Just look at that title.  Look at that cover art.  That’s a lot for one book to live up to.  Perhaps it would have been better if I had just imagined a plot to go along with the both of them.  But instead I read the book…

Castration Celebration is about Olivia, who is attending a drama summer camp after a very rough year (she walked in on her father fooling around with one of his students).  So Olivia decides to swear off men, and to put all her energy into writing a musical – Castration Celebration!  Of course, as soon as she arrives at camp, she meets a charming young man and the two begin to flirt like crazy…

Someone on GoodReads mentioned Kevin Smith – this is def. more of a Jay & Silent Bob Strikes Back kind of book, rather than the Chasing Amy story I was hoping for.  Wizner goes for crude humor and shock value but forgets that he’s supposed to also tell an interesting story.  That’s the reason movies like Clerks, Chasing Amy, The Hangover, Superbad are so watchable – you’re connected to the characters, even when they are dropping f-bombs and making sexual innuendos that would make a sailor blush.  I kept waiting for Olivia and her crew to become more than static characters, but it never happened.

Olivia makes references to Much Ado About Nothing in the first part of her play, so I was hoping that perhaps the book would be a twist on that tale.   Yeah, no. 

The idea of having the reader go through Olivia’s play as she writes it quickly becomes boring.  I waiting for the parts of each chapter that turned into script, and tended to skim them by the end of the book because they had no baring on the actual story anymore. 

An interesting premise but poorly executed – Castration Celebration can’t live up to its cover art.