Daniel Handler once again proves himself as a master of wordplay, which provides much humour throughout. The book is written from the perspective of Joseph, who becomes entangled with his girlfriend's family, whose dark secrets threaten to destroy them all.
Never one for literary conventions, Handler guides us through a melodramatic opera in the first half, and the stages of Joseph's attempted self-help in the latter half. Handler has cleverly shaped some sort of genius monstrosity with this book. It's not as stunningly perfect as the Lemony Snicket series, but equally as funny as The Basic Eight, with a good helping of the darkness that one comes to expect from Handler, and the carefully sculpted wordplay that makes this writer one of the very best.