Review Detail

I went into this book with no expectations. I'd never read anything by Charles Benoit, and a contemporary book has to really be exceptional to keep me enthralled.

Mr. Benoit hit this one out of the park.

The characters are immensely relatable. I recognized pieces of my parents, my friends, and myself in all of them. The high school scenes felt like I was back in school. The tension between the parents, who just want to plan what's best for their son's future, and the son, who really wishes his parents would stop planning and start listening, is pitch perfect. The relationships between Sawyer (the main character) and his girl friend, Grace, and other teens feels absolutely authentic. Best of all, we get a teenage boy narrator who actually thinks like a teenage boy.

The writing is clean and spare and deceptively simple. A crisp, easy delivery of a story with hidden layers and complexities. Most of those complexities don't fully hit home for the reader until the final few pages. It's a sucker punch of HOLY COW, WHAT??? that leaves the reader reeling, in all the best ways.

This is a compelling, honest, somewhat disturbing novel that (back in the day when I used to teach high school English) I would teach in my classroom for the sheer joy of watcing others discover all the little gems hidden throughout the narrative. Loved it.