I'm having a hard time writing a review for this. On the positive side his felt like a very real insight into the teenage male mind. It's written as journal entries, and while the confusing jumbled mess of words may be a true portrayal of a boys thoughts, it was a confusing jumbled mess. And beyond the overall themes, there was very little plot or story, and definitely no resolution.  It really did feel like he took his teenage diary, and selected a chunk of it, and published it. So while this may be an interesting curiosity, or maybe anthropological evidence, it was not, in my opinion, a good book.

I can definitely say that this was different. It really was like going through a horny teenage boy’s diary. He’s supposed to be every girl’s dream and what not, but things aren’t going so well for him. This book made me imagine a kid, somewhat over exaggerated, and definitely awkward. There wasn’t much of a plot, just a lot of rambling thoughts, but I guess that’s what you can expect from a horny teenager. The story is overall pretty funny, but beware that its also raunchy as hell. It was interesting to see inside this mind, and I was amused.  So I am not sure if it’s because I'm a female that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy this one, but it was just okay for me. I gave it 3.5 4 - stars because if anything, it was at least funny.

Cole is the boy your friends will warn you about.

Handsome and athletic, with just the right amount of artsy thrown in, he’s every teenage girl’s dream — on the surface. But he’s starting to get himself a reputation as less of a lady’s man and more of a lady killer. He’s rifled through the girls in his high school class like a rabid raccoon the night before trash pick-up day, and the result is something just as unsightly.

He has the same problem every high school boy has — he can’t stop thinking about sex. He thinks about it at the breakfast table — mom and oatmeal notwithstanding. He thinks about it every time a girl pushes past him to get to her locker and he’s left in a cloud of her intoxicating perfume. He thinks about it while practicing on the high school’s track, and it’s really not his fault because who wouldn’t be thinking about sex with the cheerleaders practicing their stretches and high kicks just a few feet away? Cole is obsessed, and when he can’t get it from the girls at school, he has to resort to what is arguably his second favorite pastime — girls on film.

All the Dirty Parts is a hilariously tragic tale of a high school boy and his fixation on the appendage hanging between his legs. While the insight into the boy’s mind is sometimes crude, raunchy, and cringe-worthy, it’s also something that leaves readers sharply aware of the differences between men and women and how early these differences come about. While Cole is ruled primarily by his most basic of instincts and dominated by his body, the fairer sex involved in the story has a firm hold over her brain and a sharp cunning that is a marvel to behold.

Readers will travel along with Cole as he transitions from a playboy to the one getting played, and how sex plays a pivotal part in not only his world, but the immediate lives around him. Once he catches feelings for the exotic new girl in town (who sought him out primarily because of his sexual reputation), his obsession with sex turns from one of basic release to actually. . .performing an act of love. Readers won’t be surprised at how things eventually play out for Cole, but they may be surprised at how they feel just a tad bit sad for the boy who lost control of his heart before he even realized what was happening.

I give All the Dirty Parts a 4 out of 5 star rating, and I recommend it to anyone who is curious about the inner-workings of a teenage boy or need a reprieve from serious tomes in the way of a humorous tale. I do stress that this book is not for readers under the age of 18, as there is a lot of graphic sexual language and scenes throughout the entirety of the book. And when I say entirety — I mean WHOLE BOOK. I really loved the humor and how the author poked such fun at his main character, but in such a clever way. . . the perspective is very unique in that while it is first-person, it is much more simple — seeming to be told directly from the bare mind of Cole and all of his teenage glory. The supporting characters, primarily his best friend, are rich and welcome attachments to the progression, and I did not blame their decisions one bit, in the end.

This book lives true to its title and is indeed. . . all the dirty parts.

Just couldn't get into this.  50 pages about the teenage boy mind and masturbation and I gave up.

I wish Daniel Handler published more because few writers can surprise me like he can. Obviously, I know that quality work takes time, effortless as it may seem, but excellent writing like this makes you feel greedy. Daniel Handler writes dialogue like no one else. And I'll be damned if he didn't change my sensibilities re: Cole by the end of the book. I don't usually re-read fiction, but I can't wait to back this one up and read it again,.

Cole is a timely, relatable character, but the story needs more sturcture to make the the random thoughts of a teen male interesting. Despite the specificity of Cole's inexpert sexual exploits it is neither insightful nor entertaining. Boring.

All the Dirty Parts by Daniel Handler is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in late July.

Lemony Snicket, this is not - his lead character, Cole, is extremely tangential, prone to unframed, nearly faceless dialogues, and is obsessed with sex, but is quite taken with Grisaille, a slightly granola naturale girl.

