The cover is darling, the premise sounded interesting and like it would be funny but it soon got repetitive and finally just felt cruel.

Normally, these kind of books can get repetitive and tiresome. Often, they repeat the same format and you get the same punchline but in different formats. "Race Me in a Lobster Suit" was different. Placing made up ads on the internet and waiting, Kelly Mahon baits unsuspecting good Samaritans, people in need of money, and the plain curious into answering her often ridiculous ads ranging from needing help cleaning up an ant farm to needing someone to be a "human pinata" for a party.

The set up is the same, but the magic happens when people respond. Kelly prefaces the book by describing how she changed people's names and requested that she use their responses, before publishing this book. One of the best responses, was the ant farm, where the person replying became to invested in the outcome and sent encouragement as the ant situation kept escalating further and farther into ridiculousness. Most people give in right away, starting to calculate how much money the gig will pay and if it will be worth the trouble, such as the title story where Mahon's ad requests someone to race her in a lobster suit in her flooded aquarium transformed apartment. One of the most surprising letters, would have to be the "human pinata" ad, because the person responding seems okay with everything, so that the humor comes from Mahon struggling to find the person's limits.

While many of the ads are played for laughs, the real interest comes from the people who respond and how willing they are to help the ad placer achieve their ridiculously, extravagant dreams. I was impressed by how generous or maybe desperate people are to participate in these schemes if the price is right. I don't know if it should give us hope or fear at the lengths that some people will go, but either way the laughs are genuine and the ride is always entertaining.

I really enjoyed this book, despite my skepticism. The creativity of some of the ads and the way they escalate, made me guffaw several times. I would recommend this for a light read that will inspire you to be more adventurous and realize that there is no dream too ridiculous for someone on the internet to help you achieve.

This was a funny book at times as the author just leads these poor, naive souls along in the most absurd requests - my favorite being the pig latin one. But I got a little bored with it. I found myself able to read a few of the conversations then I needed to take a break before I could continue. The idea behind the book is genius and the selections did make me chuckle, but a little bit went a long way for me. This would be a great book to give to someone as a gift if they appreciated a nice laugh.

Stars: ✦✦✦✧✧
Therefore I'll tell 3.0 things I liked about the book and 2.0 thing I didn't like, as usual.

+1 | I'll just say that the author has been extremely imaginative while writing this up!
+1 | The humor was very entertaining
+1 | The way it's written suits the context perfectly
-1 | It was sort of one-sided. At times it felt like only the author was in on the joke and making fun at the other peoples expense.
-1 | I didn't like not knowing how the recipient/participant felt about the whole thing. Maybe if it had included the reaction when the author told it's all for a book?

Note: review will be published in April on my blog

Thanks to Quirk Books for the ARC!

Okay, so how can I start this review?
People are crazy. Very kind and sweet, but so crazy. That's all.

Kelly Mahon had the wonderful idea of publishing fake ads, hiring people to do weird things for her. What kinds of things? Well...

She needs someone who'll tickle her until she laughs; someone to boost her confidence before meetings; volunteers allowing her to tattoo “Sal & Sons Auto Body Shop, Making Cars Fly" on them (btw, she had no experience at all, so this was for practice); a contractor to install an indoor pool in her apartment; a skilled knitter to knit her into a cocoon for the rest of the winter; guests for a tea party, among others. Each more absurd than the next!

The funniest thing? People replied to her. They tried to get these jobs.

It's beautiful how they send so many messages, doing their best to see if they really understood what she was saying. That made me laugh so much. Thank God at some point they realized she's probably just insane and none of them actually did anything, but jeez... Wasn't it obvious?!

I love this book! It was a very good surprise for me, since I didn't know Kelly Mahon before and didn't know exactly what to expect. Now I'm a fan.

