Michele Jaffe's Bad Kitty is Hilarious

I love this book! Bad Kitty is hilarious; Jaffe is one of the funniest authors I've ever read, consistently making me laugh out loud and adore her and the teenage characters for giving me such a good time. I can hear Jas's voice very clearly and I like her sarcastic sass and clever wit. The mystery plot is complex and surprising. The meta footnotes are innovative enough that this could even be called experimental fiction -- but more entertaining.

After finishing her books, reading a novel by another author is hard, seems dull. I'm spoiled now by the vivacious sparkle of this style. I never knew I liked chick lit before coming across her novels. I think it's unfortunate they were marketed that way, with lots of pink covers and all, and then the genre fell out of favor. But now some are out with new covers. Few of the covers of her books do them justice or really help readers get a good sense of what they're about, in my opinion.

While I was serious when young, an over-achiever focusing on "Profound Greatness," nothing like the sort of shallow pop-culture teens in Jaffe's YA books, maybe I'm now getting a chance to vicariously be like them now through these novels, and it's refreshing. Jas is lively, brave, and addictive.

I like how her female characters are always able to feel attraction for more than one person, so it doesn't feel claustrophobic like most novels with Romance elements. Chick lit actually is wider in scope than Romance, with more about friendships and the whole social scene, even animals, mysteries, caring about the welfare of others for reasons other than biology. And the humor is wider, not so much the flirtatious banter that gets old for me.

The characters are so creative in their use of language, and I want to be their friends, though they would have no interest in me. I'd be so foreign to them they'd trip over me without recognizing me as human. But their friendships tend to be so shallow it's easy for their authenticity to be suspicious, which makes the mystery element thrive, and we can question the truthfulness of what everyone says.

The plot line is brilliant and multilayered, full of surprise twists and turns that leave me excited and hungering for more.