OnlineBookClub.org
1 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Joking Kills by Sandra Zouak is a short book of jokes. There are 138 numbered jokes within the book, organized into 20 different sections by topic. Topics begin with Aliens and continue alphabetically through Work, with Miscellaneous added on at the end. There is one section of One-Liners, but most of the jokes are 2-4 lines in length. These quick jokes make for a speedy read that can easily be finished in a single sitting.
This book is available for free through Kindle Unlimited, and the Amazon listing indicates that this is book 6 of The Laughing Factory series. However, I could not find an Amazon listing for any of the other books in this series, so I can only assume that this series title refers to the others books of jokes published by this author, which are also available for free on Kindle Unlimited.
The writing itself is flawless, as I did not find any grammatical or typographical errors within the book. Unfortunately, that is really the only thing I liked about this book. The tagline of the book reads, “To those who wish to laugh out of their graves,” so I was naturally expecting to read a collection of extremely funny jokes. I didn’t get many funny jokes at all. I can count on one hand the number of jokes that made me smile, but absolutely none of them were worthy of even a snicker.
Many times, I turned the page expecting to read more of the joke, only to discover that the joke was finished without ever seeming to reach a punchline. On a small scale, I think that many of these jokes were written with a more British style of humor, which just didn’t transfer to an American audience. I felt like I was missing some information that would explain why the joke was funny. Other jokes were just very bad “dad jokes” or slightly in bad taste. The book is also quite heavy with profanity and adult topics.
There were also minor issues with the book that were easy to notice given the short length of the book. First of all, joke #46 under the Parenting section and joke #64 under the AI section were the same joke told with different details. Was this intentional? Also, the sections of the book were in alphabetical order with the exception of “AI” placed arbitrarily between “Pets” and “Sex.” Some sections included only one joke, but then there was an entire miscellaneous section at the end. I don’t understand why some single jokes got their own sections and others were just lumped together in the miscellaneous section.
I love humorous books, and I would expect to at least chuckle from a book of jokes. However, that didn’t happen at all, and I found this book to be overall disappointing. For these reasons, I give this book a rating of 1 out of 4 stars. I think that readers can find better jokes by browsing Facebook or Twitter.
******
Joking Kills
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