*Disclaimer: I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

My favourite comedian is Joe Lycett, a man famous for absurd email exchanges and playing with spam mailers, so going into this I thought I would love it. At first I was enjoying it but as the 'stories' went on, I felt more and more uncomfortable. Each section starts with the absurd internet advert that Kelly Mahon posted and then follows with an exchange with the prospective employee. Some of the posts were amusing but most were just plain weird. Not only did the book get repetitive as the messages went back and forth but I started feeling increasingly uncomfortable and couldn't pin point what it was until reading reviews afterwards. 

The author does this exercise for the humour and in many cases it is quite funny. However, what I think she, and the publisher, doesn't realise (or care about) is the fact that there is a person on the other side of these messages that have taken time and in some cases spent their own money preparing for these 'jobs' that in the end they are told is just a joke. I don't think it's fair and I don't think it's worth it because in the end this book is repetitive and boring. I made myself finish it because it was sent to me by the publisher but unfortunately I wouldn't recommend it.

In theory, this sounded like it was going to be hilarious. An author who got bored enough to start posting ridiculously absurd "help wanted" ads on the internet and publishing the email conversations that ensued? It reminded me of a nonfic/humor collection I've loved before, so I honestly thought this was going to be a big hit—and it is! At first.

It starts off pretty funny, if a bit tedious—I definitely found myself skimming some of the stories because I was just getting bored of the constant repetitive nature of the messages (not that the emails are similar, but that each specific "incident"'s conversation would have a lot of messages where the author repeated themselves). After a while, though, I began to notice a theme with some of the email conversations: many of the people responding to the ads really needed the money and were willing to do anything to get it.

Maybe this is just my own personal issue, but once that "clicked" for me, it was impossible to view this author as anything other than a raging jerk because, I mean, imagine someone offering you hundreds of dollars to do some weird but feasible thing when you really need to get your rent paid or buy your kids groceries, and then after days of having your hopes up, they tell you it was all a joke so they could make money off of this book. I dunno, y'all, I'm a mom and I'd do anything to keep my kid fed and safe and I'd probably come after somebody over this shit if I had been forced into a desperate enough spot to respond to Mahon's ads.

I dunno, I'm being a spoilsport and I know it, but this kind of sucked and I have no respect for the author.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

One day, feeling bored, Kelley posted an ad looking for someone to dress up as a lobster and race around her living room. It pretty much snowballed from there... This book is a collection of the ads placed online and the real replies and email exchanges. Amusing, but often quite ridiculous. It's amazing what people will actually believe!

Well that was different! On the one hand, it was a refreshing laugh. On the other, I'm very concerned about the mental health of this author! Who comes up with stuff like that?? Actually, no. I'm more concerned about the people who actually _responded_ to the author. Do they need money that badly? It's a humor book, and you'll laugh....I'm just hoping that most of those respondees were joking, too!

Very funny book to read, relaxing and... showing you how much fun people around you are. The idea about fun add is cute and it is amazing (never thought that way!) how engaging the responses can be. This book is fun to read in general and may be quite an interesting instrument for developing creative skills to write one's own ads. Sometimes it is really do in life that a tiny crazy looking idea may result in an effective marketing campaign.

Everything that is wrong with society and the internet today is contained in this book. Smart arse trolls mocking the innocent and gullible. This is like laughing at the vulnerable people who fall for get rich schemes from Nigerian princes - not everyone is as savvy as the more technologically literate amongst us. In a lot of cases, people's desperate need for money provides a springboard for their responses and some people clearly will take risks to try and make ends meet - they'll agree to do seemingly dumb things, they'll respond to emails that may seem a bit weird, they'll fall for trolls like Mahon...
While I appreciate that this supposed to be a bit of light relief, at its heart is someone trolling people on the internet - out of work actors, people desperate for a bed, people trying to make a buck... Mahon deliberately sets out to hoodwink and troll these people, and push them to humiliate and degrade themselves in the name of humour. This whole book left a bad taste in my mouth. Shameful.

