Dungeon Crawler Carl

I honestly wasn't sure what I was getting myself into with Dungeon Crawler Carl. This is definitely not my normal type of book, and I'm not much of a gamer, so I was a little worried all the game stuff was going to lose me. Somehow, it didn't.

The whole thing is completely ridiculous—in the best way. The world basically ends, Carl gets thrown into this insane underground dungeon, and his sidekick is Princess Donut, his ex-girlfriend's spoiled show cat. And honestly, Donut stole the book for me. She's dramatic, bossy, full of herself, and absolutely hilarious.

There were definitely moments where the stats, upgrades, and game mechanics got to be a little much for me, but I eventually stopped worrying about understanding every little thing and just went with it. Once I did, I had a lot more fun.

What surprised me most was that underneath all the craziness, violence, monsters, and dark humor, there's actually a pretty good story. It's funny, weird, sometimes gross, and completely over the top, but there are also moments that are a lot darker than I expected.

This is one of those books where I kept thinking, What the hell am I reading? while continuing to read because I needed to know what happened next.

Definitely outside my usual reading comfort zone, but Carl and Princess Donut won me over. I'm curious enough to keep going with the series—and honestly, I mostly need more Donut.