I really wanted to like this book, I live in Portland, know a lot of the areas mentioned in the book, and it just sounded super fun. But...it's just too much. There's so much going on, and it tries to so hard to be clever and quirky and weird, I finally ended up setting it aside, and it's going to be a DNF. :(

I think if the author had reigned it in a bit and developed a story with a few less quirks for the sake of being quirky, it might have worked for me. That all said, love the cover! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I’m the first to rate and review this one. Whew, Ok, then…
I’m pretty sure I requested this book based on the cover. Put a Sasquatch on the cover and I’m there.
Of course, I wasn’t opposed to the concept of an American frolic either. I love a good satire. But Sasquatch or not (and frankly, he has but a small role in this), this one really didn’t work for me.
Frolic, picaresque, satire – this book juggles a lot. The basic plot involves a small Pacific Northwest place with a nothing-going-for-it college and an environmental situation standing in a way of a huge commercial housing development.
There’s tons of potential here, some of which is taken advantage of and some is…well, it’s overdone. The narrative veers from genuinely funny to punny (the author is a whiz when it comes to slogan puns) but all too often devolves into anatomically-based juvenilia.
The characters are fun and whimsical but there were ways too many of them and they too tend to be over-the-top.
The book seems like the author had too story to tell in too small on a page count so he crammed and crammed and crammed.
And then, there is the fact that the University of Nevada Press that furnished this ARC through Netgalley really, really didn’t want you to enjoy it. So much so that they put numbers throughout the text – there occur frequently and sporadically, sometimes even in the middle of the words. There are also so formatting and font snafus, but the numbers are the real bane.
It’s bewildering why so many publishers provide perfectly readable ARCs and then every so often someone goes and does this. I almost ditched the book, but the beginning was sort of funny and I figured I’ll stick with it. Turned out not worth it. Not the book itself and certainly not the reading experience. User mileage may vary, I suppose. Thanks Netgalley.