Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Jude by Kate Morgenroth


Stars: 5


Summary From Goodreads:

"Listen, you're young. We don't send kids to jail. If you had something to do with this, it's better to tell us. Then we can help you. Maybe it was a friend of yours come to take care of things for you. You've got a nasty bruise there, and your neighbors told us that you tend to get a lot of bruises. We take those things into account, you know. We understand about things like that."



"You don't understand anything," Jude said.

After Jude watches his drug-dealer father get gunned down at the kitchen table, he's taken from their dangerous neighborhood to a comfortable home, an elite private school, and a mother he doesn't remember. Only fifteen, Jude is under suspicion for his father's murder, but to save his own life, he can't tell the police what he knows.

To make things worse, Jude's mother is the district attorney. She can protect him from the police — but when Jude's classmate overdoses on heroin, Jude is implicated, and his mother decides to prosecute. Jude is determined to clear his name, though he doesn't know that mysteries from his past have yet to be revealed — secrets that will forever alter the course of his life.

Jude's gripping story is at once moving and horrifying as it traces a young man's quest for acceptance and his incredible capacity for hope and resilience. Kate Morgenroth, whose adult novels have been called "nearly impossible to put down" by Time Out New York and "compulsively readable" by Entertainment Weekly, here shows more of her considerable talent.



Review:

Wowowowowow. I literally finished the book a few minutes ago.


I knew I was going to love Jude by Kate Morgenroth by the end of the first paragraph. And I did. At the beginning of the book Jude's world was black and white. His father beat him. What was he supposed to do about it? Jude sucked at school. Not like actually studying would help. Jude makes a promise to his father's killer that he would never tell. Jude never breaks a promise. That was the promise that changed his life.


The plot was so woven. Whenever I thought the twists were good and twisted as they could ever be, some thing else came. Something bigger, worthy of a "hung open jaw"(or what you wish to call a reaction to a completely stunning curveball). I thought I knew many characters well in this book, but more then once I ended up being proved wrong again and again.

I would recommend it to EVERYONE. Although especially reluctant guy readers. The book is like a freaking flycatcher for guys. Just in school, like five guy asked to look at the back. Okay... maybe it was because of the handcuffs on the cover. They seemed interested even after they read the synopsis. I’m going to take that as a good sign.


Run to your bookstores, my pretties. Run. With great speed.

3 comments:

  1. Ooooh. I agree. I loved this book, and try to get boys to read it all the time. Sometimes they think it's "too long" that's the only problem. But if I can get them to read it, they always like it.

    Thanks!

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  2. I was looking for a book to read aloud to get my class, a little ten minute read to settle them down and prepare for class. They always want more than the one chapter per class. They are enjoying it, looking forward to it and I hope realizing that reading is for enjoyment not just education. We do writing activities like predictions, summaries, "what surprised you most" and I am reading over and over from their assignmetns how much they are enjoying the book.

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