Review: Shut Out by Kody Keplinger

Title: Shut Out
Author: Kody Keplinger
Genre: YA, Social Issues
Rating: PG
Publisher: Poppy
Publication Date: September 5, 2011
Pages: 273
Source: Purchased Finished Copy
My Rating: 4*

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Synopsis

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 

Then 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. But what Lissa never sees coming is her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling...


Quotes

     "I just hear all those stories, and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who's never done it.  I feel like I'm behind or something.  Like it makes me a prude."
     "You're not weird, or a prude, or a tease, or any of that," I assured her.  "Actually, I think it's great that you're waiting.  It's sort of refreshing.  And sex is a big deal, so you shouldn't rush it just because everyone else is doing it.  I think it's  major decision."

My Thoughts


While I do have Kody Keplinger's debut book DUFF, I have yet to read it.  I don't know what made me read Shut Out first, but I did and I really liked it.


I am not sure just how realistic a sex strike is, not to mention one amongst high school students, but it was an interesting premise.  It took the idea of sex being a weapon in a whole different direction.  In this book, sex was a weapon used to bring about change.  Or at least that is how it started, but alas, 'the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry'.  The girls, who believe they are holding all the power, are in for a bit of a rude awakening.


What I really liked about this book was not the sex strike, but rather the dialogue that sex strike provoked amongst the kids involved.  These were kids like any others and they assumed that they were all having sex, when they weren't.  The sex strike brought about several interesting conversations and realizations among both the guys and girls.  These were conversations really brought home the message of being true to yourself in all ways.


Shut Out was a good book and a very easy read.  It's one of the few books out there that I have read recently that has a pretty decent characterization of high-school students, their attitudes, and dialogue.