e-Audio, 10:08:56
Narrated by: Guy Lockard & Kim Johnson
Release Date: April 25, 2023
Published by: Random House Books for Young Readers
Read from: June 14-16, 2023
Stand-alone
Source: PRH App
TW: Wrongful incarceration, pandemic, medical talk, death of a grandparent, suicide, domestic abuse, murder, racism
For Readers Interested In: Thriller, Mystery, Racial/Ethnic Diversity, Family Diversity, Romance, Realistic Fiction, Contemporary, YAFrom the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of This Is My America comes another thriller about a wrongly accused teen desperate to recclaim both his innocence and his first love.
Life can change in an instant.
When you’re wrongfully accused of a crime.
When a virus shuts everything down.
When the girl you love moves on.
Andre Jackson is determined to reclaim his identity. But returning from juvie doesn’t feel like coming home. His Portland, Oregon, neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying, and COVID-19 shuts down school before he can return. And Andre’s suspicions about his arrest for a crime he didn’t commit even taint his friendships. It’s as if his whole life has been erased.
The one thing Andre is counting on is his relationship with the Whitaker kids—especially his longtime crush, Sierra. But Sierra’s brother Eric is missing, and the facts don’t add up as their adoptive parents fight to keep up the act that their racially diverse family is picture-perfect. If Andre can find Eric, he just might uncover the truth about his own arrest. But in a world where power is held by a few and Andre is nearly invisible, searching for the truth is a dangerous game.
*MY THOUGHTS*
This book made me so glad I am so backed up with reviews because I had no idea what I was going to rate this. I have not been so stressed about a book as I was with this one. Just having the knowledge we have about it now and not seeing all of that happening in the book had be stressed like a mofo. I almost DNFed. It was a lot of pain in this book and I don’t think I was quite ready for it. But of course, Johnson pulled all that out of me, you know where I’m going with this rating lol
Ok so if you’re triggered by medical content or the pandemic, this isn’t the book for you. This is set at the start of COVID when we don’t know hardly anything about the disease, before the mask mandates, before the shut downs, all that. It was at the time when everyone was still thinking it was ok because it was just a bad flu. Y’all I don’t think I’ve ever cringed so hard at a book before. Every time someone said they felt sick but they were still out and about. When they were still hanging out in the same room and touching things that others had touched while one of them was sick, I had to put the book down at times. I couldn’t take it. It was so triggering reading that and knowing what we know about it now. And Lord knows I was scared to death for his grandparents. Ugh I was effing stressed.
Even with all that, this book was actually a mystery. The mystery was the what happened to his friend. Andre has just got back from juvie, serving time for something that he said he didn’t do. He’s left with an ankle monitor being monitored by a guard that thinks he’s so cool and no idea where the friend who might have sent him there currently is. From there things start coming to light and it’s obvious that something’s not right. This is what made me take something from this tho. This book didn’t have to be 400+ pages. The whole COVID plot seemed to be the thing that was taking the reader away from this mystery. I understand that it was there, but I don’t think it needed to be as big as it was if that makes sense. I would have liked it more if it was less that and more about the mystery.
At the time when we were finding more out about COVID we were also watching the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and seeing the Black Lives Matter movement grow. This also makes an appearance in the book. It doesn’t have a huge part in the story like COVID, but it does play a key role in the end. I don’t want to throw any spoilers, but it is there and makes this story and time frame authentic.
The one thing that was keeping Dre going was the kids from across the street. Sierra is the one he falls for, but he has to watch her fall for someone else. He blames him going over there all the time on looking for her brother, who he believes is the best friend who framed him for the things he was doing. But as things start to get uncovered, he realizes things are so much more dire in that house than all of them were letting on. And let me just tell you, I was not ready for all the bombs that were dropped from there. Trust me, you won’t be either.
This book had SO MUCH going on, but it was so good. I really liked certain aspects of it, but other times not so much. I was so into this that I stayed up reading it until like 2 everyday. It was a lot to take in and I found myself rewinding and stressed out, but I was still hella into it. Kim Johnson is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
Overall, I give this
