Vigilante Nights

What I Loved:

The premise of VIGILANTE NIGHTS is absolutely fascinating. It's part contemporary urban street gang, part ghost story, part haunting journey from grief to hope. I loved the juxtaposition of a rich, privileged boy running a gang on the streets because his grief and rage drove him to do things he wouldn't have ordinarily done.

The action from about halfway into the book is intense, and plot twists abound. Readers who hang on through the slower first half will be entertained.

The ending is hopeful, something a book with this much darkness needed. I appreciated that the author led her characters (and her readers) to redemption in the end.

The setting, a small coastal town in California, was often portrayed with lovely imagery. I could hear the eucalyptus leaves in the breeze and smell the salt air. It was enjoyable to feel solidly connected to the landscape that served as a backdrop to the story.

What Left Me Wanting More:

The pacing felt off to me and made it difficult to become fully immersed in the story until nearly the halfway mark. So much of Lucas's character depends on us taking his word on what he was like before, but without a chapter or two of normalcy to help cement his relationships, his pranking, and his interactions with his social structure, it was hard to care about his grief and the changes that loss wrought in his life. The author also hurries past chunks of time, skimming the surface of Lucas's emotional journey, and then quickly gives us his decisions as if we should be on board with them. Without walking through his slowly evolving thought process on loss, and eventually on revenge, it was hard to keep up. I felt like I had whiplash trying to keep up with Lucas's sudden declarations and actions, especially when he seemed to contradict himself or when the motivation remained murky for the reader.

I also had difficulty with Lucas himself. For one, the teens in this book don't sound like the teens I have under my roof or like any of their friends. There were phrases like "hella" and "take a powder" that went out of style before I graduated from high school. Lucas also approaches his male friends with macho arrogance, and denigrates any emotion inside himself (other than rage) as wussy and female. He mentions that he should just take estrogen pills and get his transformation into a woman over with and similar phrases when he feels sad or in love. He's especially hard on himself when he cries. I might feel differently about this if his character arc had included him learning to accept that boys feel emotions and then finding a constructive way to deal with them. I would hesitate to recommend this book to teen boys because they get enough "men shouldn't feel" messages as it is, and that's a shame, because I think this premise would certainly draw male readers.

Final Verdict:

A promising premise and an action-packed second half should appeal to readers who enjoy urban thrillers with a hint of supernatural and who don't mind a main character who can be difficult to cheer for.