The Lie

January 26, 2009
This new novel from Average American Male
author and YouTube icon Kultgen continues his testosterone-fueled fiction with this unapologetically sleazy campus romp. College freshman Kyle is more innocent and bookish than his best friend and BMOC Brett, whose endless appetite for women mirrors his bottomless bank account, and the scheming, promiscuous Heather, whom Kyle falls for, not realizing that Heather is only using him to get to Brett. Told in alternating points of view, the unsurprising plot follows them through four years and eventually revolves around the lie that Brett and Kyle concoct to teach Heather a lesson. Kultgen has a fluid narrative style and is an excellent mimic of college kid speech patterns (perhaps too well—“like” has never been so, like, overused); he can sling bawdy humor and the banal details of daily life, though his chops are less refined when he focuses above the waistline. Readers who got a kick out of Kultgen’s first book will get a bang out of this.