Title: Shut Out
Release Date: September 5, 2011
My Rating: 4/5
Synopsis: “Most high school sports teams have rivalries with other schools. At Hamilton High, it’s a civil war: the football team versus the soccer team. And for her part,Lissa is sick of it. Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is always ditching her to go pick a fight with the soccer team or to prank their locker room. And on three separate occasions Randy’s car has been egged while he and Lissa were inside, making out. She is done competing with a bunch of sweaty boys for her own boyfriend’s attention
Then Lissa decides to end the rivalry once and for all: She and the other players’ girlfriends go on a hookup strike. The boys won’t get any action from them until the football and soccer teams make peace. What they don’t count on is a new sort of rivalry: an impossible girls-against-boys showdown that hinges on who will cave to their libidos first. But what Lissa never sees coming is her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling…“
I had been holding off reading Kody Keplinger books for a while, they just didn’t seem like my kind of thing. For one, I like to judge books by the covers, and they didn’t quite pass the test. But with A Midsummer’s Nightmare being released and looking intriguing, I thought it was time. It has been a long time since I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed a book, but Shut Out did just that. I really enjoyed it, and proceeded to read her other two right away.
It starts with a fun concept, the girls who are dating the school’s football and soccer players decide to go on a sex strike to end their long standing feud. What Kody Keplinger does with the story is spotlight the way girls are perceived when it comes to sex. On one hand girls are judged negatively if they are virgins, but on the other hand, if they do have sex, they’re called sluts or whores. Regardless of their stance on sex, they can be judged an criticized. These are judgements that I think everyone holds in one direction or another, it is hard not to have certain ideas about what people’s attitudes should be towards sex. It is nice to see a book that shows that different attitudes are okay and normal.
On top of that we have a very cute love story, with some enjoyable characters. Lissa has been through a lot in her life, and she remains a strong girl who takes a lot of responsibility for her family. On the boy front we have Randy, a jerk of a quarterback, who despite claiming to love Lissa, seems to be totally self absorbed and only interested in one thing. On the other hand we have the completely adorable and crush-worthy Cash, who despite being a hot jock and having girls try to throw themselves at him, is holding out for the right girl. I doubt such a combination of traits exists in real life, but I’ll take it in book form if that’s all that’s available. I really enjoyed him, and relationship development is seriously sweet.
Shut Out is a great combination of fun and thoughtfulness, and incredibly impressive as a book written by an 18 year old. I didn’t know how young she was until I had finished, and I never would have guessed. It will be fun to see how her writing evolves over the course of her career. So if you haven’t read Shut Out yet, it is definitely worth a shot.
Along for the Read 