Author: Jeff Zentner
Genre: realistic fiction
Similar books: The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost Kiss by Amy Noelle Parks
Paper Towns by John Green
Rating:
Summary (provided by publisher): Life in a small Appalachian town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to an opioid addiction and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. Dodging drug dealers and watching out for his best friend, Delaney, is second nature. He's been spending his summer mowing lawns while she works at Dairy Queen.
But when Delaney manages to secure both of them full rides to an elite prep school in Connecticut, Cash will have to grapple with his need to protect and love Delaney, and his love for the grandparents who saved him and the town he would have to leave behind.
My opinion: At face value, this is a pretty simple story. Perhaps even predicable. For me, this does not matter. There's something about Zentner's writing style that makes me forgiving of apparent simplicity. For one thing, the characters are complex. Much of the page space is devoted not to events but to reflections. To Cash contemplating his history and his future. It's relative poverty and limited opportunities come face to face with privilege. We meet characters dealing with different prejudices and limitations. All together we have a plot that feels fairly inevitable and because the characters are realistic and nuanced we go along with them to that inevitable conclusion.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley
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