I love Rachel Cohn. This book, I feel, wasn't as strong in ways as some of her work but with her that's still a fantastic read. Kill All Happies, the title alone captures your attention, doesn't it? And the book itself delivers. If you're a fan you won't want to miss this one, and it's a great jumping off point for new readers of the author, too.

I really was not a fan of this. I remember enjoying Rachel Cohns other books, but this was a total miss for me. I found it to be a little too cheesy, such as all the plays on names and such. It kind of reminded me of a book version of that crazy party movie Project X. I didn't care for the movie, either.

Well, happily my library already purchased a copy, since my digital file expired before I was able to read it.

I love Rachel Cohn's writing, so I know anything by her is going to be gold. Kill All Happies wasn't my absolute favorite by Cohn (her team effort with David Levithan on Nick & Norah wins that honor), but this was still an enjoyable book that I would recommend to readers at my library.

It is the day after graduation and Vic is planning to host the best after graduation party Rancho Soldado has ever experienced. She finally has permission from the selling owner of Happies to have this last hurrah before the buildings are torn down. Vic wants a last good party with her friends and she is hoping this will also be the perfect opportunity to hook up with Jake, her secret crush. The party is a success and everyone is having a good time, but when Happies fans decide they want to join this final celebration, this fun party becomes an uncontrollable monster.

Kill All Happies is a stand-alone novel that takes a while to take off, but eventually will pull readers in. Whether readers are looking forward to their own graduation party or are fondly remembering it, the party vibe is easily relatable. There are some stupid decisions and logical consequences, but Cohn doesn’t present the story as a lesson-to-be-learned tale. A good read, but won’t be added to everyone’s TBR list.

I was all sorts of excited when I received a copy of "Kill All Happies" through Netgalley. I thought to myself, "Self this is going to be a fun read filled with humor and all sorts of hi-jinks". However, when I finished the book I had changed my tune. Instead of my elated new book joy I instead said to myslef, "Well that happened".

"Kill All Happies" takes place on graduation night. Our heroine is Victoria, Vic, Navarro recent high school graduate who is planning on flee her small town life to the big city glamour of San Francisco. But before she leaves she has one simple plan. She wants to throw the perfect graduation party so she can lure her brother's best friend into a hot hook-up. Vic even has the perfect place: Happies, the former amusement park that was once beloved by her community but has since been closed down. Can Vic pull of the perfect night of debauchery and get her guy?

This book has everything that I usually love in a fluffy novel. There is a sassy heroine, a fun premises, and just the right level of melodrama. But it just didn't work for me. I never warmed up to Vic. She was too intense and blasé but never actually likable. The cast of characters surrounding her felt like cliches of the cool kids who were never developed beyond caricatures and the dreamy boy that she was desperate to be with just came off as a jerk. The actual plot was basically a bunch of people say "Want to party now" and a few people saying "No you can't party now". I don't demand a book to be brilliant and this premise could have allowed for a fun mindless read except all the zany misadventures culminated into me not caring at all about what was happen. The only plus in for me was the relationship between Vic and her brother. Their interactions were limited but they felt genuine.

"Kill All Happies" with it's interesting premise and time tested author should have become a must read but with it's lack of character development and slow moving plot the book has definitely found a spot on my skip it list.

Final Rating: 2 out of 5

This book was total fluff, but I actually enjoyed it for just that reason. The tone reminded me of Mathew Quick's Every Exquisite Thing and Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne. A quick, easy, irreverent read.

Pun date: May 2017
Cute and fun, this YA is all about a high school graduation rager, and reminded me of Sixteen Candles. Though it has kind of an abrupt ending, it played like a John Hughes movie in my head, but with more cursing and drugs. I wish the end would have been fleshed out more, but if there was more, I'd totally read a sequel featuring Vic Navarro and her crazy town's residents.

DNF - Kill All Happies was very confusing and hard to understand what t was actually going on.

Trying to be edgy doesn't mean you should be offensive. Apart from that, a dull plot that didn't grab me.

Rachel Cohn's latest book sounds really fun. A big party after high school graduation, tons of pies, an abandoned restaurant and theme park, and all your best friends. And there were fun parts of this book like the exploration of the run down theme park but it suffered from stereotypes, underdeveloped characters, and surface diversity without accurate representation.

