Shut Out

I checked this book out of my high school library a few years ago and loved it. As a high school girl reading about a high school rivalry, it was amazing. So I checked it out a couple years later in my senior year of high school and loved it just the same! I am one who loves to re-read books a few years later to see if I've grown out of them or to try and find details I may have missed before so I finally caved and bought the book. I still love it just as much as the first two times I read it. Would highly recommend if you're into books about young love with a bit of rivalry thrown in!

This is a book that will make you think. Yes, the story is engaging and has a few twists, and you'll find yourself laughing out loud a few times. But this book is one of those that you could discuss at great length. It's set at a high school, but I read this as a college student, and found myself identifying with it a LOT. I think any female age 15 to mid-20s will identify with the story in some way.Plot summary: The football and soccer teams at Hamilton High have had an ongoing rivalry for about a decade-- what started out as tame, summer camp-y pranks have now become more intense, to the point where players are getting injured. And the players' girlfriends, particularly starting quarterback Randy's girlfriend Lissa, are sick of it. (Also because their boyfriends rank the rivalry above their respective relationships.) So, brought together by Lissa with the help of her best friend Chloe, the soccer team girlfriends and football team girlfriends all make a pact to withhold sex until this feud comes to an end. Obviously, drama and some hilarity ensue.Here are some of my favorite things about "Shut Out:"-- Chloe, Lissa's best friend and sort of "first lieutenant" in the assembly of the girlfriends. She's fiercely loyal, blunt/fairly crude, and has sex, well, "like a guy," by societal standards. She's multi-dimensional--- she's more than just that token slutty girl. She's comic relief while also having her deeper moments. She's not ashamed of who she is and what she does. In a society where slut-shaming is still a thing, I'm glad Chloe played such an integral part in the plot.-- The diversity of the girls. We've got Chloe. Then we've got a couple of girls who admit to being virgins, yet one is absolutely hell-bent on hiding this from everyone she knows. (Much to her surprise, the group still accepts her.) Another girl admits to not enjoying sex with her boyfriend, and is worried that this makes her "weird." One admits to faking orgasms. There's an openness that develops within the group-- by the end they're confiding in each other about intimate details of their sex lives, wondering if their experiences are "normal" or not, as they realize that there truly isn't a "normal."-- Cash Sterling, the male hero of the book. Swoon. However, I like that he doesn't necessarily swoop in and save the day entirely. I.e., he's not getting all the credit for solving the problem, which is nice.-- The book encourages openness about sexuality, which is amazing, yet rare. I'm not saying we all need to turn into "Sex and the City" and start loudly discussing orgasms and vibrators over Sunday brunch, but there shouldn't be so much taboo surrounding sex... The book also brings up a lot of great questions about sex and sexuality that will hit close to home for pretty much any female reader.--Lissa is flawed. It'd be too easy for her to be the perfect, laid-back, social butterfly who's dating the quarterback. Nope, she's anxious, and a bit uptight, and isn't an all-knowing relationship/sex goddess. She doesn't have an endless group of friends. She gets too swept up in the strike, she's a little bit crazy at times. We've all got some Lissa in us. She's relatable, and in that sense, she's normal.

Shut Out is one of those books that was so fun to listen to! This is the second book of Kody Keplinger's I've read (Duff being the first) and I have to say I love her style. She writes fun reads with just enough seriousness/emotion to keep me invested. But they're also on the light side and entertaining. This was just the type of story I was in the mood for!Lissa is sick of the feud at her school. Soccer boys vs. Football boys. It's been going on too long. It's effecting her and her relationship with her football playing boyfriend. After enough is enough she decides to fight back. She gets together with the girls dating other players from both teams and they unite. They make a pack to 'hold out' until this feud is over. The boys will surely stop this if they're getting cut off, right? It seems like a legit plan but things never seem to go according to plan...Lissa was a fantastic heroine. I love the way she was with her family, she reminded me a lot of myself in that regard. Her dad and brother were great, and her best friend Casey had me laughing throughout the story. I loved how her relationship with our hero progressed. The narration was good when it came to Lissa, but anytime she was voicing any other character, not so great. Still, overall this is an audiobook I would recommend and I would definitely recommend reading it for all YA lovers.

Shut Out was a pretty good read with a fairly good plot that was written really well. I saw the romance plot coming a mile off though I'm afraid. Lissa starts off the story going out with Randy, the Quarterback who ditches her at every opportunity to run off and instigate or retaliate to the soccer team's attempts to prank him. Randy is just too much of an oblivious fool... He is really dense about Lissa's feelings and she seems only patronisingly fond of him. He days were absolutely numbered, even before Lissa thinks up a "sex strike" to try and win back s attention and end the silly feud.Cash, or the boy from the library (*swoon*) was my pick for romantic interest number 2 the minute he was mentioned. To be honest, it was the name that did it... Cash... It conjures up all kinds of suave mental images and it took me a while to get past it. (I find it really hard to understand why someone would name their child, or character, after money.) As a book lover, the idea of Lissa and Cash getting to know each other romantically between the stacks of books was... Rather good and I certainly appreciated the references to Atonement.The footballs vs soccer team feud seemed relatively harmless until someone is injured and forced to sit the season out, and this is what prompts Lissa to group the girlfriends together and make life collectively hard for the guys, forcing Randy to make some interesting life choices. I had several feelings about this, storyline mainly along the lines of them being too young in the first place for this in high school (but that might be me being conservative). I felt like this story would have been better off in a college new adult setting, it just seemed a bit much for YA fiction. Too much swearing, references to casual sex, assuming everyone is sexually active... I really liked how the truth came out in a series of slumber parties though, which ended credibility to the plot.In the end though, despite my feelings over the setting and predictability, I still gobbled this book up in a matter of hours. It was really well written, the characters drew me in, and I really cared how the story ended. I think there were good lessons about being truthful, considering how you really feel about becoming sexual, and the importance of communication. I just wouldn't want a younger reader, eager to read more of the very age-appropriate Kody Keplinger books The Duff and Lying Out Loud, to read this as it is far nearer the boarder line of YA and New Adult than the other books. I think Shut Out should have actually pushed into New Adult properly, switched setting and then it would be marvellously at home in the college years.

Not a bad book but not a good one either. Shut Out is an easy read but it doesn't really have a pull to it.The premise of the book is girls against boys... the girls have instigated a sex strike in order to get the boys to stop their rivalry. This had the potential to be a really good and really funny read but it just fell a bit flat.Overall an okay book to read to pass the time but I wouldn't recommend it or get too excited going in...

This is the story of American football vs. Soccer. Of boys vs. girls. Of getting some, and not getting any.And it is hilarious. The romance builds gradually, as per the teenage romance genre, but the character development is fabulous! A brilliant second novel by the DUFF author. A must read.

My daughter loves this book and trust me it takes a lot to get her to read and she did in 2 days, worth every penny would highly recommend.

Really light hearted and an easy read. Reading it in two days shows something. I loved it. The way Kody Keplinger told the story.