Many people will know Daniel Handler by a different name – lemony snicket.  Please, please do not go into this book thinking that this is in any way a continuation of lemony snicket’s writing.  This book is marketed as an adult book, but I would park it somewhere at the extreme end of young adult – very late teen, if you will.  Here’s why late teens and adults should take this book for a spin.

The narrator of this book, Cole, loves sex.  He also loves masturbating.  And he is not shy about talking to the reader about it.  This book is presented in small, choppy chunks of thought.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell just who is talking, and sometimes changes of subject are hard to follow.  I loved that about this book, because it adds to the frenetic atmosphere that is adolescent sexual discovery.

Cole warns us early on: “There are love stories galore, and we all know them.  This isn’t that.  The story I’m typing is all the dirty parts.” And Cole describes all the dirty parts all right, of a string of sexual relationships that feel casual and fun to Cole.  Like many kids, he experiments sexually, and the reader watches Cole struggle with his identity as a young sexual man. We meet a young lady who seems so different from Cole, and watch their relationship develop as well.  It’s all written in those short bursts, and it’s decidedly consumable.  And explicit.  Cole really wants us to understand his life and how much he enjoys having sex.

During the course of storytelling, I watched Cole hit an apogee, and I watched his orbit decay.  He’s a complicated character, who reminds me slightly of a dirty, but not mentally ill Holden Caulfield.  He wants to tell it to you straight.  He doesn’t realize how emotionally immature he is, until he does…

I consumed this short novel (144 pages) in the course of an afternoon, when I had meant to space it out over a few days.  If that’s not a recommendation to pick up, I don’t know what it!  I will be suggesting this book to some of the men I know, seeing if they can find themselves within the pages, and to some women, who might recognize Cole as well.

Let me put it this way: this book is literally all the dirty parts. It felt like a novel with absolutely no filler, just the parts where Cole is either thinking about or having sex. It made for a quick read but it left me wanting more. I would have liked to see some of the other characters more and learn how one scene led to the next.

Not at all what I expected, but very interesting style. At first I was going to give up on it because the tone seemed very misogynistic. That was until it progressed and with it it the character. Seeing the transformation throughout the book was great. At that point I wish it had been longer.

I was curious about this book. I would not recommend reading it. It is all sex. No story. One dimensional characters. I am glad it was short. I couldn't take much more. 

I don't even know what to say. I am not quite sure how this was published.

Cole is a young sexaholic. He will have sex with anyone, and sometimes you think, anything. When the girls weren't available, he did it with Alec. But he dumped Alec when the girls came around again. Alec wasn't too happy. The book is a series of short vignettes about Cole's escapades. Like many things, a little goes a long way. Problem is, there is a lot, and it gets boring. Once you have the picture, the novelty wears off. I found myself skimming pages. Lots of them. I don't think I missed a thing.
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

was given an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

 

I wanted to wait for a little bit after finishing All the Dirty Parts to write a review. This is because upon finishing, I was a little confused about what I felt about the book. I have to say, now sitting here writing a review, I'm still mostly confused.

 

First, this book isn't clear on whether it's YA or Adult. It's shelved as YA in NetGalley if I'm not mistaken, and on Goodreads it's shelved as YA and Adult, and I didn't realize that going in.

 

When I say this book talks about sex, I really mean it's all sex. Literally most of this book is explicit sex scenes. There isn't much dialogue, and the dialogue that is there is confusing. I'm not against sex in YA, but to have such explicit scenes and knowledge thrown into a YA book is weird to me. Kids as young as 12 are reading YA and I'm not sure that I would feel comfortable with a 12 year old reading this book.

 

This story starts with Cole talking about sex. Specifically, about all the women he has had sex with so far. Eleven girls, I think is the number that he started with. I thought that it was a good enough introduction into the conversation that the book was supposed to be bringing up, but the problem is that... it felt like the intro never stopped. There were no chapter breaks, no clear dialogue, and as far as I could tell, Cole never changed his attitude about how he views women as objects for sex.

 

Pretty quick, we learn about Cole's best friend Alec, who likes to hear "all the details" after Cole has slept with a girl (meaning he wants to hear about how Cole convinced the girl to have sex, or do sexual acts with him). Cole notes that he and Alec like to watch porn together, and Alec's favorite type is that with two men and one woman. Later we learn that maybe Alec has this preference because he identifies as bisexual. We learn that he is bisexual because one night, Alec suggests the idea that he and Cole should satisfy each other instead of doing it themselves. Thus Alec and Cole sexually satisfy each other, and Alec develops feelings for Cole while Cole thinks that he's not gay, not bisexual, he just likes to get off.

