Knock-Knock. Who’s there? A comedy book that lacks the punchline.

Sara Levine’s, “The Hitch” is about an insufferable aunt, Rose, who insists on taking care of her six year old nephew Nathan while his parents are going on trip to Mexico. During this week however, disaster strikes. While out in the park, Rose’s dog Walter attacks another dog, killing her. The dog’s soul then jumps for the body of the dog into Nathan. 

What was proposed as a comedy has readers rolling their eyes more often than laughing out loud. 

Rose is a middle aged woman who is described in the summary as a “insert summary here about ecowarrior.” However, she is completely oblivious to those around her. It is hard to tell if the author was aiming for satire or not because none of the characters juxtaposed her. Most of the characters were overdramatic stereotypes of their archetype that felt flat and quite frankly, underdeveloped. 

There are many books who are able to play with stereotypes and do it well, but there is no punchline for these characters. The only character that seems to have some semblance of likeability is Nathan and his father, but this is often overshadowed by the preachy rants that Rose goes on. From complaining about the vacation spot that Nathan’s parents go on to talking about which presidents own slaves, Rose is portrayed as self righteous. She even goes as far as judging her brother and his wife for how they are raising Nathan, yet completely messes up after just one week of babysitting. 

It’s not just the readers who find her insufferable though. The other characters in the book also find her absolutely frustrating. 

She is constantly messing up with her family, friends and coworkers, seemingly doing nothing right while thinking she is completely justified in what she says and does. 

While this may work in other books, that is usually because this character trope is a side character, has another character to balance them out or has a redemption arc. Without any of these elements, it feels needlessly exhausting listening to her. 

While she does have a half hearted attempt at realizing that she might be the issue, she never fully changed. Instead of showing growth in the character, the author tried to make the readers feel empathetic towards her by pointing out how lonely she was even though this loneliness stems from her stubbornness and inability to see her own flaws. This isn’t a wacky character that needs to find the right people to be around, she is a flawed person who needs to realize that she is pushing away everyone around her. She doesn’t even start to realize this until page 200 out of 289. 

She isn’t the only flaw though. 

Sara Levine makes all her characters these one dimensional people. Nathan’s father is the peace keeper who when he is around will go with anything anyone says. Nathan’s mother is over-bearing. Omar, her best friend, is the therapist’s friend, always blaming everything on trauma and obsessed with saying he is the listening ear. But they don’t go deeper than that. 

When Rose yelled at Omar and blamed him for the scuba diving accident, he showed up by her side completely fine, not even expecting an apology. There should have been some lingering tension or there should have been a deeper talk about how he was being treated. Instead the scene was short and the issue was chalked up to just Rose being Rose. That would work if it was a lighthearted jest that was a little rough, but that’s not what it was. She made a targeted remark even though she knew that it wasn’t true. She genuinely is a bad person and the fact that her best friend blew it off without even addressing the issues they clearly have is poor writing. 

Then there is the corgi. The book easily could have done well without the idea that a corgi possessed the little boy. Hazel, the dog, didn’t even play a real role in anything other than telling puns and knock-knock jokes and turning into the dog a few times. The dog had no real role in this book and merely complicated the plot further. 

If Rose was taking care of Nathan and realized through this week her flaws then striving to get better, it could have been a good book. The corgi was merely a pull to the book because people enjoy that dog. 

Levine is struggling to decide between a supernatural book and a slice-of-life family book, which did not play out in her favor. There is simply too much going on to make this book enjoyable, which is why the characters are underdeveloped and flat. 

This book also reads more like this happens, then this happens, then this happens. 

It’s not an actual story, it is a retelling of imaginary events. 

There is no point to the book. 

The reader does not learn anything from the characters nor is it funny enough to say it is for pure enjoyment. 

To be honest, the only part of the book that was funny was the bad corgi puns and even then, it was more pity laughing than the laugh-out-loud funny Levine was promising. 

Overall, this book is a waste of a good idea and not worth the read. 

This book is a 1/10.