I had to choose from a short list of nonfiction books for my AP English class. This was the only one I could even get through, and I do NOT recommend it.

The author goes “undercover” to see if she can survive for a month at a time working various low-end jobs. And let me tell you something, the author is not a role model. This is just my personal opinion, some of you may disagree. The author kept complaining about “how hard it is not to cuss on the job” or “I have to take a bunch of detox crap or else they’ll find out that I smoke marijuana.”

Huh? Plus, the book was randomly peppered with very colorful language, that didn’t seem to be there for any reason. Perhaps it was just to ease the author’s addiction to profanity.

Anyway. Aside from the author the subject matter was fairly interesting. I didn’t really care what happened to the author, but I became concerned and interested in the other characters—the people she met while “undercover.”

So I don’t recommend it. I found it crude, and by the end I felt sorry for people who are in that situation, but that’s all I felt. Nothing about this book really pushed the fact that we should help the less affluent, just that they have hard lives.

So I didn’t like it. Bleh.

~Enna Isilee