Need a book about racism? Stuck in a rural town and finding yourself surrounded by skinheads? Are your parents LITERALLY the worst? Then this book is for you!

Mock Printz contender #1. Notes:

Spoiler

This book took a while to get into with all the connections and people having nicknames and whatnot, but eventually, as the pieces started coming together, it became a much more interesting book. I knew The Freak was dead pretty quickly. I was reading this while getting my tattoo (don't worry, it wasn't a racist tattoo!) done and I was like, "Oh, I think this character is dead. She just kicked a garbage can and her parents, downstairs, said 'I hear noises from up there all the time'." Definitely was getting ghost vibes from that.
In the author notes she mentions how the whole scene where The Shoveler sees the White Power tattoo on Mike's forearm was something that happened to her in real life. She said something like,"You can't strip search your friends so always be aware." And that's true. She also said in her acknowledgements, "I promised my teens in the last book to flip off all the awful adults in their life. My finger is getting tired, how do you put up with this crap?" This is a good quote to lead me into my final analysis of this book:
Adults do suck. You are not set in your ways. It's not your genes that define you. You are responsible for you, but that also means making sure you don't pass on the suck or let another person get away with being awful. We all have a duty to stop inhumane and racist behavior by not spreading it ourselves and not putting up with it in others.
Is this going to be a Mock Printz winner? I don't know. It's got a great setting of an awful, racist, whitewashed, rural town in Pennsylvania. The characters are totally it's driving point, but there may be too much for some readers to keep track of. It took me a little while. It has a very relevant and great message for today's teens. I believe it was pretty well researched and the author used much of her own life's experiences to make the story truly believable.