Scambait,  Ryan R. Campgell

Genre: Contemporary Fiction / Humor

Length: 75,000 words

Date published: 4/18/2022

Publisher: Cedarbrook Books

Editor: Scott Birrenkott 

Reviewed by: Michelle Caffrey, http://www.michellecaffrey.com/

Humor Me

Fast-paced and laugh out loud witty, Campbell entertains the reader with a protagonist I won’t soon forget. I’m a sucker for an anti-hero who takes on the world, while realizing his life is in shambles and looks to be heading downward.

 Eric Amundsen, an amateur vigilante, is hell-bent on avenging his grandmother, the victim of an online scam that resulted in her spending the remainder of her life in a Wisconsin nursing home instead of the idyllic warmth of Arizona. At her demise, his financial inheritance lost to scammers, he gets only her St. Bernard, Boulder, who suffers from massive gastrointestinal issues. As life throws one obstacle after another at Amundsen, including a supposedly dead father, he responds with sarcasm, self-deprecating humor, cleverness, and finally courage and conviction.

I highly recommend this book—it’s engaging enough to be difficult to put down. You might, however, want to read Scambait alone to avoid the quizzical glances of others as you chuckle aloud. 

Reviewer: Michelle Caffrey is the author of Just Imagine: A New Life on an Old Boat, and Bring Jade Home: The True Story of a Dog Lost in Yellowstone. Her latest picture book, Jade - Lost in Yellowstone received the Creative Children's 2020 Book of the Year award. She lives in Lake Geneva with her husband Paul.