Review: Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Dairy Queen
by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Release Date: May 22, 2006
Series: Dairy Queen, #1
Num Pages: 275
Links: Goodreads/Purchase

When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said. 
Harsh words, indeed, from Brian Nelson of all people. But, D.J. can't help admitting, maybe he's right.
When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said. 
Stuff like why her best friend, Amber, isn't so friendly anymore.  Or why her little brother, Curtis, never opens his mouth. Why her mom has two jobs and a big secret. Why her college-football-star brothers won't even call home. Why her dad would go ballistic if she tried out for the high school football team herself. And why Brian is so, so out of her league.
When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said. 
Welcome to the summer that fifteen year old DJ Schwenk of Red Bend, Wisconsin, learns to talk, and having an awful lot of stuff to say.

My Review:


Sixteen year old DJ Schwenk's life is far from perfect. Her college football-star brothers haven't talked to her in months, her younger brother never talks, her dad has hip problems, her mom works a lot, she flunked Sophomore English, and she's stuck doing ten thousand daily chores on her family's farm. Sounds fun, right? Well, everything changes when Brian Nelson, comes to work at the farm. DJ has never been the type of girl that guys swoon over, nor has she been the type to swoon over guys. But this terrible, long, wonderful summer, she falls in Love.
       I really liked this book. I came away feeling happy. First of all let me make one thing clear: My favorite character was the dog. Smut, her name is. I have no idea why but she was just my favorite character even though she was barely mentioned. I just thought I'd mention that. :p Anyway, now that's out of the way. I really liked DJ too. She wasn't beautiful or perfect or boy-obsessed (Well, not really...) like all the other book heroines I read about. She was so much different, and I liked her for that. She worked really hard and made me realize that I was probably the most spoiled person ever when I loudly complained to my mom that I really, really didn't want to empty the dishwasher, thank you very much. And she changed SO MUCH throughout the novel, it was fantastic. At the end she started to get kind of arrogant, which bothered me a teensy bit, but no characters in books can be 100% perfect right? So I managed to overlook this and I ended up really liking her as a character.
     I've never been a fan of football. Like, my brothers would get really excited about a football game, and I'd just kind of sit there not really interested in it. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of watching and playing sports. But something about football has always seemed kind of boring to me. But now that I've read this book, I have whole different views on football. Instead of impatiently waiting for all the football talk to be finished, I clued in and I found that the parts where DJ talked about football were my favorite parts. So now I must declare that I will go watch football, or heck even PLAY football when my brothers do. (I say proudly.)
    This book gave me a lot to think about. It wasn't fantasy; It was definitely something that could happen in real life. Since I don't read a lot of contemporary fiction these days, it was nice to be able to actually compare your life to someone else and reflect on what the character learned and if you too could learn from this. Which sounds totally weird, I know. But I'm holding strong to that point because it really is more important. Anyway, I learned a LOT from this book. Even though it was more of a light read and I pretty much finished it in a day, it taught some lessons that you'll have to find out about by reading the book.
   So should you buy Dairy Queen, or borrow it from the library? Yes! Go now!

4/5 stars