Voice of Youth Advocates

Opening with a blank-verse poem that wrenches the reader immediately into high school junior Jayson's overwhelming world of parental abuse, poverty, and depression, award-winning Adoff (son of Virginia Hamilton and Arnold Adoff) delivers fully and with a surprising-but credible-upbeat denouement. Jayson recounts, often in the present tense and usually in blank verse, a summer during which his mother continues to beat him, his best friend dies horribly, he falls in love and loses the girl, and he tries to commit suicide. In quick, minimalist strokes, Adoff paints Jayson's public housing home, tense bus rides with posturing street thugs, the posh private school he attends on scholarship, the mind-numbing job he holds at a car dealership, and eventually his treatment-both physical and emotional-at the hospital. Boys will find this book to be true and gripping, but it also needs to be read by others, including youth librarians looking for insight as well as excellent writing. It is a natural for discussion groups, but its powerful authenticity needs no intermediary to speak directly to the Jaysons of our time and their friends.-Francisca Goldsmith.

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-Jayson Porter, 16, spends his days as a struggling scholarship student at a prep school in a wealthy Florida suburb, and the rest of his time at home in the projects avoiding his abusive white alcoholic mother, checking in on his wasted-on-crack black father, and smoking dope with his friend Trax. Jayson knows how to survive in "the hood," but the mounting pressures of his mother's beatings, his challenges at school, and his menial job build until he sees suicide as his only escape. The idea of jumping from the 18th-floor breezeway outside his apartment door entices him. Trax is killed in a meth-lab explosion, and then Jayson's father lets slip that he and Lizzie aren't really his parents, but stole him from their friend Trina when all were drug addicts living together. It's the last straw, and Jayson jumps, but only from the seventh floor. He survives but with a broken neck, narrowly missing serious paralysis, and facing months of surgery, therapy, and rehabilitation. Jayson's first-person narration throbs with the pain of his life, revealing the frightened teen behind the cocky exterior. Adoff writes candidly, with carefully chosen details carrying a wealth of insight, in a style approaching free verse that draws out the complexities of Jayson's character as he deals with sexuality, self-esteem, and identity. The ending is a bit too tidy, but Jayson is a vivid, dynamic character who will get under readers' skin.-Joyce Adams Burner, Hillcrest Library, Prairie Village, KS Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

Horn Book

Jayson's mom beats the crap out of him, and his dad is too strung out to care. It's only Jayson's buddy, Trax, and his girlfriend, April, who keep the sixteen-year-old from leaping off the rail of the breezeway outside his high-rise apartment. Adoff's free-verse narrative is brutal and beautiful, intense and honest, and ultimately uplifting, as Jayson climbs out of the abyss.

Kirkus Reviews

Abuse coupled with the death of a friend drives a teen over the edge and toward a new life. Jayson Porter wonders why he doesn't stand up to the constant abuse of his alcoholic mother. Unfortunately, Bandon, Fla., has few options for an interracial 16-year-old whose skills include avoiding neighborhood thugs, cleaning motor-homes and failing classes. After an unsuccessful suicidal leap lands him in traction, Jayson begins to confront both his inner turmoil and his kidnappers. Adoff's narrative blends verse styling with short chapters, accurately reflecting Jayson's conflicted personality and disjointed home life. Though tragically flawed, the characters are ultimately underdeveloped; Jessie's alcoholism only partly explains her abuse and raises questions as to the authenticity of her anger toward Jayson. Adoff's portrayal of the weakened Jayson and ultimate reunion with Trina creates a saccharine feeling in the second half of the book, which is incongruous with the pervasive despair in the first half. As Jayson comes back to life, readers can't help but wish the turnaround had been more realistic. (Fiction. YA)

Starred Review ALA Booklist (Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2008)

Starred Review Jayson Porter's life is miserable. His relationship with his alcoholic mother wavers between abuse and neglect, his father is a downwardly spiraling crack addict, and he literally has to dodge bullets in the projects just to stay alive long enough to escape in the only way he sees possible. He daydreams about throwing himself off his building, and when he finally does, he has a split-second realization on the way to oblivion that no matter how grim, life is too precious to abandon hope. Miraculously, he is given a second chance at life. Adoff, whose verse-novel Jimi & Me won a 2006 Coretta Scott King Award, captures the inner-city voice of drug-strangled poverty from Jayson's point of view, in stark prose that crumbles into haunting blank verse, effectively using both white and black space to convey Jayson's anguished mentality as he crawls ever closer to the edge. This forceful story will appeal to the many readers, some in despair, who will find Jayson a character they can cling to. It's a hard book to read, and even harder to put down.