is hilarious, fast-paced, and totally engaging! The novel is like a cross between Stieg Larsson and Janet Evanovich but more cleverly written. I don't know why I want to be Fiona Blacklock, but I do--even though she is a drug dealer who has the crap beat out of her on a regular basis and who has a dysfunctional relationship with her mother. Maybe it is because she has both intelligence and street smarts, or because she makes omelets with veggies from her garden. As he showed in "The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse," Selwood has an uncanny talent for satirizing the entertainment industry. His descriptions of the characters made me laugh. A lot. What is new in this novel is his portrayal of Portland which is spot on. I can't wait for the next installment.

Great read! Selwood breathes life into both his characters -- and the neighborhoods in which they live and die -- in a way that would make Raymond Chandler (or whoever is staying at the Hotel Monaco) blush and then be jealous. This book will make you laugh and wince in pain, if you have more empathy than Fiona Blacklock. Highly recommend!

As he did in "Pinball Theory of Apocalypse," Jonathan Selwood has created a world in which over-the-top, self-centered characters find themselves in impossible situations. Somehow, Selwood once again makes me believe the unbelievable. I don't generally enjoy violence, but somehow, I find myself rooting for the sociopathic drug dealer, hoping that she manages to dispose of the body of her second murder victim without getting caught. I read this book in a single day. It was a reasonably busy day, but I fired up the Kindle at every opportunity, so that I could find out what would happen next.

How on earth does Selwood come up with this stuff? A Portland drug dealer who spends most of her time high and drunk, but who would rather go hungry than subject her body to the processed food products available at a convenience store? A boy-band star known as the "Well-Coiffed Penis"? A drug kingpin using as cover a high-end chicken coop business catering to vegans who raise rescue hens after they stop producing eggs? A washed-up 97-year-old actress who has resorted to adult undergarment commercials and who has attempted to bribe/blackmail her way into a new film before she dies of cancer, in the hopes that she'll win a post-mortem Oscar? The attempted ambush-style baptism of the alcoholic, drug-dealing protagonist by her born-again mother and her fourth husband? Even more amazing is how the author can come up with such outlandish characters and situations and draw me in so completely.

I look forward to Selwood's next novel with eager anticipation.

Featuring the lovable yet psychopathic autodidact Fiona Blacklock, this mystery has enough dark humour to fill a bottomless bread basket. There are so many deliciously clever one-liners, I got hand cramps from highlighting them all on my Kindle. This book has everything: douche-y celebrities (like "The Well-Coiffed Penis"), offbeat criminals (like Tony Tofurkey), panty sniffers (The Gonad, specifically), and (spoiler alert!) dick-chopping. The last time I laughed this hard whilst reading was when I devoured Selwood's The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse.