Dairy Queen

I read this because I kept seeing it on lists like “Favorite Teen Read,” “Teen Recommended,” “ALA Best Books for Young Adults,” etc. And it also had many blurbs saying, in essence, “I loved this book.” And unsurprisingly, I loved it as well.

D.J. (for Darlene Joyce) Schwenk is 15 when the book begins, and she has taken over most of the chores at her family’s farm in Red Bend, Wisconsin, because her older brothers have left home, her mom is working two jobs, and her dad got injured. She has one other brother, but he’s 13, and in any event is in a summer softball league.

D.J.’s dad used to be a football coach for the rival team at Hawley High, where his best friend Jimmy Ott still does the coaching. Jimmy sends his show more quarterback, Brian Nelson, over to help out at the farm, but Brian thinks the work is too hard, and quits after one day. He only comes back when D.J. agrees to be his personal trainer to help him prepare for the upcoming football season.

The trouble starts, however, when D.J. decides she too wants to play football, for her home team of Red Bend, which is the main rival of Hawley. She doesn’t tell Brian though, because the Schwenk’s aren’t very good at communicating.

Sounds fairly standard, but the character of D.J. is outstanding. She considers herself “poor, stupid, and ugly and just not cool at all” but of course she is none of those things, except poor (but only in terms of money). She’s hilariously funny, smart, courageous, and full of insight about herself and others. As one example evincing all of the above, she talks about how she and her BFF Amber watch the movie “Blue Crush” over and over. She explains:

“It’s a movie about three girls who are a lot like us except they live in Hawaii and don’t have any parents and they date professional football players and surf all the time. And they’re thin. So you can see that the similarities are overwhelming.”

Evaluation: I laughed out loud often while reading this charming coming-of-age story. The author has written some follow-up books and I can’t wait to read them. show less

15-year-old DJ Schwenk is having a rough time. Her two older brothers have left home for college and never call or write. Her younger brother, Curtis, rarely speaks. Her mother is bogged down trying to work two jobs, and her demanding father has had a hip operation, and can't do the work on the family's dairy farm. That leaves DJ to run the farm - while going to high school, where she's failing English. The last thing she needs is for their great family friend, (who is the coach of her school's rival football team), to ask her of all people to train, Brian, one of his players, on their farm during the summer.
And then her life gets more complicated when she and Brian start to kinda-sorta like each other. Throw into the mix her own show more secret decision to play on her school's football team, and she's got one complicated life to figure out.
DJ is one of those teen novel protagonists who are super smart and tough as nails in some ways, while still sort of innocent and vulnerable in other ways. I absolutely loved her, and the book both! (Didn't know it was a series until I went to write this review... now I've got more to look forward to.) show less

D.J. Schwenk has a lot to deal with. Not only is she the only daughter out of four kids, she is pretty much in charge of running the dairy farm her family owns, at least ever since her dad's hip got really bad. Her older brothers (both football stars when they were in high school) aren't talking to the rest of the family because of a fight they had with their dad, her younger brother doesn't talk, and her mother has two jobs that take up all of her time. Her dad is trying to learn how to cook (slow going). She got an F in English last year. And her friend Amber is starting to act really weird. And to top it all off? Brian Nelson, quarterback of her high school's rival's football team, is being forced to work for her family the summer show more before their senior year, and D.J. has agreed to train him.

D.J. has some major self-esteem issues—she fully believes that she is neither pretty nor smart, yet just accepts this as cold hard fact. It bothers her a little sometimes, but mostly she just does what needs to be done without too much to say about it. In fact, she does a lot of stuff that needs to be done, including the majority of the farm work, which irritates her a little, but again she says nothing (after all, D.J. knows that good, old-fashioned hard work is one of her greatest talents). She does everything that's expected of her, until Brian makes a comment about how she's just like a cow and will do pretty much whatever anyone tells her to do.

