Sucktown, Alaska follows Eddie, a dropout who works at a newspaper in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Fed up with his life, he starts smuggling weed (in his ass of all places) to make money and move on bigger and better things. Smuggling weed isn't an easy gig though, and he soon steps on the toes of some big players in town.

You know when you can tell that a book is written by a man? This was one of those books. Eddie was highly misogynistic with the way he would sometimes talk about women and objectify them. It completely turned me off him as a character so by then I was only interested in the plot.

The plot itself was slightly unrealistic. How can a town in the middle of nowhere that is supposedly completely boring have such a thriving drug trade? I don't get it. I did enjoy the journalism elements and I wish more focus was given to these rather than to the drug plot. I get that drugs should in theory be more exciting to read about than journalism, but I thought some of it was stereotypical and I didn't really like the characters that were involved.

For a book that is touted as a comedy/written by a comedic writer, I didn't find it very funny. Everyone has their own sense of humour but this wasn't really the book for me.

*I received this free copy in exchange for my honest review.

I really wanted to love this book, unfortunately it fell short for me. This was promising, based on the description, but did not live up to that for me.

THis book wasn't really my style. It's not written badly, I just didn't like the storyline. I just really wasn't into it so I didn't finish reading it.

I will not be finishing this book - I have tried and failed multiple times to do so and been unable to get through it. Managing to push through it would not be a pleasant result for me or the publisher, so I am officially giving up on it.

No. Just no. I don't know what book that awesome synopsis was written for, but it was far better than the book I read. I don't know how to make sense of this story.

A competently told YA novel of mistakes, forgiveness, and frigid life. It may be that Joanie was the best character.

The blurb for this book is misleading and I was not impressed by the rampant sexist attitude of the main character. The plot was significantly lacking and I was just overall disappointed.

This was actually a DNF for me.
I could not get into the book even tho the premise was promising
I dont like that we now have to star rate these books

"That was the only way in - by plane. No roads connected Kusko to Anchorage, or to anywhere in civilisation. That idea - the remoteness of the place - intrigued me."

* * .5
2.5 / 5

Eddie Ashford failed the first semester of university. In order to redeem himself in the eyes of the university admissions department, he takes up a job working for the Delta Patriot, a paper published in the tiny town of Kusko in rural Alaska. It's a coming of age sort of story and prominently considers drugs and rural life. I couldn't stand the main character, Eddie, but I loved the setting and all the details about what life is like in a place as wild as the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

"I was glad he swore. Working at the Delta Patriot would be my first real job, and I didn't know the swearing rules at real jobs."

What I did like was the journalism focus and the setting. I don't know much about America at all, let alone Alaska. Eddie moves from Anchorage to Kusko, a small town on the ice fields, and the newspaper he writes for is delivered all across the YK Delta, an area covering many small Native villages. There's a lot of hunting, fishing, and dog sledding or "mushing" as well as detailed information about what living in a place like Kusko might be like; to be uneducated eye, the book seems well researched. The stories that Eddie works on are sprinkled throughout the book and I liked reading about the newspaper process and reporting job.

"My ding dong went from zero to boner faster than a car's airbag can deploy. I untucked my red flannel shirt to hide it."

Eddie is an eighteen year old boy and the way he is written as thinking about women is frankly a little disturbing. Particularly when most of the women he encounters are high-school girls. He meets a high-school girl and calls her "exotic", ogles the "amazing bounty of her chest", and thinks about her "perky pooper", which is just about the weirdest term for butt I've ever heard. It's demeaning and uncomfortable to read and was one of the aspects I hated the most about Sucktown, Alaska, and Eddie. It's also just really weird: "real jiggle farm" and "honkerburgers", really?

When Taylor's friends imply that Taylor isn't interested in Eddie, he storms off angrily. Essentially, Eddie is neither a great guy or an interesting one: he whines a lot about how broke he is, how boring Kusko is after he flunked out of college, how Taylor doesn't like him back. The weird thing is, Eddie isn't really like this at the start. He seems a bit more mature, taking responsibility for his college failure, determined to make a good impression on his boss, and get his articles in on time. He passes up alcohol and weed because he needs to stay on the straight and narrow to get back into college. But at some point this rather likeable character devolves into a immature brat who whines that a girl he hung out with once isn't interested in his "ding dong".

