At the start of his senior year, Joe Brickman expects to be the star of his high-school soccer team and to finally work up the courage to ask out his neighbor, Kristine. Things don't turn out as expected, however, when Antonio Silva, a transfer student from Brazil, turns up and takes over the starring role on the team and starts dating Kristine. Although the basic plot elements would seem to be the stuff of standard teenage romance, Klass adds strong doses of realism and grittiness by setting the novel in a tough and often violent northern New Jersey high school with a complex social code that adults fail to understand. As the school year progresses, Joe matures and begins to find a direction for his life. Klass conveys this process subtly through the multiple plot threads and the well-handled first-person narration. A winning novel with many elements that will ring true for older readers.

Klass excells with a funny, likable hero caught in an agonzing situation. Joe, captain of the soccer team, is able to handle himself in a fight, but he's a bit backward in the romance department. Antonio, a soccer "Phenom" about to turn the high school's losing soccer season around, is also an arrogant s.o.b., who steals Joe's would-be girlfriend. Readers will be rooting for Joe to pull through, which he does, time and again.

While better written and more psychologically complex than most sports fiction, this compelling offering still follows a standard sports plot: the main character feels threatened by a new, outstanding player on his team. Joe Brickman, a senior at a suburban high school, is captain of his mediocre soccer team and its best player. When Antonio, a Brazilian pro, transfers to Joe's high school and takes up with Kris, the girl Joe likes but hasn't pursued, Joe's life takes a nose-dive. The team starts winning but Antonio gets all the praise, while Kris acts silly and snobbish due to her new relationship. Meanwhile, other students including Joe's closest friend are dealing on a daily basis with vicious bullying, mainly from football players. As narrator, Joe sounds modest but in fact he's unusually physically fit, good with people, and likable, although almost unbelievably tactless when dealing with Kris. He's so clearly courageous that his modesty appears exaggerated, saying things like, "The best way to face danger is to meet it head-on," as he goes to confront the school's most dangerous bully. Soccer fans will enjoy the sports action, while other readers will find the setting convincing and the story engaging. It's too bad that the females are so weak: Kris is passive and gullible; Joe's mother deserted her husband and son years earlier; and Joe's father's new girlfriend carelessly betrays a confidence. While it lacks the brilliance and humor of Klass's You Don't Know Me ( 2001), overall this is a solid school and sports story that will find a ready audience. (Fiction. 12+)

Klass (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">You Don't Know Me) throws a lot at his protagonist, Joe, a suburban New Jersey high school senior who is captain of his school's losing soccer team, the Braves. While Joe is sympathetic, the unclear trajectory of the narrative and predictable outcomes will likely discourage readers. "The Phenom," a Brazilian soccer player, transfers in, becomes the star of Joe's team and wins over Kris, Joe's longtime crush, and Joe is understandably upset. After the Phenom injures a football player in a fight, tensions spark between the "hard [i.e., muscular] guys," football players mostly bused in from Bankside, and the soccer team (and eventually between Bankside and local kids), but Joe plays by teen rules, keeping silent to authorities even after bullies beat up his best friend, Ed the Mouse. Heightened security at school and the next attack on the Mouse, compounded by a falling out with Kris, add to Joe's mounting stress. In the end, he must decide whether to fight hard guy Slade, a decision presented as pivotal to shaping his future. The story unfolds very slowly, and the Phenom's role in the book is surprisingly marginal; it's easy to lose track of him occasionally amid Joe's other crises. Some of the plotting, like Joe's unlikely interview for an educational boating expedition, steers this story off course, and even the Phenom's dark secret seems lackluster. Ages 12-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Oct.)

Gr 9 Up-Suburban New Jersey's Lawndale High School is plagued with old rivalries, cliques, bullies, and systems that fail to address these problems. Joe Brickman, captain of the soccer and wrestling teams, is trying to find the courage to ask Kristine, his best friend since childhood, out on a date. When a Brazilian soccer star arrives as a transfer student, upsetting the peer-imposed social mores, Joe develops the strength and maturity to handle much more than that. The football thugs loom over Lawndale, requiring marked students to bow their heads when the players pass through the halls. Antonio, totally self-assured and able to defend himself one-on-one, scoffs at the system. When Joe tries to explain how things work, the newcomer is rude and condescending. Joe's nerdy buddy "Mouse" is also marked by the jocks and refuses to play the game. When violence erupts, the administration responds with a zero-tolerance policy. Intervention comes in the form of bars on windows, metal detectors, video monitors, and police in the halls. At a town meeting, parents point fingers, blaming the old issue of busing in students from the wrong side of the tracks, and a near-riot ensues. Antonio sweeps Kristine off her feet; Joe's father hits on every pretty woman in town; Kris's cruel comments force Joe to examine his future prospects; and an inevitable confrontation between him and the bullies' ringleader are just a few of the strands in this multilayered story. Klass's characters are, for the most part, believable teens searching for answers to complex societal and individual issues.-Joanne K. Cecere, Monroe-Woodbury High School, Central Valley, NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.