 

Soon Cole leaves Alec in the dust when a girl who is free in her sexuality, who Cole thinks is made for him, decides she wants to be with Cole. Alec tells Cole that he has feelings for him, in which Cole responds that he isn't gay and he only wanted to have sex because he literally thinks about sex every second of every day.

 

Grisaille, I think, is supposed to be the image of a sexually free woman. She is supposed to be the same as Cole, just as a woman. I think the author did pretty well with her, except for the fact that she comes across as cold. Just because she's a sexually free woman, does not mean she doesn't have any feelings. I get that she was supposed to be almost a reflection of Cole in order for him to be taught a lesson, but I thought it was a little disingenuous. Also, you're made to believe that she's a horrible person because she convinces Cole to have sex with another girl, so that she could have sex with another man. I don't understand why she wouldn't have just broken up with him at this point, if she was truly sexually free and wanted to have sex with someone else. Instead it was made out to be that because she was a sexually free woman, she was also a cold, heartless woman.

 

I also think that this book had a lot of potential, but it almost seemed like it wasn't executed at all. It was supposed to be the conversation about sex, gender roles, and narrative that women are put down for sexual activity, while men are congratulated for the same thing. The problem is, that's really difficult to discuss this in only 144 pages. It took an hour for me to read, and I felt like it ended right in the middle of the story. 

 

I hated Cole. I read a lot of books where the main characters are less than good, but I've never really hated a character until now. And there was no redemption. The supposed redemption is when is when Grisaille leaves him at the end. Throughout the whole novel, Cole only thinks of women as objects, even thinks as his best friend as an object for sex, is continually disrespectful to any woman he talks to (yes, even Grisaille), even admits that what he does is close to rape, and his behavior never once changes. We never see him progress. Sure, he gets feelings for Grisaille and when she leaves, he's heartbroken. But even then he thinks horrible things about her. And not once has he thought "oh, maybe all those things I did to those women and the way that I think about women and how I treated my best friend is not very great".

 

I guess I'm just a person who always wants to see character development in a book. This felt less like a conversation and more like a telling. Look, we know how rape culture and gender roles work in today's society. I want to see less of how it is and more of how it ought to be.

 

Anyways, I give this book three stars overall. I'm not sure if this review makes much sense because my feelings about the book are still confusing and muddled.

This book is amazing! I have recommended it to so many people, and their favorite is when it is read out loud! Handler writes with the perfect voice!

I am not a dude, but I imagine this book reflects the inner monologue of most teen aged boys. The book follows Cole on his journey through the ups and downs of sex. It covers girls, exploring sexuality and the ever fateful crash into love. 

I kept thinking to myself, "Why am I reading this?" But the story was so enthralling that I read it in just a few hours. The narrative was a little graphic at times, but what do you expect from a book about sex? This book is not for the faint of heart, but if you enjoy a quick dirty read, try All the Dirty Parts.

Obviously not anything like the books written under his moniker, but understandable why it isn't published under it. I really enjoyed it. I think it's a great book for not shielding teens and their sexuality, so long as you guide and talk to them about it. This book is definitely a conversation starter.

This is a very quick read - only 144 pages - and thank goodness for that. The book completely lacks plot and its main purpose is to document the main character's sexual exploits. If the book had been any longer, I probably would have given up. The book is very well-written but the characters are very unlikeable. Alec is the only character who is somewhat likeable, but he disappears about halfway through the book. 

Since the book is so short, I feel like more plot could have easily been added. Instead, it was more of a stream of consciousness of the main character, Cole. One of the more interesting parts of the book was also cut kind of short, Cole's experimentation. I feel like that could have been delved into more, or even came back to later on, but it wasn't touched on much again. 

I don't know if I am being exceptionally harsh because I was really looking forward to this book, or if it really was that bad. So I'm just disappointed it didn't live up to my expectations. But thank you to Bloomsbury, Daniel Handler, and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Daniel Handler wasn't kidding when he said he was typing all the dirty parts. This book literally is ALL THE DIRTY PARTS. It's nothing but sex. Seriously.

I really, really wanted to like this, but it was so choppy and went all over the place. Very well written, and I appreciate the stream of consciousness, but I don't think this book was for me.

Handler's short novel ode to teen age sexual angst, exploration and frustrated love is unlike anything you will read. A hard to describe slice of teenage life loaded with sex and promiscuity is also a semi cautionary tale of the perils of unbounded sex. And it's also funny. Recommended.