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popthebutterfly 's review for:
Lost Boy
by Rawiri James
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Disclaimer: I received this e-book from the author. Thanks! All opinions are my own.
Book: Lost Boy
Author: Rawiri James
Book Series: Standalone
Rating: 1/5
Diversity: Italian American/Indigenous MC, POC characters (nothing was very concrete about their race), Jewish side character
Recommended For...: (note: I can’t recommend this for younger than 18 readers because of the way the material in this book is written) paranormal, mystery
Publication Date: October 4, 2019
Genre: YA Paranormal Mystery
Recommended Age: 18+ (Sex, Cheating, Sexual content, Language, Disordered eating TW, Parental Death, Bulimia TW, purging shown TW, Underage alcohol consumption, Grief, Pressuring Sex, Religion, Alcoholism, Abelist comments, Drug use, Racism mentioned, Homophobia mentioned, Child abuse mentioned, Emotional abuse, Violence, Gore, Romance, Rape of a minor mentioned)
Explanation of CWs: Sex, pressuring for sex, and sexual content is shown and mentioned, including the talk about pornography. There is romance and cheating in the book. There is a lot of curse words in the book. Disordered eating is shown, fatphobia is in the book, bulimia is mentioned, and there is purging and excessive working out shown. Parent death and grief are shown. Underage alcohol consumption and drug use is shown in the book. Religion is briefly mentioned. Alcoholism is shown. There are some abelist comments in the book, including the R word being said, and there is racism and homophobia mentioned in the book. Child abuse is mentioned in the book. There is emotional abuse shown in the book as well as violence and gore. There is rape of a minor mentioned in the last bit of the book.
Publisher: Indie Published
Pages: 310
Synopsis: Overdue assignments.
Overbearing parents.
Overactive hormones.
Being sixteen sure does suck sometimes.
Yet Mike DeVelli Jr. knows he is destined for greatness. His mother always told him so - at least, until the unfortunate day an overdose took her to an early grave. As grief befalls the DeVelli house, Mike's father retreats to the liquor bottle, while Mike throws himself obsessively into exercise. All this, while avoiding the pitying gazes of the students at school whom he always struggled to fit in with.
It's not all bad, though. He has his best friend Joey, a loyal and quick-witted kid who's raging libido brings its own troubles; and he has Nicole, his girlfriend of nearly two years. Sweet, strong Nicole. She knows Mike even better than he knows himself. Lately, he's been acting different. Distant, weird, with an arrogance even his newly-formed six-pack doesn't warrant. Nicole has noticed. And she's not the only one.
Mike catches the eye of popular It Girl, Priya, at school. Flirtation spills over and they agree to meet, but she fails to show, and Mike feels rejected yet again. Priya is soon reported missing and Mike becomes a lead suspect in her disappearance. As the town of Flatbush searches desperately for Priya, the investigation mounts, with many residents under the magnifying glass of Inspector Peter McCall and Officer Espinoza. The evidence continues to point in Mike's direction and with the help of Nicole and Joey, the three teenagers decide their only option is to uncover the identity of the real culprit.
Getting closer to the truth, he learns that his seemingly ordinary family tree has supernatural roots, and as he comes face to face with a hungry, eveil enemy, he discovers a power inside himself that will create a wave of change in the world.
Touching on themes of addiction, loss and racial identity, Lost Boy is an engaging coming-of-age story, an entertaining superhero origin tale, and a suspenseful mystery thriller, all in one.
Review: Oh boy, this was… a book. I feel bad for this because the book had a lot of promise, but it fell flat for me. The positives? The character development was good. However, that’s the only thing that I felt was good about the book unfortunately. The book has a lot of promise, but there’s a lot of work to do on this book to make it good. The POV of the book keeps switching and it’s very disorienting to the reader. One second we are following Mike and then we are following his girlfriend Nicole and then we’re following some random guy in a completely different place that’s unconnected to Mike and then we’re back, but following a teacher. It’s so weird and it would be good for a TV show manuscript, but not for a book. The writing got weirder in the book with the weird and random flashbacks that would happen and the random interjections of different characters doing different things than what the plot was calling for. The powers and supernatural themes in this book didn’t come into play until the middle of the book and there was no build up to it nor was there any conclusion to it. It just kind of happened and then didn’t. I was also sad to see a lack of world building and I was confused by how some of the characters were written. This is definitely a more mature young adult book, but it feels like Mike is being written more mature than what is the norm in YA. I am very pro-sex positive in YA books and it should be normalized, but there’s a level of care that happens when you write YA books with the intention of young children as young as 13 reading them. I also am concerned that while there are POC characters in this book, the book doesn’t describe these characters until very far into the book or just off-handedly about 70% through it. I felt very confused by the writing of this book.
