I tried about 6 times to get into this book. I think I can see what it was trying to do episodically and narratively, but it just wasn’t for me.

2.5 that I'll round up to 3.

I think that there is an audience for this book, and I am not 100% sure that audience includes me. There were a lot of pieces to the book that perhaps thought it was more profound than I personally found it. It kind of gave of the vibes that I would imagine would be interesting to a lot of young men in their late teens to early twenties.

The man character No. 44 was kind of like a walking stereotype of a "cool guy." He's a hitman who basically the whole book fucks and kills people around the world. His sexual conquests got to be too repetitive for me. We get it, the dude fucks! Since the book is also about a guy who receives a list of 100 names that he has to kill in order, that also gets very tedious at times (the author at least breaks the 4th wall to address this).

I'm no stranger to fever dream books, in fact I love them so I did enjoy how weird things got. I think that the writer does have some writing chops. There were some good concepts and scenes in this book. Perhaps maybe it needed a bit more time to cook however. It seemed like the author had some things that they wanted to say but it didn't all come out clearly.

This book felt like it was very much written for males. The vast majority of female characters that isn't a child is either just described by their physical features and used for sex OR they are either scumbags who are cuckolding their husband's or drunk drivers etc. Even Becky who was probably the best written female character was out fucking other guys (tho it kinda wasn't her fault since she only was with No.44 subconsciously? Or something). Now I'm not saying this was intentional by the author or that women can't be bad people, I just felt like there wasn't much substance to any of them.

No. 44 I also was a little confused by his personality and really who he was. He seemed to have a bloodlust but then randomly would get sentimental about certain things. He also had one Tinder date where she didn't text him back the next day and decided prostitutes are the only answer now because apparantly he was actually a romantic? "Could he ever separate his penis from his heart" No.44 asks himself despite the fact he had multiple one night stands (plus a foursome) at this point. I felt like his actions and words didn't match a lot of times.

Now this was a satire and there was a lot of parts that did have me laughing out loud out of the absurdity of it all. But some of the humor didn't land and had me scratching my head wondering if it was suppose to be a joke or not. Like when the devil asked him to put the body in the suitcase and then when he asked why the devil said so he had something to do to pass the time.

I enjoyed the way things ended. Once again I think this book had a lot of potential. I think I would have rated it higher if there was a stronger sense of who No.44 was and then watching more of an internal struggle as he goes through the list. Maybe showing more of him losing his self of sense as Hell overtakes him.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Darby Guise’s An American Beelzebub is certainly a one of a kind read. Taking readers through No. 44’s life as a hit-man tasked with killing 100 people, the reader is never sure where the book is going next (and if you guess—you’re always wrong). I’m still working out whether there was a deeper message or whether this was just supposed to be an entertaining story. Either way, it’s sure to be a polarizing read.

Not what I was expecting, but still fine. The characters were okay. Not something I’d read again or recommend highly.