Dear reader, before we begin my review, let me first explain to you how this book came into my life. I was browsing libro.fm's independent bookstore day sale (shout out to a real one) and saw this on the list of sale books. I looked at the cover, saw the tagline The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs, and went "huh, seems cool, I've been interested in reading niche nonfiction about random topics, let's do this one." I did not, in fact, realize what the point of this book was. (Foreshadowing because I do not think this book realizes the point of itself either).

All that said, I sat down to read this book a captive audience with a very long train ride to sit and listen while I watch the scenery. Partway through the book, I wondered "who tf wrote this" and that is how I learned that this is not niche nonfiction to learn about a topic, but rather a book by a comedian. Which, in hindsight, makes a lot of sense.

So. How did I feel after having the wrong expectations and adjusting my view of what this should be? Still confused. This book can't decide if it wants to be a food blogger travelogue, trivia history of hot dogs, commentary on capitalism and class, or a weird diary of how Loftus and her boyfriend broke up over a long road trip. I think that it's reasonable to combine all of these into one book, maybe minus the weird diary part, I just don't think that Loftus is the author to do it.

We start out fairly solidly, with some history of hot dogs and getting us to the present day, looking at how it made its way to the US and how hot dogs are made. Then, we jump into road trip and "Hot Dog Summer." If the book had kept going along the path we started out on, I would have enjoyed it more. It was a bit all over the place, but felt like it had direction and a story to tell.

Once we got beyond the beginning, I often felt whiplash from jumping from detailed hot dog descriptions to the sociopolitical issues surrounding the food/vendor/area to cramming in a bunch of history tangents. There wasn't a smooth segue between these subjects and it was particularly noticeable when Loftus would recount a horrific fact, then jump to a non sequitur, travel tidbits, history factoid, her boyfriend, whatever. I started taking notes at the end, but one example is how she described a white hot dog entrepreneur loving the hot dogs prepared by a nice Hispanic lady, who the community literally drove by and kicked dirt from their cars onto her (hence his mom coining the hot dogs "dirt dogs," which is how his business got its name), and then just ripping off what she'd done and getting famous for it. No time for processing this, we just speed right on into descriptions of the food and the declaration that they're delicious.

Loftus often does acknowledge and make clear her feelings about many of the sociopolitical issues that are intertwined with the history and current present of hot dogs. But it feels perfunctory, like she know it'll look bad if she doesn't frown obviously, so you know she's not like that.

Maybe it's that I wasn't expecting a travelogue, but this just didn't quite hit the mark for me. The humor was very hit and miss, but that's quite subjective and if you already like Loftus's work (this was my first intro to her), then you likely have a good idea of whether or not that works for you. That said, we get 2 stars because it was humorous just often enough, it made the hours on the train pass by, and the beginning was interesting enough.

2.75 🌟

The premise had a lot of potential, a publicity romance stunt becoming more truth than fiction but unfortunately the chemistry failed. A good 200 pages could have been edited out making this story more contained because despite the length of the novel, the characters lacked depth.  A few moments of laughter but sparks did not fly.