I also want to talk about what felt like a lack of research on police procedures with juveniles from what I saw as a former Juvenile Clerk. This is not indicative to all states, but how the two I’ve worked in have handled juveniles and how their laws were. The main character mentions that he is a sophomore in high school, but then is not treated as a juvenile when arrested. When a child is arrested by the police they should NEVER be questioning them without the presence of a parent, legal guardian, or legal aid especially after they say they wanted to speak to their attorney. All communication stops there about the case at all and they are kept waiting until an attorney is present. Children are also not kept in general population when arrested. They are taken to a juvenile detention center or to a special segment of a jail/prison where none of the adults can talk or touch them. Juveniles are also placed into correctional uniforms when booked in as well, not left with their clothes and just without their shoelaces, that’s sometimes a mental institution that does that. Juveniles also see a Judge within 24 hours on business days and on Monday by noon on weekends. Juvenile Judges also usually go into a juvenile detention center on holidays to make sure that the kids don’t spend holidays in detention centers. Within 24 hours, the next day by noon, our MC should have been in front of a Judge. The way that Mike was treated during these passages really feel like he was being written as an adult rather than a kid.
Finally, I had tremendous issue with the way that the mother was wrote. She’s fat at 350 pounds, which is fine because I myself am 300 pounds, but she is described in the most fatphobic way that I’ve ever read in my life. She’s described as lazy and unable to move because of the weight she has. She dies from “overeating” as described by a character later. The author even goes on to describe how some characters were concerned at the mother’s funeral because they were concerned about how to lift a 350 pound woman in her casket. I will say that, reading this on a treadmill actively doing cardio as apart of a book challenge I’m voluntarily participating in, I felt very insulted by these words. Even if I misread the weight that the mother was, I would still feel insulted because this is NOT how you talk about fat characters in books. The book doesn’t stop with the mother when it comes to fat shaming however. The book constantly talks about the food that Mike is eating or won’t eat. A part of the book is about Mike’s eating disorder and I’ve read books that have talked about eating disorders before. However, the way that the food is described is incredibly insensitive and given how the POV is written it feels like the author is fat shaming and impressing disordered thinking about food on young readers.
Overall, I’m just very confused and hurt by this book. I had an idea of what would happen in this book, but it was completely different and badly executed. I think there’s some promise of this book, but it will take a lot of work to fix it.
Verdict: Not for me, but maybe for you? Definitely needs work though.
Book: Lost Boy
Author: Rawiri James
Book Series: Standalone
Rating: 1/5
Diversity: Italian American/Indigenous MC, POC characters (nothing was very concrete about their race), Jewish side character
Recommended For...: (note: I can’t recommend this for younger than 18 readers because of the way the material in this book is written) paranormal, mystery
Publication Date: October 4, 2019
Genre: YA Paranormal Mystery
Recommended Age: 18+ (Sex, Cheating, Sexual content, Language, Disordered eating TW, Parental Death, Bulimia TW, purging shown TW, Underage alcohol consumption, Grief, Pressuring Sex, Religion, Alcoholism, Abelist comments, Drug use, Racism mentioned, Homophobia mentioned, Child abuse mentioned, Emotional abuse, Violence, Gore, Romance, Rape of a minor mentioned)
Explanation of CWs: Sex, pressuring for sex, and sexual content is shown and mentioned, including the talk about pornography. There is romance and cheating in the book. There is a lot of curse words in the book. Disordered eating is shown, fatphobia is in the book, bulimia is mentioned, and there is purging and excessive working out shown. Parent death and grief are shown. Underage alcohol consumption and drug use is shown in the book. Religion is briefly mentioned. Alcoholism is shown. There are some abelist comments in the book, including the R word being said, and there is racism and homophobia mentioned in the book. Child abuse is mentioned in the book. There is emotional abuse shown in the book as well as violence and gore. There is rape of a minor mentioned in the last bit of the book.
Publisher: Indie Published
Pages: 310
Synopsis: Overdue assignments.
Overbearing parents.
Overactive hormones.
Being sixteen sure does suck sometimes.
Yet Mike DeVelli Jr. knows he is destined for greatness. His mother always told him so - at least, until the unfortunate day an overdose took her to an early grave. As grief befalls the DeVelli house, Mike's father retreats to the liquor bottle, while Mike throws himself obsessively into exercise. All this, while avoiding the pitying gazes of the students at school whom he always struggled to fit in with.
It's not all bad, though. He has his best friend Joey, a loyal and quick-witted kid who's raging libido brings its own troubles; and he has Nicole, his girlfriend of nearly two years. Sweet, strong Nicole. She knows Mike even better than he knows himself. Lately, he's been acting different. Distant, weird, with an arrogance even his newly-formed six-pack doesn't warrant. Nicole has noticed. And she's not the only one.