"In less than a year I went from normal suburban kid to bush-living, marijuana-dealing, murderer-dodging, broke-ass fool."

The ending was decent. I didn't really suspect what was happening and it took on a few twists and turns. It did feel a bit too jammy and cliche, but I liked it nonetheless. I'm in a bit of a mixed-mind about the whole book - I liked the writing but hated the way Eddie thought and spoke about women, I liked his character growth but had to wade through pages of him being a self-entitled brat, I thought the setting was great but a bit under-utilised.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an ARC of this book. Thanks to NetGalley and Capstone for the opportunity to read and review Sucktown, Alaska by Craig Dirkes. Eddie has taken a job in the Alaskan bush while he's on academic probation from college. He wants to earn money and turn his life around and he feels that the next year of his life can do this for him. This book contains new adult language and is geared toward college age young adults . Desolate Alaska is more dramatic than Eddie thought it would be. He makes some good choices and then some bad choices and that's when things spiral out of his control. I enjoyed the descriptions of Alaska and its wilderness and the sled dogs were pretty impressive! 4 stars for this coming of age story with its unique setting and characters.

I was unable to download the title. Thank you for the opportunity!

White guy comments on how "eskimos" don't being called that. Ignores daily discussions on Inuits and Natives reclaiming their tribal names. DNFed.

Although I thought that this book had a lot of potential, and I really loved the premise and the title, it really let me down. I was hoping for a quick read after my exams, and the prologue had me interested in continuing with the rest of the story. However, the prologue was the best part of the book for me. The plot is too simple for me and it seemed unlikely that some of the plot points from the book would actually happen. Like someone deciding, out of nowhere to go to the middle of nowhere to work in a newspaper. Cool, but the likely hood of that actually happening are very slim. Then we get to the women, woman, of this book, Taylor. I almost put this book down while reading it and it was mostly because of the way that the narrator disrespected women and how misogynistic he was. I wouldn't recommend this book to people that I know and it didn't really seem to have too many redeeming qualities. In retrospect, this would be a one or two star read at best.

Unfortunately there was no way for me to read this book on my Kindle and that left the option of reading it on my stationary computer. I therefore regret that I cant rate or review this titel as it sounded like it had excellent potential.

I didn't finish this because I found it to be incredibly boring. I'm sure this is the right book for someone, but that someone is not me!

Okay, so, this is where I admit that I was born and raised in Alaska. I did not live in a town like remote Kusko, but I could frequently relate to many of the problems that Eddie faced after he flunked out of college and went to spend a year working for a local newspaper. I enjoyed reading the many random pieces of information Mr. Dirkes included about Alaska and Native Alaskans. While many times I wanted to yell and shake Eddie about the poor decisions he made, I do realize those struggles were the whole point of this coming of age story. As Eddie’s dad tells him: “Figure it out.” I just wish Eddie had before his last big stupid mistake.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book and honestly I'm pretty bummed. This book appealed to me because of the cover and because well I'm pretty much obsessed with Alaska. So I had high hopes for this but it just wasn't what I expected.

I couldn't really connect with the MC and all his boyish humor. I'm not really one to shy away from any type of sexual content but sometimes I just felt it was a little excessive and over the top. And I especially hated the sulking after getting rejected by Taylor. Which speaking of the rest of the characters just really didn't do much for me either. I feel like once I can't connect with a character it's super hard for me to get into the book.

I did, however, enjoy the authors writing style and I really appreciated the fact that Eddie did man up at the end of this story. His character growth was written very well and towards the end of the story I felt somewhat able to connect with him than earlier into the story.

Overall this wasn't a bad book but it wasn't my favorite either.

