The Return of Book Club Monday #22: Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

Let me start off by saying that I don't win things very often - if ever - and I was genuinely surprised by my luck in getting to be one of the first to read Chuck Palahniuk's newest novel (releasing on October 8), Doomed.

When I found the giveaway on Facebook, I applied, not thinking anything of it. A couple of weeks later, I got an e-mail with a UPS MyChoice shipping notification for something from Random House books. I didn't want to get too excited, but when I received the package I knew for sure that I had finally won something from an Internet giveaway - and a pretty cool something at that! A galley (AKA review) copy of Doomed. It's awesome to have something like this to add to my collection.

Onto the good stuff, the review. Let me just preface by saying that this is a companion to Palahniuk's previous work, Damned, and you're gonna want to read that prior to this. Damned was the first story of Madison Spencer, a dead thirteen year old girl and her descent into the afterlife via hell. It chronicled the people she met, things she saw, and you can't forget her confrontation with the devil himself.

Doomed is written in the form of blog posts from the afterlife, or, rather, purgatory. Madison still walks amongst those she left, and they can't see or hear her. In each chapter (or 'post', as it were), she encounters something new, from seeing her dead grandmother's ghost on a trip to her parents' apartment to guiding the reader through the worst summer of her life - and quite possibly the reason she wound up in hell in the first place.

Later, we find out that in no uncertain terms, death was her destiny. Her crazy-as-all-getout parents knew what would happen from the start, and didn't care one way or another what happened to their daughter.

As a reader, the blog post format is actually very easy to read, offering the story in easily digestible pieces. Every now and again another character will chime in with a post of their own, but about 95 percent comes from Madison's point of view.

As with his other novels, Palahniuk hooks the reader very early on with Doomed. I found myself wanting to read a single chapter before bed and before I knew it, it would be a hundred pages and an hour later! Chuck Palahniuk is really a champion amongst authors, and if you've read and enjoyed his other works (yes, even Pygmy), Doomed definitely will not let you down.

Doomed will be released on October 8, 2013 by Doubleday Books, but can be preordered on Amazon here.

Milwaukee was also one of the cities picked for Chuck Palahniuk's 'Adult Bedtime Stories' author tour, and I picked up a ticket not long after hearing about it. Never fear, I'm certain I'll be putting together a recap of that, also!