Now, let's go kill someone, shall we?

I can't remember when I first heard about The Intern's Handbook. It's about an assassins-for-hire business that hides their hit men as intern's because "interns are invisible," not important enough for people to take note of but they tend to get access to important places and people. The story is about star hit man John Lago talking about his "last big job" writing down his story for future employees of the company.

I like the idea of it, but overall this didn't work. But like Zombie, Inc. it doesn't really live up to a cross-section of office satire mixed with ridiculous action. (Book world, WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LET ME HAVE THAT?)

John makes a big deal about how it's important for interns to not stand out and then he IMMEDIATELY makes himself stand out because OMG he's the best you guys. And then it shifts to just being a ridiculous action story, which could be OK if done well and if it didn't come off as the type of thing that would be popular with the MRA crowd, if only for lines like this:

If you are a guy, you have to embrace all things that go against your nature: thoughtfulness, sentimentality, caring, listening, and purchasing expensive gifts. If you are a girl, you have to embrace all things that come naturally to you: emotional cannibalism, psychological manipulation, and insatiable greed. Back to animals. Men = confused and desperate for pussy. Women = powerful because they have the pussy. The quest for love is shockingly similar to tracking a kill.

Don't worry, it does have a female character. A Strong Female Character^TM who is "not like other women".

The story itself is nothing special. It's every action story you've ever seen/read. This could have been taken in a different direction, something that I think could have made it more interesting. So I guess, instead of telling you more about the actual book (cos eh) let me tell you what I wish happened.

John goes into how he go this job and we find out he was in foster care and had the typical Tragic Home Life^TM. We also know that this is John writing down his story. SO WHAT IF this is actually John, a scared kid in a foster home, writing what he wishes could happen and he could be, which is why things are ridiculous and he is the super smooth, best-of-the-bunch all the time. You get hints of this because John writes about how awesome he is all the time, but then also talks about how his team has to come up in and clean up after him or how he gets most of his information and ideas from Alice (aka Strong Female Character^TM).

I would even accept that John actually does work for this company but is himself an intern for them. And not a super cool assassin-intern. An actual intern. Which could explain why he knows SO MUCH about coffee and goes on about it for awhile.

Anyway, no, this book was not my thing. If you couldn't tell.

Gif rating:

P.S.: This is minor, but since at this point I was annoyed at the book, it stuck out. So either the author messed up and at one point says this airport is in Long Island but then later forgets that and says it's in New Jersey. OR the author thinks Long Island is in New Jersey. Possibly mixing up Long Island and Long Beach Island. The point is, someone should have caught that or else this plays into my "John is making shit up" in which case, error would have been accepted.

Title quote from page 33, location 507

Kuhn, Shane. The Intern's Handbook. Simon & Schuster, 2014. Kindle.