Vic was a believable teenager who was sometimes selfish, but loved her friends and her town. I appreciated that her best friend pointed out that Vic romanticized her hometown and often turned people into "one-dimensional roles" for her convenience. Vic was able to confront the way she hid behind villianizing someone, like her teacher, in order to avoid her real life. This is a believable trait that many people have but some of the assumptions and roles Vic made were racist and unnecessary. For example, she sees a group of Chinese businessmen and assumes they are "homogenizing" her town and "destroying" the environment. The scene ends with Vic feeling vindicated in her moral superiority because she's against big box stores and never confronts her stereotypical assumptions or finds out what they businessmen were doing. Vic also has a brief moral dilemma about giving beers to a "devout Muslim" though she hasn't expressed the same fear for any of her other underage classmates that she's sold beers to. Because the girl wears a hijab, referred to only as a scarf in this book several times, Vic feels as if it's her place to judge if this girl should be drinking or not because she has an outward sign of her religion. Vic walks into a few other sticky situations because she jumps to conclusions and not all of them are confronted by the end of the book.

I was incredibly disturbed by a particular scene when a high school student slipped psychedelic mushrooms to a teacher without the teacher's consent. This is not appropriate behavior for someone of any age and Cohn never addressed this behavior. It was celebrated as a funny way to get revenge on a teacher.

Overall, this book had potential but didn't quite work for me. I liked Vic and her close group of friends but it was hard to root for any of them with the short time frame and no flashbacks to establish their friendship. Teens will still request and pick up this book at my library because of the recognizable author and after-graduation party setting.

In the small desert town of Rancho Soldado, Nevada, the restaurant Happies is beloved by its residents. But it is about to close its doors, for good. Victoria "Vic" Navarro, a former employee of Happies and a high school senior, decides to throw an epic graduation party there before the place shuts down. Unfortunately, not everybody in town is for an Happies' last brawl. Ann Thrope, a rigid teacher who's feuding with Vic, makes it her personal mission to stop the party. But, Vic's determined; she and her friends will have their RASmatazz pie and eat it too before the night is over.

Kill All Happies is a contemporary teen novel by author Rachel Cohn. I've read Lily and Dash's Book of Dares by Cohn some years ago, so I already knew that Cohn's writing would appeal to me. I'm not necessary a fan of Cohn, but I remember Lily and Dash's Book of Dares to be charming and light-hearted.

Kill All Happies is, technically, an interesting concept. Granted, the crazy, over-the-top graduation party has been done many times, but Kill All Happies sets itself apart with a string of original and diverse characters and endearing setting. Rancho Soldado, although very different, reminded me of Stars Hollow, Gilmore Girls' fictional town. It had the same feeling of warmth and close-knit community. Unfortunately, as promising as that universe was, it was ill-exploited.

Although I enjoyed the setting and characters of Cohn's novel, I thought many things were problematic. At 288-pages, Kill All Happies should have been an easy read, but I found myself putting it down several times out of boredom. While many elements of the novel were interesting, the emphasis was put, most of the time, on least taking content. For example, Vic and her friend group have a special dynamic which remained on the surface without being thoroughly explored. Cohn instead preferred to have Vic interact with least interesting characters, or pursue annoying ones.

The events of the book spread over less than 24-hours, however, it is difficult to believe that so many happened in so little time. The lack of realism is really an issue in Kill All Happies. Cohn manages to maintain a realistic outlook on teenagers for most of the book, giving them a distinctively angsty voice, with a few slips here and there. However, when Cohn slips, she really falls down hard.

Victoria "Vic" Navarro is the main character of Kill All Happies. She's your typical teenager; selfish and entitled, but also fun. I felt like Cohn painted a realistic portrait of an eighteen year old senior. However, the swearing was a bit heavy at times. It was unnecessary and lowered the quality of the novel. Seriously, teens don't swear as much as you think. One of the things I appreciated about Cohn's book was the many colorful characters. There was a lot of potential when they were introduced. However, most of them weren't developed enough, or at all. Ann Thrope is a cardboard cut-out of a stereotypical villain, without any nuances. Not enough pages were given to Slick and Fletch, Vic's best friends. It was a real shame for Cohn who had three interesting characters and basically gave them no substance, or backstory. Another issue I had with Kill All Happies was that it had too many characters for its length. I had to go back many times because I couldn't remember certain characters that were introduced in the beginning only to pop back up dozen of pages later.

