Book Review: The Harm in Asking by Sara Barron

ISBN: 0307720705
Published: March 25th, 2014 (first published July 9th, 2013)
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Read from June 4th to 16th, 2014
Synopsis from publisher:

Welcome to the perverse and hilarious mind of Sara Barron. In The Harm in Asking, she boldly addresses the bizarre indignities of everyday life: from invisible pets to mobster roommates, from a hatred of mayonnaise to an unrequited love of k.d. lang, from the ruinous side effect of broccoli to the sheer delight of a male catalogue model. In a voice that is incisive and entirely her own, Barron proves herself the master of the awkward, and she achieves something wonderful and rare: a book that makes you laugh out loud. Simply put: if you read it, you will never be the same.*
*That's not true. You'll probably stay the same. But you'll have laughed a lot. And you'll have learned a fun fact about Jessica Simpson's home spray. See? You didn't even know she had a home spray! The learning has already begun. 

Review:

I was interested in this book because I hadn't read much humor before and wanted to try it out. I'd say this book was enjoyable, but I don't think I found it as funny as it was trying to be. There were parts throughout the book where I'd be amused, but I don't think I ever laughed or had a desire to laugh for the majority of the book.

The beginning of the book was harder to get through for me than the rest of the book. The primary reason for that is I found the author a bit too annoying to find amusing in the earlier chapters. It wasn't an "I can't stand her" kind of thing, but it definitely was an "I don't really care about reading all of this" thing. Since the stories go more or less in chronological order, the author is younger in the earlier stories, I suppose that can be an excuse for that. I'm not sure if it was maturing as the stories went on or just that I got used to it, but the latter stories didn't have the same sort of annoyance.

Overall, I didn't love this book or even "like" it necessarily, but I did think it was okay. Reading it wasn't really a waste of time, and I never considered not finishing it. I think the biggest thing is that the humor in the book is only going to appeal to certain people. It's definitely not a sort of humor that a lot of different people will get amusement out of. I'd recommend checking the book out more before you read it in order to see if it's a type of humor that you would enjoy.

You can read the first chapter of the book here.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.