All the Dirty Parts

OK so I know Daniel Handler can be a #problematic fave but I have really loved a lot of his books and I think he is a great writer who overall has good intentions but just like.....makes some big missteps sometimes...

So I picked this up even though I was a little wary of the premise. And now I have some questions...

like

who is this FOR though?

it's written from the POV of a v horny teenage boy and the whole story is set in high school, which basically seems YA, but it's marketed/shelved as an adult book, but then it's like...uncomfortable as an adult lady to be reading really explicitly about a teen boy's masturbatory and sex habits.

there's kind of a twist....or something...where the narrator ~gets comeuppance~ when
a) he abandons his “not gay but we jerk each other off” best friend for a horny new girl
b) the new girl uses him and moves on
c) the “not gay” friend gets a boyfriend (props to the book for actually having that character come out as bi while the narrator refuses to)

like...I get that we're not supposed to find the narrator's actions to be good, and I can totally be on board with exploring the world through the eyes of a narrator who's kind of a shitty person (and I think Daniel Handler has done this so well with like The Basic Eight for example), but with this the whole time I was just like... why

it reminded me more of Diary of an Oxygen Thief than I'm comfortable with :(

I still think he's a great writer and on the sentence level there were still some beautiful sentences in here but on the whole.....

why

who is this for

is it for horny teenage boys who seek it out of the adult fiction section?? I guess??