Crash and Monster: two brief reviews

Since I finished two books at the same time (one on Kindle and one on audiobook), I'm just going to write their reviews in the same post.

taken from goodreads.com

I picked this audiobook up from the library because Jerry Spinelli is a big deal and I thought I'd probably heard of the book before. I'd somehow only ever read Spinelli's Stargirl, and although I didn't hate it, I also didn't necessarily love it. Crash, though, I really loved. A lot. It was a really cute book, and the fact that the person reading the audiobook was incredible. Loved it.

Crash is your typical middle school bully/star of the football team. Pen is your typical middle school nerd/free spirit/star male on the cheerleading team. Crash makes it his life mission to make Pen's life miserable for years, but Pen's spunky, carefree attitude simply cannot be broken.

This book reminded me a little bit of a middle school version of something Laurie Halse Anderson would write. Reading a book from the perspective of a bully was really uncomfortable at times, but it also made a huge impact. I loved the characters, loved the dialogue, loved the little plot twists, and loved the heartwarming lessons learned. Plus, it's a very short book. I knocked out the audiobook in a day. That's always nice.

taken from goodreads.com

In contrast to the low expectations I went into Crash with, I went into Monster with super high expectations. Also in contrast to how much I loved Crash, I did not love Monster. It had been on my radar for years and I always thought it looked like such a crazy plot that I would love getting into. When it came time to read it though...eh. It wasn't. It wasn't a very crazy plot and I didn't love it. In fact, it was hard to get into at all.

Steve Harmon is a 16-year-old boy on trial for his involvement in an armed robbery that also resulted in the murder of the shop owner. He and two other boys were supposedly working together, and are all on trial. The book follows Steve through the trial, both in and out of the courtroom.

I love law and order-type shows and I think the ones that focus on younger people are especially interesting. Since the book is called Monster, I thought that this was going to be about a deeply troubled young man who had done some unthinkably awful things that have landed him on trial. I expected to be wowed by the horror of it all as I followed his trial through his eyes. This isn't at all what the book is about, though. It's also not the opposite of that, which would be a book about an innocent boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time because he has some of the wrong friends and is now just thrown into the system without thought because he's black and from the projects. That book would have also been an interesting read. It wasn't either of those things, though; it was a book about a boy who did in fact grow up in a loving family on the poorer side of town who definitely seems to be innocent but never actually explains what his involvement/lack of involvement was in the robbery, who does question how on earth he got into this mess but also calls himself a monster and wonders if everyone knows something about himself that he doesn't know.

This was really confusing, to be honest. I'm reading a book from this kid's own perspective, and I don't even know if he did it or not. I don't even know if he was minimally involved or if he was plucked off the street and put on trial despite the fact that he was nowhere near the store at the time of the robbery. I have a hard time with books like that, that don't just say what they mean and mean what they say. He certainly seems innocent based on how scared and confused he is by everything that's happening around him, but why on earth is he calling himself a monster and questioning himself so deeply? Why would anyone question their own moral standing if they knew they were innocent? I get that he's a kid, but...still. I would have been fine reading a social commentary on the injustices of life for black teenage boys, and I would have been fine reading a shocking and grim look inside the mind of a teenage sociopath, but this wishy washy, weird middle ground was boring and hard to get excited about.

Also, fun fact: it's written in the style of a movie screenplay, because Steve is interested in making films and is using his time in jail and at trial to document everything for a movie. Interesting approach...super sucked to read. Following stage directions and screenplay shorthand required much more effort than I wanted to give, and since I didn't know it was going to be written that way it kind of annoyed me.