Dodgers by Bill Beverly

I can tell you why people like this book, but it wasn't mine to like. Here is what I liked ...

1. The initial setting was intriguing.

"The row of houses sat blind behind plywood doors and windows - just a few at first, then more. Then two out of three. This was the Boxes."

2. I enjoyed the choppy writing style - short sentences that got to the point. (Hemingway-esque?)

"Behind him lay his brother, a video game squeaking under his thumbs. Uninterested. East tried to remember the last time he'd seen Ty. Maybe last summer. A couple months at least."

At the beginning, I really enjoyed the plot along with the choppy writing style. Then, I hit the van ride, and it was like taking a long road trip (which seemed incongruous to the writing style).

"East liked driving here - the flat, unruffled fields with no one in sight, blind stubble mown down into splinters, maybe a tractor, maybe an irrigation rig like a long line of silver stitches across the fabric of the earth." This is where (87 pages in) I felt like a long road trip watching fields of corn pass.

Things happened on the road trip (that moved the plot along), but I stopped caring. And, I felt very little connection to the main characters. I wanted a stronger more developed main character, and at the very end, I am not even sure that character had been developed enough for me to think it was a "coming of age story". There are people in my life that are going to love this story. It just wasn't for me.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.