Ami's Hoard

2.5 stars

When I first read the story of Weasel in Pop Goes the Weasel a couple of years ago, I was quite amused by it. I thought it was an entertaining comedy of errors story with all the mischief and mayhem that Weasel got himself into.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me this time. Maybe it was the wrong kind of mood that I had when I was reading this – but I did feel that the story felt a little too hard. It seemed that Weasel was trying to be funny in every single scene or every single paragraph. From his internal monologues, his descriptions of people or situations around him, his way of talking with other people … and it didn’t feel slightly funny to me. In fact, I thought Weasel was acting like such a brat in one way or another. Including the way he tried to get out from under his step-father’s thumb.

I was annoyed with this story and not at all amused. I was annoyed with Weasel who thought that working with so much free time to read his Kindle was the perfect job for him (which of course made him a lazy kid), I was annoyed with Weasel always referring to his stepfather as step-monster, I was annoyed with how the stalker-girl and Tony’s ex were portrayed (so cliché), I was annoyed with Weasel’s mother … the whole comedic / slapstick angle introduced in this story just didn’t work for me this time.

I know that humor can be very a subjective matter. So maybe with this type of humor, it only works for me one time rather than for a whole series. I still like Stephen Osborne’s stories but this one, safe to say, is a series of his that I prefer not to follow.