Basketball has always been an escape for Finley. He lives in gray, broken Bellmont, a town ruled by the Irish Mob, drugs, violence, and racially charged rivalries. At home, he takes care of his disabled grandfather, and at school he’s called “White Rabbit”, the only white kid on the varsity basketball team. He’s always dreamed of getting out somehow with his girlfriend, Erin. But until then, when he puts on his number 21, everything seems to make sense.
Russ has just moved to the neighborhood. A former teen basketball phenom from a privileged home, his life has been turned upside down by tragedy. Cut off from everyone he knows, he now answers only to the name Boy21—his former jersey number—and has an unusual obsession with outer space.
As their final year of high school brings these two boys together, “Boy21” may turn out to be the answer they both need.
REVIEW
Recently, I was lucky enough to read Boy21 by Matthew Quick and I loved it. This book is set to be released on the 19th June and I recieved it via headline and bookbridgr so thank you very much. This book follows Finley, who doesn’t live a perfect life. His home life and his past aren’t the best and he lives in a terrible neighbourhood. But he keeps going because of his girlfriend Erin and his love for basketball. Then a guy called Russ arrives in his life and he’s a bit strange. He answers only to Boy21 and he claims to be from outer space. Russ is also one of the best high-school basketball players in the country and could easily take Finley’s place on the team. However against the odds, Russ and Finley become friends and they help each other out when dealing with their pasts and their futures. I honestly really loved this book as a whole and I really recommend it.
This is the second Matthew Quick novel I’ve read, the first being Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock (click here to read my review of it) and I absolutely love his writing. Matthew Quick deals with a lot of big issues in his novels and even though they are dark and intense subjects, he still makes you laugh a lot. His writing makes you want to keep reading, which hardly happens for me when it comes to contemporary novels. I really want to read his other books now and there is a chance he could make it on to my list of favourite authors.
Finley was a great main character. He had issues yet I loved that about him. He never annoyed me or irritated me. I understood all of his decisions and I really sympathized with him. Russ was also a great character. He was odd and unusual and I didn’t understand him at first but as we got to know more about him, I really did care for him a lot. Their friendship was absolutely beautiful and reminded me a lot of Sam and Davey’s friendship in Cloud Busting by Malorie Blackman, which was my favourite book when I was younger. I also really loved most of the secondary characters including Erin, Coach and Wes.
I loved the whole Harry Potter book club thing that Wes, Russ and Finley started. They mentioned Harry Potter in the second half of the novel to compare their lives and I loved that. When they talked about escaping, they said that they were going to Hogwarts. Hogwarts had always been some what of an escape for me and I loved that a lot.
As I said earlier, Matthew Quick touches on a lot of dark subjects and issues in this book but I won’t tell you what they are because it’s best to not know what they are. Even though they were dark subjects, I still felt myself laughing and smiling throughout the book which is a unique thing that Matthew Quick can do. I honestly recommend this book to everyone as well as Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock because the writing is superb. This book is a solid 4.5 stars for me and the only thing that stopped me from giving it 5 stars was the ending. I really did love the ending, but I wanted more! I wanted to know what happens afterwards! This is a definitely a book that you should all be going out and buying on the 19th June because its fabulous. I’m going to leave you with one of my favourite quotes from this book because I don’t know why but this quote really stuck out for me:
“You don’t always get to pick the role you’e going to play in life, but it’s good to play whatever role you got the best way you can.”
Thanks for reading and definitely go get this book as soon as possible.
- Sofia.
(fifisofa.wordpress.com)
- Sofia.
(fifisofa.wordpress.com)
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