Book Review: A Shore Thing by Snooki

Title: A Shore Thing
Author: Snooki
Publisher: Gallery
Release Date: 01/04/2011
ISBN: 1451623747







When I heard that Snooki wrote a book, I couldn't help but think "Gee, I didn't know they made enough crayons to write a book with." Of course I had to check it out, even though I got both horribly teased & lectured by various coworkers. (One actually gave me a half hour lecture on how Snooki shames the Italian-American population. She was very intense.)

The plotline? Well... with any other person I'd say that it was a parody of Jersey Shore expectations & old beach flicks. I mean, one of the characters *is* named Frankie, after all. Maybe the writing team (yes, this was ghostwritten) turned it into a parody? It's hard to take this book seriously with some of the stuff that goes on in it. Dry humping a guy after 1 drink? Mother/daughter urine bonding? Tripping over a shark? A date that ends with one person whizzing on the other's foot? (OK, so that was because of a jellyfish sting, but still...) It's really awful. Like "feel your IQ decrease about 20 points" awful. It's painfully obvious that the only reason this was published was due to Snooki's infamy. And no, Gia teaching everyone to do some weird dry humping tree hug dance movie doesn't really redeem the book much.

No seriously, the plot of this was bad. It was not only full of stereotypes & awkward scenes, but the plot was paper thin. It's like Crossroads, only Snooki doesn't sing. (Yet.) I can't fault the ghostwriter for this- you can only do so much with what you're given. (Maybe we should take up a collection to help with the mental breakdown she might've had while collaborating.) There isn't a lot of imagination here, what with the thinly veiled Snooki self-insert.

Yet somehow the book still has a large amount of entertainment value. True, it's not on purpose but it was honestly fun to regale my coworkers with the escapades of Gia (the thinly veiled Snooki self-insert) & her cousin Bella. That brings me to another thing that made the book so funny. Two of the characters are named Bella & Edward, making it near impossible to read the book without imagining the famous Twilight couple. There's also someone called Bender, which makes me think of the Futurama robot. It makes the scenes a little more tolerable & a lot funnier.

Is this a must buy? Nah. I'd recommend it as a library rental, though. In the end I can't really dislike this book enough to give it 1 star. I might not really watch Jersey Shore, but I know enough about it & Snooki to the point where I know not to have expected Tolstoy or even something on par with the Hillary Duff book.

Although if we're lucky, Snooki won't put out a new book. Unfortunately knowing MTV, we'll probably soon have to suffer through a movie adaptation of this book sometime in the future.