A Bad Day For Voodoo

A Bad Day for Voodooby Jeff Strand

When your best friend is just a tiny bit psychotic, you should never actually believe him when he says, "Trust me. This is gonna be awesome."Of course, you probably wouldn't believe a voodoo doll could work either. Or that it could cause someone's leg to blow clean off with one quick prick. But I've seen it. It can happen.And when there's suddenly a doll of YOU floating around out there—a doll that could be snatched by a Rottweiler and torn to shreds, or a gang of thugs ready to torch it, or any random family of cannibals (really, do you need the danger here spelled out for you?)—well, you know that's just gonna be a really bad day ...(goodreads.com)

I received my copy of A Bad Day for Voodoo from Sourcebooks last October as part of their Halloween give-away promotion and I gave away a copy of this book and others to one lucky reader. I am sad to say that this book sat on my TBR for so long before I picked it up. I get into these comfort zone phases and I don't want to read anything outside of that zone. This book scared me because I was pretty sure it would be Outside The Zone.Of course now I'm in a phase where any and every book I pick up just annoys the hell out of me and I feel like everything is just so unoriginal. Does that ever happen to you? I have a plethora of books hanging around my house that are half-started and left behind because I just can't connect with them.Cue this book.This book, with its ever so obvious Outside The Zone-ness and I hoped that it would be what I would need in order to actually complete a book from start to finish. And I had just come off the disappointing read of A Discover of Witches and I wanted something that wouldn't have anything to do with silly women pining over vampires that treat them like property.I will say this loud and clear, in bold, so you know I mean business.I have not enjoyed a book this much in a long time. It made me laugh. A lot. Out loud. Over and over again.I had so much fun reading this book. Sure, it's pretty ridiculous a lot of the time but it's hilarious the entire read through. It's a perfect comedic horror story. If it can go wrong, it will but you will probably burst out laughing while taking the bus to work in the morning and then have to put the book away so the other passengers stop giving you dirty looks.This book was fun and rather creepy (OMG, that house with the Basers. I was freaking out with that creepy family. *shudder*) and I laughed. I read the book over lunch breaks. I tried reading it on the bus, but public laughter aside, I still get rather bus sick so that didn't work so well. I didn't even want to work because I was enjoying the book so much. It gave me a nice escape from the office during a particularly brutal week both in the office and personally.My gods, there's even an intermission in the story and I nearly fell off the couch when I turned the page and saw that.Jeff Strand has an amazing sense of humour and it is very obvious in the writing of this novel. He also has some creepy stuff going on in his brain since he is also a horror writer. I believe this is his first book for teens.I really wasn't expecting the voodoo doll to work the way it did and the first time Tyler tries out the doll on his teacher - well, the results took me by surprise and again, I laughed out loud. The book just became way more fun from there on.I will warn you, this book is complete humour and it can get pretty corny and you have to reeeallllyyy suspend your beliefs as things happen. It doesn't stop. There's no moment when you think, "well, it can't get any worse than this" because it will and you will giggle and think "Holy cow! This is all so ridiculous, but I love it!"I don't know why the foolishness of the book didn't bother me. Sometimes  I find stories this far-fetched a little over the top, but maybe I just needed this much humour in my life and I have to say that Strand's writing was really engaging. I find he writes humour very well and I think a lot of that was why I enjoyed the book so much.So if you need a pick-me-up and you feel like reading something that will make you laugh and wonder if any of the characters will make it to the end alive - I highly recommend A Bad Day for Voodoo. :)