Title: This Might Hurt a Bit
Author: Doogie Horner
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: June 4, 2019
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Summary
Kirby Burns and his family moved to Shucksburg to escape the memories of their previous house–and his sister who passed away from cancer. As the one year anniversary for her death creeps up, Kirby is doing his best to avoid all his emotions relating to his sister. And doing his best to ignore his parents in general.
One night, in order to escape his parents, he pranks a local farm with his best friends PJ and Jake. But the next day at school, they realize they may have taken the prank too far. Now, in addition to it being the anniversary of his sister’s death, Kirby also has to avoid the bullies at school who are mad about the harmless farm prank they pulled. One thing happens after another, causing Kirby to spiral out of control. But maybe that’s just what he needed to do.
Review: This Might Hurt a Bit
Thanks to NetGalley and Simon Pulse for providing me with an early copy of this book to review! I’ll admit, I the book description intrigued me. However, the actual book happened to be wildly different from my expectations. Overall, I thought the book was going to be more focused on the way that Kirby struggles with his sister’s death. However, it just focused on Kirby trying to get away from bullies at school, with some flashbacks thrown in.
I’ll start with the good: there are a lot of funny lines in this book. Kirby’s voice is unique; while it’s difficult to follow his train of thought at times, he’s overall a funny guy. He tries to make light of what’s happening to him, despite the fact that he’s struggling more with his sister’s death than he’s letting on. It’s this suppression of emotion that felt the most real to me throughout the book. Kirby doesn’t want to talk about it, with anyone.
For me, the timeline of the book wasn’t quite believable. Everything here happens within a day. But it feels like Kirby’s in school a lot longer than he should be. There’s all this time between classes where bullying happens. Overall, the events don’t seem like they add up to a single day. The events would have made more sense if they spread out over a series of days, instead.
The other thing that bothered me was the little time that was spent on Kirby dealing with his sister’s death. This book is being promoted as a book that deals with grief. But, we don’t get much of that actually within the text. Just small scenes here and there. I would have liked seeing this theme explored more through Kirby’s eyes.
Final Thoughts
Overall, despite the funny moments in the book, This Might Hurt a Bit left me feeling a bit lukewarm about the story. For other books on grief, check out Before We Go Extinct or Goodbye Days.
2.5/5 stars