At first, I was really invested in it. Especially in the reporter aspects of the novel and the funny articles. But once I read about a third of the novel, and it became less about reporting, I started to lose interest and skimmed. A lot. So much so that I would lose chunks of the story yet somehow still know what's going on. In the end, what started out as something really enjoyable became something I just couldn't read anymore.

As I've said before, the novel did start out interesting with Eddie's reporting and articles in The Delta Patriot, the newspaper he works for in Kusko. It was cool to see Eddie go all out for a career he loves, even though the place is less than ideal for him. Everyone tries to warn him about it, but instead of just quitting at the first sign of trouble, he sticks it out, which I had admired. I just wish he kept that resolve later on in the book.

Then there was Eddie's logic on his staying at Kusko. While I thought it was admirable that he was willing to make up for his mistakes and prove that he is serious about journalism even after his mistakes, all that resolve goes out the window because of a girl he had just met. I'd say it was on a whim except he makes decisions affecting him in the long run because of it. At the very least, Eddie could at least stick to one plan, whether it was to go or stay, and not base it off how a girl treats him. That kind of decision making gets him into all sorts of trouble that's more than it's worth...

Overall, I wasn't as invested in the story as I was in the beginning where it had shown a lot of promise. Partly because of what happens as the plot progresses and partly because of Eddie becoming less of a likeable character. Well, that's all I have to say about Sucktown, Alaska by Craig Dirkes. It wasn't the novel for me, but I'm sure that had to do with my biases more than the writing itself.

A contemporary coming-of-age novel set in a tiny-and quirky-town in Alaska, that unfortunately did not live up to my expectation.

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Eddie Ashford is eighteen, and has just managed to flunk out of his first semester of college in Anchorage, Alaska. In an attempt to get some work experience in journalism-which could possibly help him in his effort to reenroll in school by showing that he is ready to be a student again-he gets hired as a reporter by the owner of a small paper in the remote town of Kusko.
It doesn't take long for Eddie to want to go back to Anchorage, what with all the crazy Alaskan experiences and stupid situations he ends up in, but several things hold him back: the lack of money to actually get him out of Kusko, his new very chill friend Finn, and Taylor, the very smart and beautiful girl he's just started falling for.
But even with his burgeoning friendships, and the chance of a possible romance, the idea of leaving his always on his mind.
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Being an Alaskan who has lived in small-town Alaska, and currently living in Anchorage (which is the biggest city my state has to offer), I was super interested in reading a book that is set in my state. Also, I have to admit that I wanted to read it so that I could possibly find any factual errors or Alaskanisms that may have been misused, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the author knew what he was talking about, having had actually lived in bush Alaska (which is any region of the state that is not connected to the North American road system), thus helping give the story some credence.

But now for the bad. (And unfortunately, there is a lot of it.)

It's obvious Eddie is extremely immature, considering he had flunked out his first semester of college due to all the partying he did, so it's really no surprise when he says and does stupid things. A lot.
There's also the cringe-worthy way he views poor Taylor. He goes on and on about how attractive she is and also gives crude descriptions of how his body reacts to her, while mentioning the parts of her he likes...gross.
I can't even say if I actually remember him speaking of attraction that isn't physical when it comes to her. Then when his feelings aren't quite returned, he gets mad and wants to end his "friendship" with her. He's just extremely ridiculous when it comes to how he treats her; I'm surprised she's even interested in being friends with him. Sheesh.

Finally, as we're getting closer to the end of the book, big things happen, which are supposedly meant to be "life lessons" for Eddie, but by this point, I was ready for this book to be over. I wasn't interested in reading about big life lessons anymore. I was pretty much satisfied with assuming that Eddie was an idiot who'd continue on in his own stupid world. The end.

So the last 25% ended up feeling like author remembered the end was coming up and needed to wrap up the story somehow-big life lessons-type of somehow-hence all the crazy that suddenly goes down. But as I'd already said, I was ready for it to be done, so I was not impressed, nor interested.

Anyway, this book was alright in the sense of it being a coming-of-age novel, but Eddie was just so unlikable for me, that I could not really like this book.

Sorry, but not one I'll recommend.