Dairy Queen

Dairy Queen
By Catherine Gilbert Murdock (274 pages)
Published by Graphia
Bookish rating: 3.75

I resolved to read more young adult lit this year, and Dairy Queen is part of that valiant effort. My friend Lauren recommended it, with the caveat that "it's not perfect, but . . .," so I went ahead and picked the book up.

Dairy Queen falls into a category I call "Agricultural Royalty Literature." There's something about the tongue-in-cheek mix of corn and tiaras that authors--or marketers--can't resist. Or maybe it's just coincidence. Still, there are The Princesses of Iowa by M. Molly Backes (a debut author), which won't be released until May (I look forward to reading it), or the Sweet Potato Queens series.

It didn't take too many pages for me to see what Lauren meant about the the book's imperfections . . . BUT. This book has some flaws, the most irritating one being the looooooong, drawn-out, rather repetitive internal monologues of our narrator and heroine, D. J. Pages and pages go by with nary a break for some dialogue. Or action. A tad more "telling than showing," as perhaps a writing instructor would say, was desperately needed.

But.

D.J. is a disarmingly likable character, with a unique voice. A farm girl in Wisconsin, D.J. is solely responsible for running her family's dairy farm after her dad's injury. Her mom already works full-time as a teacher, her older brothers are off at college (playing football), and her younger brother is a baseball star and thus has no time to help out. She begins training her school's rival's quarterback as a result of a rather implausible plot point (his coach makes him work on her farm to learn about "real" work), and while romantic sparks inevitably flare, D.J. makes the more important decision to JOIN HER SCHOOL'S FOOTBALL TEAM.

And that's just a concept for a book that greatly appeals to me. I loved that.

Murdoch ultimately pulls this novel off, and shines when depicting the farm, D.J.'s tense relationship with her dad, and football. Lauren tells me the sequel, The Off Season, is far better. I'm totally game for another match-up with the dairy queen of Wisconsin (puns intended). Recommended.