This gets her thinking. She notices a lot of the people in her town of Red Bend are like cows, going through the motions without deviating from the norm, at least not really. D.J. decides she does not want to be a cow. And so she makes an awesome decision. She is going to try out for the Red Bend high school football team. How great is that? I never get to read about girls trying out for sports dominated by men, and D.J. decides to do it without really worrying about how she'll be treated by other people. In fact, her biggest concerns are a) how her father will take it (hint: not well), and b) how Brian will take it (hint: worse than her dad).

I enjoyed watching (or listening) how Brian and D.J.'s relationship developed over the course of his training and the summer working on the farm. Their hatred grows into a grudging friendship, which, for D.J., eventually turns into a bit more. It's a slow transition, but how refreshing to have a realistic crush in a YA book.

As D.J. starts to work toward goals for herself, she becomes more confident, though it's subtle. She doesn't rag on herself as much as the story progresses. One thing I didn't like at first is how she references to the present (a few months after the action of the story takes place); I like to not know about anything that might happen in the future unless it's through some kind of foreshadowing. But afterward, it made sense to me and I wasn't so annoyed by it anymore.

Murdock lightly touches on heavier issues like sexism and sexuality, along with her main themes of deviating from the norm and what is expected. She handled it all very well, working it into the story without forcing it or making it an issues novel.

I was also a big fan of the language. Typical teen speak, without sounding too forced. This was probably helped by Moore's fantastic narration. She had a slight Wisconsin accent, completely taking me into D.J.'s story. Plus she emphasized and read phrases in certain ways that I might not have necessarily done while reading it, and I think it was for the better. It all sounded completely natural, and I loved it.

And again, I'm going to come back to this: D.J. tries out for football. SO awesome. For some reason I really like football stories or stories with football, despite my lack of interest in the sport itself. Weird. But I totally loved this audio book and highly recommend it, even if you're not a football fan. show less

When I finally found a spare two minutes to sit down and start reading this book, I suddenly ended up drawn in for a couple of hours discovering that [b:Dairy Queen|16178|Dairy Queen (Dairy Queen, #1)|Catherine Gilbert Murdock|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166719842s/16178.jpg|564970] is just as ridiculously funny, silly, and heartwarming as everyone had told me it was. And strangely inspirational too - I love anyone who dares to break the mold, especially young females who challenge gender stereotypes and go their own way.

I will admit that I am not the biggest fan of chick lit novels, so I should warn you that this would probably never have got five stars from me, and the fact that it got four stars should not be taken lightly show more when I'm dishing it out in this genre. This book has all the elements you could want from a light-hearted, teen read: a funny, likeable and slightly snarky protagonist, cute boys, some family troubles - nothing too heavy, romance, friendships, insecurities and overcoming them... this stands out for me amongst others of its kind and I will give it the best compliment I can by saying that if you're a fan of [a:Louise Rennison|65189|Louise Rennison|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1217261779p2/65189.jpg], [a:E. Lockhart|173491|E. Lockhart|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1267209040p2/173491.jpg] and/or [a:Stephanie Perkins|3095893|Stephanie Perkins|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1266806187p2/3095893.jpg], I can see no reason why you wouldn't love this.

D.J. Shwenk is a great character. You know why I think she is such a great character? Because she does sport and farming - two things that interest me about as much as Kim Kardashian's "novel" - and yet she still manages to keep my attention from the very first chapter. It takes A LOT to literally make someone laugh out loud while reading, as in, to actually pause and giggle stupidly to oneself and think if Big Brother was watching right now I would be arrested and locked away forever (am I paranoid? are these weird thoughts?). Anyway, this novel does this repeatedly and I'm glad I didn't read it in public.

I put this book off for two reasons, 1) I never thought I would enjoy a book about either sport or farming, never mind both! And 2) I've been busy reading the dark, disturbing, depressing, supernatural and fantasy books, which is all very well but sometimes we need a little bright happiness from our novels. This delivers, trust me, this delivers. show less

D.J. Schwenk is fifteen, and she lives on her family's dairy farm in Red Bend, Wisconsin. D.J. has almost completely taken over all the work on the farm following an injury to her father. Her mother is working two jobs, her younger brother isn't talking, and her two older bothers, both college football stars, have stayed away despite the family's struggles. The last thing that D.J. wants is help in the form of spoiled, lazy quarterback Brian Nelson, who plays for rival Hawley. Brian's coach wants D.J. to teach him how to work, and when D.J. agrees to train him, she starts to think that maybe she should be the one trying out for the football team.

