Review: Dairy Queen

Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dairy Queen is about young farmer D.J. Schwenk's summer before her junior year in highschool. It's about training for American football, friendship, loss of friendship, family, and being (or not being) a cow.

I liked this book a lot.



I wasn't really expecting all that much out of it, all I knew is that it had some sort of connection to sports, and that said connection was football. Which was true. It wasn't really about football, but the main character's (D.J.'s) whole family is a football family so it's a pretty big deal to her so I guess it's brought up a lot. As someone who doesn't really like football, I didn't mind it. Football is used more as a backdrop to everything else that's going on, and it all worked out really well. This book is also pretty funny, and made me giggle out loud quite a few times. That might have been aided by the fact I listened to the audiobook though. Good audiobook: Would recommend.

Along American football, D.J. also plays basketball, volleyball, pitches in softball, and runs sprints in track, which I thought was really cool. There was this one description of running anchor (final) leg in a 4x100m relay, and it was so satisfying. If you can't tell: I run track. All I want in this world is to be able to read a good book that's about running either short or long sprints (I run them all), and that focuses on the running and training aspect of it instead of romance or life drama or whatnot. Last year I read The Running Dream which was about a 400m sprinter, and it was great until the main character's leg got torn off. That kind of put a damper on the whole sprinting part of things. It still ended up being a fantastic 5/5 star book, but it gave me this wonderful taste and left me only wanting more.

This book has the best slow burn of a relationship I've ever read in all my years of reading. This whole next part might be spoilery, depending on how strict you are on spoilers. I'll try to be vague while still getting my point across.

(view spoiler)[I hate books where you know the second that a character is introduced that they're going to be the love interest. Even in this book, I guessed that some hot boy was going to be introduced right before that ended up exactly happening, but the development of their relationship was so satisfying. For the whole first half of the book I even thought that it might end up just being the best platonic relationship ever. Even soon after things turned definitively romantic I was shipping them pretty hard. This never happens to me in books where the love interest is obvious, because it feels way too forced to me and I just can't ever get behind it. The main example for me is always Four and Tris from the Divergent series. I never ever could get behind their relationship. (hide spoiler)]

This next part is an actual proper spoiler so don't click this unless you've read the book. (view spoiler)[I know what it feels like to lose that someone who you could talk to all day and tell anything to. Someone who you maybe even made out with a couple times. (Okay, in my case it was a LOT of times and in D.J.'s case it was only one kiss. My point is that it was a boy we were super close to and maybe even liked a little bit and who we ended up having a falling out with.) And then that awkwardness afterwards. And the feeling of loss and loneliness of no longer having that person to talk to anymore. That feeling of losing your best friend. That was sad, and reminded me of my loss, and I appreciated being able to read about it in a book.

I thought it'd be a real unique thing for this book to actually end their relationship like that, because it'd be realistic. But it seems like they'll get back together again in the next book, and I ain't even mad because I am trash. This book had me hating Brian, liking Brian, hating Brian so much I had sworn off him forever, and then beating myself up for shipping them again because he once again seemed alright. God damn it.

That was such a missed opportunity when D.J. could have gone on vacation to lake Superior for the weekend with Brian. So much juicy drama or relationship building could have happened on that trip. D.J. should have found some way to skip farm duty or something. We know she's not a saint: She happily skips church, she underage drinks, and judging by her brother doing it and her already being so good at it we can assume she also drove without a license. So she shoulda just skipped town with Brian and left the consequences to be delt with by future D.J. This would have added a lot more pages to this book, but all good and interesting content I think.

It's kinda dumb how this book is supposed to be an assignment D.J. wrote for school. Like who would tell all that to a teacher? Way too much information. Also—and I think this about any first-person past-tense narrative—it's weird for her to have remembered everything so well and detailed. This whole thing that was this kind of "reveal" at the end was just pretty dumb to me. (hide spoiler)]

With the way the characters talk (using words such as "retarded") and think (being slightly weirded out by gay people) you can definitely tell that this was written back in 2006. So if you're someone who's sensitive about those types of things then those aspects of this book will pose a problem for you. I myself found it refreshing. Somewhat shocking—because of how strict and "inoffensive" our society is nowadays—but refreshing nonetheless. It also has some girl hate, as books back then also tended to have, but once again I chalk that up to just being a reflection of the time it was written. At least it never dropped the "slut" word, which even I myself was prone to dropping about other girls when I was bitter and didn't know any better back in grade 7.

Overall a really enjoyable book! It's not 5 stars because it didn't have that last spark of amazingness I need to be able to rate something that highly. Though I did fly through the audiobook instead of studying for my final that's coming up in a few days. Honestly I just want to be a professional athlete already and not have to deal with school. But I don't want to be like D.J.'s dad and flunk out and therefore get kicked out of varsity track, so the education grind can't stop. Though some may argue it hasn't started. Because I never study. But I'm still kicking!!!!

Why I gave this book my "teary" tag: (view spoiler)[I came real close to tearing up out of happiness after DJ scored her down and then realized her brother Bill was in the audience. (hide spoiler)]

Click to read my other Dairy Queen Reviews:
Dairy Queen*
Off Season
Front and Center
Heaven is Paved with Oreos (dnf)


*Current review

View all my reviews