Some of the content in Kill All Happies was misguided. I especially didn't like that main character's comment on domestic violence. She states that it couldn't possibly happen in Rancho Soldado because people living there aren't "hicks". To have an eighteen year old make such ignorant comments about something as serious as domestic violence and abuse is beyond irritating. What was Cohn thinking?

Overall, Kill All Happies is an average teen novel with an interesting premise, but underdeveloped characters. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone under seventeen because of the explicit content which includes swearing, underage drinking, drug use, etc.

Super cute and fun read by an author who is already beloved in the YA world.

It is a little too predictable for me. I like the idea of the book, but it did not bring enough originality.

'If you can't beat them, party!' - This was so much fun! Finally a book that throws caution to the wind and rejects deep and complex characters and a well-developed plot. As much as I crave those, it's sometimes just very refreshing to read something that's pure joy. I've been reading quite a lot of YA novels recently, and all shared a common trait: they desperately tried to come up with something unique and meaningful. This book, however, never pretends to do either of these things and I loved it for it. So what's the story?

Victoria (Vic) Navarro lives in Rancho Soldado, a small desert town in Southern California, where the weather is sweltering and the people easy-going. Although Rancho Soldado hasn't much to offer, Vic feels very tied to her hometown for several reasons. Reason number one: the Cuddle Huddle aka she and her two best friends Slick and Fletch, who have been inseparable since childhood. Secondly, there's Slick's older, incredibly hot and out-of-bounds-for-Vic brother Jake. And, most importantly, there's 'Happies', a restaurant famous for its Pies as much as its owners who, for generations, have brought joy and happiness (and high-calorie food) to the residents of Rancho Soldado. 'Happies' even has a nationwide fan club whose fans are just known as 'Happies'. But said restaurant is about to close down. Vic and her friends are also at a crossroads. They just graduated high school and now prepare to leave the nest and each other. If this doesn't call for a ginormous, crazy, revelry of a party, what does?! And maybe Vic can even impress small-town hunk Jake and finally get her much longed for wish to get cozy with him in the back of his beer delivering van. Unfortunately, Vic hasn't reckoned with how far Miss Ann Thrope, teacher, former beauty pageant winner and Satan's spawn who makes Dolores Umbridge look like kind nursery teacher, would go to deter Vic from her plans to give all her schoolmates a well-deserved farewell. So what's going to happen when Ms. Thrope arrives with a rifle in hand and declares to 'Kill all Happies'?


Well, find out for yourself if you are into crazy stories that don't pretend to explore the deeper meaning of life and which are charged with sizzling heat and sex, and which feature likable characters and lots of beer and RASmatazz Pie! It strongly reminded of some 90s and Noughties teen movies that didn't give a damn about expectations or politics and instead were just plain silly. The ones that were slashed for being ridiculous but everyone secretly enjoyed enormously. Of course, this book cannot be taken seriously and obviously has some flaws in plot development. Also, some things are too predictable. But then again, who cares? I don't think this mashup of American Pie and Teaching Mrs. Tingle will ever see a school library, but every high school student will want to get their hands on it nevertheless. Particularly girls will enjoy these self-confident female characters who are very open about their sexuality and who just take possession of whatever comes their way: friends, boys, self-actualisation, big dreams as well as small ones. In the end, it's also an ode to small-town life. This tale of a dying childhood in an economically dying town is full of nostalgia without being kitschy. I'd love to celebrate Taco o'clock with Vic and the Cuddle Huddle on their front porch with a cold drink on a hot night reminiscent of days gone by.

Kill All Happies is a page-turning sexually-charged fun friendship book with a few flaws. The POV protag definitely earns her nickname of "General Navarro", but shows some usual teen insecurity that keeps you on her side. She acts older than her age, but continues a childhood tradition called the "Cuddle Huddle" that seems like it should draw more fire than it does. While the party atmosphere shenanigans were enjoyable, having a gun-toting capitalist antagonist referred to as "Miss Ann Thrope" kept pulling me out of the narrative. There were some good takeaways, but I generally prefer Rachel Cohen when she has the balance of a co-author. I'd recommend this to fans of hers, Jesse Andrews, Ally Carter.