Mike catches the eye of popular It Girl, Priya, at school. Flirtation spills over and they agree to meet, but she fails to show, and Mike feels rejected yet again. Priya is soon reported missing and Mike becomes a lead suspect in her disappearance. As the town of Flatbush searches desperately for Priya, the investigation mounts, with many residents under the magnifying glass of Inspector Peter McCall and Officer Espinoza. The evidence continues to point in Mike's direction and with the help of Nicole and Joey, the three teenagers decide their only option is to uncover the identity of the real culprit.
Getting closer to the truth, he learns that his seemingly ordinary family tree has supernatural roots, and as he comes face to face with a hungry, eveil enemy, he discovers a power inside himself that will create a wave of change in the world.
Touching on themes of addiction, loss and racial identity, Lost Boy is an engaging coming-of-age story, an entertaining superhero origin tale, and a suspenseful mystery thriller, all in one.
Review: Oh boy, this was… a book. I feel bad for this because the book had a lot of promise, but it fell flat for me. The positives? The character development was good. However, that’s the only thing that I felt was good about the book unfortunately. The book has a lot of promise, but there’s a lot of work to do on this book to make it good. The POV of the book keeps switching and it’s very disorienting to the reader. One second we are following Mike and then we are following his girlfriend Nicole and then we’re following some random guy in a completely different place that’s unconnected to Mike and then we’re back, but following a teacher. It’s so weird and it would be good for a TV show manuscript, but not for a book. The writing got weirder in the book with the weird and random flashbacks that would happen and the random interjections of different characters doing different things than what the plot was calling for. The powers and supernatural themes in this book didn’t come into play until the middle of the book and there was no build up to it nor was there any conclusion to it. It just kind of happened and then didn’t. I was also sad to see a lack of world building and I was confused by how some of the characters were written. This is definitely a more mature young adult book, but it feels like Mike is being written more mature than what is the norm in YA. I am very pro-sex positive in YA books and it should be normalized, but there’s a level of care that happens when you write YA books with the intention of young children as young as 13 reading them. I also am concerned that while there are POC characters in this book, the book doesn’t describe these characters until very far into the book or just off-handedly about 70% through it. I felt very confused by the writing of this book.
I also want to talk about what felt like a lack of research on police procedures with juveniles from what I saw as a former Juvenile Clerk. This is not indicative to all states, but how the two I’ve worked in have handled juveniles and how their laws were. The main character mentions that he is a sophomore in high school, but then is not treated as a juvenile when arrested. When a child is arrested by the police they should NEVER be questioning them without the presence of a parent, legal guardian, or legal aid especially after they say they wanted to speak to their attorney. All communication stops there about the case at all and they are kept waiting until an attorney is present. Children are also not kept in general population when arrested. They are taken to a juvenile detention center or to a special segment of a jail/prison where none of the adults can talk or touch them. Juveniles are also placed into correctional uniforms when booked in as well, not left with their clothes and just without their shoelaces, that’s sometimes a mental institution that does that. Juveniles also see a Judge within 24 hours on business days and on Monday by noon on weekends. Juvenile Judges also usually go into a juvenile detention center on holidays to make sure that the kids don’t spend holidays in detention centers. Within 24 hours, the next day by noon, our MC should have been in front of a Judge. The way that Mike was treated during these passages really feel like he was being written as an adult rather than a kid.
Finally, I had tremendous issue with the way that the mother was wrote. She’s fat at 350 pounds, which is fine because I myself am 300 pounds, but she is described in the most fatphobic way that I’ve ever read in my life. She’s described as lazy and unable to move because of the weight she has. She dies from “overeating” as described by a character later. The author even goes on to describe how some characters were concerned at the mother’s funeral because they were concerned about how to lift a 350 pound woman in her casket. I will say that, reading this on a treadmill actively doing cardio as apart of a book challenge I’m voluntarily participating in, I felt very insulted by these words. Even if I misread the weight that the mother was, I would still feel insulted because this is NOT how you talk about fat characters in books. The book doesn’t stop with the mother when it comes to fat shaming however. The book constantly talks about the food that Mike is eating or won’t eat. A part of the book is about Mike’s eating disorder and I’ve read books that have talked about eating disorders before. However, the way that the food is described is incredibly insensitive and given how the POV is written it feels like the author is fat shaming and impressing disordered thinking about food on young readers.
Overall, I’m just very confused and hurt by this book. I had an idea of what would happen in this book, but it was completely different and badly executed. I think there’s some promise of this book, but it will take a lot of work to fix it.
Verdict: Not for me, but maybe for you? Definitely needs work though.