The Catastrophic History of You and Me - a review

The Catastrophic History of You and Me
Jess Rothenberg
375 pages

There's Not Another Teen Movie. Then there's Vampires Suck. The next parody movie that needs to be made is Not Another Dead Kid. That sounds harsh, but really, it's not.

Between Shade (dead boyfriend) and 13 Reasons Why (over dramatic dead girl) and various other books that deal with the topic of death, something bad has happened. No one is really dead. I mean, like, completely dead. Like, I have zero influence on the plot because I'm totally fucking dead dead.

That's not the issue I really have with The Catastrophic History of You and Me. The issue is the dead girl herself: Brie. Brie who dies when her boyfriend says "I don't love you." Because, you know, that happens all the time and a boyfriend is something that you should base your ENTIRE existence on. He should be your social life, your best friend, your study buddy, your barf barf barf.

Brie--without knowing how clingy she comes off as--is dead. She can influence some events (push things, let people feel her presence) and is running around San Francisco with a teenagemalepotentialloveinterest* trying to figure out how to move on. That's the plot.

Oh. And she won't shut the fuck up, either.

Really. She will not stop whining. Mostly every conversation in every chapter goes like this:

Brie: I should be alive and able to (insert whatever).
Teen Angel: You can't. You're dead.

Or the teen angel makes some other kind of a quip as to how dead Brie is. It was all so CSI: Miami. I was just waiting for that yell: YEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH as one of them put on their sunglasses.**

It's something I can't handle. Teen characters being all whiny and repetitive. Catastrophic wasn't horrible. It has its moments. The afterlife is part pizzeria? Sign me up. There's an adorable dog. There's a... each chapter opens with a quote from a song!

There's also a great father character that didn't get enough time in the book. Instead it was boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend. It's just a book I couldn't get into. I guess it's a dead giveaway that this one didn't live up to its potential... YEEEAAAAAHHHHH.

Two Out of Five Fucks Given

*It's one word now.
**YEEEEAAAAHHHH! 
Full Disclosure: I read this on my Kindle.