Hero
by Perry Moore
The story was "eh." The gore was far too detailed but also far too casual---the gruesome and unnecessary descriptions were almost totally emotionless. The writing was surprisingly bad---a motheaten plot, extremely poor pacing, and stuff that was just plain confusing.
Example: Thom has been secretly coming to scope out the gay bar's parking lot "hundreds" of times. One night he goes to his usual surveillance spot. A sentence later, he states that he's going in now. (No emotional development? Why now, after a hundred visits?) A sentence after that, he decides he's not going in because it isn't "his scene" and mentions that the 'direction of his feet echoed his thoughts.' This made me honestly wonder if my copy was missing a page where he goes (or at least looks) inside and physically turns his body away from the door. Just... what?
There are lots of half-addressed issues of racism. The ones that are addressed are awesome, because you don't see that enough in teen books; but the ones that aren't... aren't. I half suspected Golden Boy was going to turn out to be mixed race, but I was really hoping I was wrong. Golden Boy?? Seriously???
I'm surprised I didn't hate this book---I just ended up being very underwhelmed. I'm a bit confused by the good reviews.