Any summary of this book is insufficient, because there is so much going on in this novel. show more Each character is fully developed with his or her own story, and we experience it all through D.J.'s eyes as she struggles through this one amazing summer.

D.J. is an awesome character and a great narrator. She's tough, and she's funny, and she's trying really hard to not think about all the things that are going wrong in her family. She doesn't whine about her circumstances, but it's clear that she's carrying far too many burdens for a girl just turning sixteen. Fortunately, D.J.'s toughness and work ethic carry her through, and her friendship with Brian Nelson changes everything for her, but not in the ways one would expect.

Brian Nelson is one of my favorite boy YA characters ever, and if I had read this book as a teen, I would have been in love. Brian is not perfect; he does several lousy things in Dairy Queen, and since there are two more books, I'm sure he'll mess up again. At the start of the book he is lazy and spoiled, and he's not especially nice to D.J. or her family. But Brian is smart, and he's talented (if untrained), and his mother has turned him into a teenage boy that can actually talk about feelings and problems, which is completely foreign to D.J. D.J.'s family doesn't talk about anything, but Brian forces her to really look at her life, and he is likewise capable of learning and changing as a result of the time that he spends with D.J. Their friendship is a joy to read about, and makes the potential for romance between them that much more wonderful.

What really makes this book awesome is that I could write ten more paragraphs about great parts of this book, be it the family relationships or the description of life in a small town or just D.J.'s unique view of the world. This book is about more than a girl who plays football, or two unlikely friends. It's about the most fully realized character that I've read this year, a fifteen-year-old on the brink of adulthood, with all the wonderful and terrible truths that come with it. This is absolutely not a book to miss! show less

I loved this. DJ works her butt of on the family farm, while her dad potters around with an injury and her older football star brothers have fled to college. When a player from an opposing school team is sent to help on the farm for the summer, she ends up training him - only to have things fall apart when she joins her school football team herself.
I would like to be friends with DJ, and I'll introduce her to as many people as possible. And it is great to see a sports novel that is more than 'girl tried out for team and boys are mean'. And Yay for sequel!

"When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said"

After D.J.'s father injured his hip, she had to take over the bulk of the work on their family's farm. Having to milk twice a day, hay whole fields, and clean out the barn, there's a lot that doesn't get said. And when Brian Nelson, Hawley's QB and most arrogant arch rival of Red Bend, shows up one day to work on the farm, D.J. doesn't take it lightly. Now with a best friend who's acting strange, a brother who won't talk, a family who doesn't communicate well, and a boy who may or may not be just the person D.J. needs, she must dig deep down to figure out who she is. And that she is not, by any stretch of the meaning, a cow.

I loved D.J.'s voice in this novel. show more Going on the journey with D.J. trying to find out who she is and becoming comfortable in her own skin was funny, sad, and heart-warming. The scenes with Brian and D.J. talking but not talking were incredibly realistic in their ackward, there isn't always something to say manner. Their encounters were also hilarious. The relationship that builds between D.J. and Brian is so beautiful and believable because it's one that roots and ends in friendship, which is hard to find in books nowadays (between a boy and a girl). The plot twists and turns that come about are surprising and delightful. The sports scenes were accurate while still keeping the excitement in pacing. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this original novel about farms and football. It was a curve ball of a book I didn't see coming, and those are the best kind. D.J. really puts her heart into the book and it's clear from the beginning. Although she sometimes can be very self-hating, she learns things about herself and life at a pace that I think we all have or will. I would reccommend this book to anyone who likes reading about a family that comes together, a sweet first love, and anyone who likes (or would like to learn, as I did) about football and milking cows! This was dazzling! show less