This dude is a great storyteller!

Boy 21
by Matthew Quick



 While I'm waiting for Rainbow Rowell to come out with another knock-me-down YA masterpiece, I'll content myself with reading everything ever written by Matthew Quick.  I loved Sorta Like A Rock Star and so I went looking for Every Exquisite Thing but it appeared to have been checked out and instead I found this.

I can't explain why I became so involved in this tale of a boy who plays basketball because, he imagines, after the death of his mother, his Dad told him to go outside and shoot baskets.  And he just never stopped.

Now he's the point guard on the high school basketball team and he keeps out of trouble, but there are things under the surface, scary things, not to be spoken about. The Irish gangs and the black ones stay always present in the background, but he stays safe and protected, mysteriously, by his girlfriend's brother, Rod--the most unpredictable and violent Irishman ever to live in Bemmont.

Then the coach asks him to befriend a transfer student, Boy 21, a former basketball star who has dropped out of life after the death of his parents.  And by then you're (if you're me) sucked in and can't put it down until the end.