Book Review: The Friday Society

TITLE: The Friday Society
Book 1 in a series?
AUTHOR: Adrienne Kress
PUBLISHED: December 2012
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Steampunk, mystery, adventure, satire
PREMISE: Cora, Nellie, and Michiko meet under dire circumstances involving murder. When it becomes clear that no one else is going to do something, they step up to the plate to solve things themselves.
MY REVIEW: So this is one of those books that debuted with little fanfare and received many mixed reviews. I'm surprised it wasn't more hyped because this seems like a very commercial friendly book to me and steampunk is becoming a thing now (which makes this steampunk fan very happy let me tell you). I'm not so surprised about the mixed reviews because it is satire/parody humor. I've said it several times but I'll say it again: satire is not for everyone. People will either get your sense of humor and what you're doing and enjoy it, or they just don't get that you're having fun with the genre stereotypes or don't enjoy the humor, whichever. So doing satire in books is risky.
Luckily for the author, I love satire books and this mostly appealed to me. I do wish more had been done with Michiko because hers was the most interesting story to me, but I'm pretty sure this is going to be a series so chances are Michiko (and Nellie) will have their chance to shine in other books. There were also a few cases of funky writing here and there. For instance every so often a modern word would be thrown in which was rather jarring considering this is a steampunk Victorian setting. I get it's satire but still...
Other then a few writing flaws this was mostly a fun adventure. I enjoyed the girls very much (can we also marvel at how a author had a book centering around female friendship? With no love triangle or boys getting in the way of said friendship? THANK YOU, author). It may not be the most deep or thought provoking novel out there. But it does its job which was to entertain.
WHO SHOULD READ: Steampunk fans, satire fans, Discworld fans
MY RATING: Four out of Five badass vigilante girls