I had this book on my Amazon wish list and was lucky to receive a copy to review from NetGalley. It was so funny (which I expected) but it also had elements to it that I didn't expect at all. I was so surprised at how many people actually were willing to do things for a complete stranger that were dangerous/weird. I laughed so hard at some of the scenarios and the enthusiasm that people showed.
Kelly Mahon is that friend that tells the best stories, she has a very easy way of bringing you into her world.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wanted a good laugh but also to anyone who is feeling jaded about the kindness of strangers.

Kelly Mahon obviously has a high tolerance for awkward interactions. In her new book, Race Me in a Lobster Suit, she collects emails from her unique project that exposes how far people will go to make some quick money. Mahon put up classified ads with outrageous requests for paid services and some of the responses she received led to longer conversations and intense negotiations. The acts that are agreed upon are at times simultaneously hilarious and depressing. Some examples of requests include: participating in the titular race, acting as a fake fiancé, taking part in a nightmare reenactment, and dressing up snakes for a fashion show. Those who agreed to participate generally had an openness to adventure and a good sense of humor. As Mahon increases the absurdity of the details involved in the activities, her respondents eventually realize it must be a joke or just stop responding. What is truly amazing (and alarming) is how long some people keep believing in the ruse, and how little compensation they demand given the tasks assigned. Readers will enjoy this short collection of experiments, especially those who approach Race Me in a Lobster Suit with an appreciation for the nonsensical.

Thanks to Quirk Books and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an objective review.

The premise of Mahon's book seemed quite funny - "absurd internet ads and the conversations that followed" a little hidden camera for the modern world, but what Mahon did was just not funny. Fake ads were placed (funny) then Mahon strung respondents along until the author stopped having fun (not funny).

I am sure there are plenty of people who find this kind of stuff funny, but I am not one of them. I would have loved to have read a book that lived up to its premise, but this one reads more like it belongs on a YouTube channel for teenagers to watch.

Race Me in a Lobster Suit purports to be record of correspondence in response to the author's fake Craigslist ads. It's ridiculous and silly in the way the works of James Veitch and Joe Lycett are (both have been doing gags about responding to spammers or telemarketers for years) and, like the work of those two comedians, quickly becomes unbelievable, There is, however, one important difference....Mahon is going out of her way to trick other people, whereas Veitch and Lycett are wasting the time of people who reach out to them. As such it feels somehow meaner and less jolly, leaving the reader feeling as if they're either wasting time on a pack of lies or indulging the whims of someone with minimal to non-existent respect for other people.

This is a cross between the Henry Root letters (crotchety old English guy writes to famous people and winds them up without their knowing it) and his more modern offspring, of the Danny Wallace, Dave Gorman, Tony Hawks kind of lark. So we get our author trying to arrange for a bloke to dress as a lobster and chase her around her carefully decorated apartment; another to fetch a pipe organ from a church to annoy the neighbours below; yet another to install a swimming pool because the rented flat below hers has been vacant for a whole month now and she's ready to just dive in. It's quite well done – I've read many sub-Root books which just don't have a sense of humour or creativity, and this author does, as the whole sustained narrative of the fake fiance proves. But it is still a little shy of being brilliant. Partly it just shows how stupidly gullible many Americans are – and if you think that's trashy, think of the bloke asked to feed a burrito-addicted paraplegic, who can't feed himself but can write emails, or the bloke trying to negotiate a rate for modelling nude for a sketch group while wrestling Komodo dragons. But this is also the first book of this kind I've encountered to fully highlight the oddities of the gig economy, when a bloke can set himself up as a professional fetish tickler, someone can monetise a lesson in pig Latin, and another man knows to bring a friend along ($60 extra) when asked to be a knife-wielding tarantula for dream therapy.

These ads are pretty crazy and I can't believe that people would respond! The back and forth are funny and unbelievable. This was a quick read that will have you shaking your head, while chuckling at what some people would be willing to do for money.

This book is the fun kind of weird . . . one where I kept thinking to myself "Oh, no . . . no, I can't believe she went so far to convince a stranger that she is crazy -- but indeed, she did!" I read parts out loud to my husband, who agreed that this book is an entertaining type of crazy.