Pressure Head

3.5 stars. I'm glad this is the start of a series, because although I think Tom is adorable I agree with several other characters who say he can do better than Phil, who has a chip on his shoulder that might as well be a boulder. Hopefully he'll lighten up as the series goes on and/or we'll learn more about why he is such a difficult person. I'm also curious about how Tom's special gift will be integrated into the mysteries moving forward.

I have mixed feelings about this book, and I doubt I'll be continuing the series. It's very....bro-ish. The romantic leads are bro-ly, the narrator doesn't take life very seriously, and the humor is of the South Park/Family Guy style. None of that is bad, necessarily, but it wasn't really my kind of book.

The narrator's voice was very appealing, and it reminded me of Prosperity by Alexis Hall, or of Jane Eyre, even. It was conversational in tone and full of humor and character, making everything feel immediate and real.

Due to the narrative style, the main character is immensely likable, although he's not really a great person. I know I tend to like Mary Sues, but I feel this was a case where the author overcompensated away from that kind of thing and made her PoV character a little bit of a jerk, in some ways. He tries to do what's morally right, mostly, but often views behaving kindly as a burden.

The love interest, Phil, wasn't as bad of a guy as he seemed to be at first. The author handled that deftly, giving hints that there was a lot going on beneath his surface. But I have trouble getting into books where the leads are mostly awful to each other. So my annoyance threshold had been passed by the time he got around to treating Tom decently.

None of that made me want to set the book aside, but I almost did, because this book has a ton of humor that I found tasteless. I kept trying to rearrange my preconceptions and remind myself that the jokes weren't meant to be taken seriously. But in a romance novel, especially one with a good amount of angst in the background, these kinds of jokes are really hard for me to enjoy. I'm not in the right mindset at that point. There was a lot of borderline-misogynist stuff, such as a character being blamed for her husband's infidelity because she was cold and rude; at another point, the narrator wonders how an ugly woman possibly found a man to marry her. There were also some awful jokes about little people, lesbians, campy gay men, on and on.

The mystery was very exciting, I thought, and kept me reading despite my issues. Most of the side characters lacked depth, but I did like Dave and his friendship with Tom. I also liked the pacing of the romance.

This is by no means a bad book. If crass humor doesn't bother you, you would probably enjoy this novel.