You by Charles Benoit YP FIC BENOIT

You are just an average 15 year old guy named Kyle Chase. You run with the kids everyone calls losers and people say You make all the wrong decisions. Maybe they’re right because there is a lot of blood and You aren’t sure when exactly everything went wrong. Was it when You started running with the Hoodies? When You met the new kid Zach who keeps pushing You to take bigger risks? Was it what happened with Ashley? Decide fast because time is running out to figure out where You went wrong.

You makes the rather risky decision to tell the story in the second person. The reader is the ‘You’ of the story which ends up really drawing you in. Kyle is really talking just to himself, but by saying ‘you’ he is distancing himself from the horrible act the book ends with. It really works to build the tension and suspense. Kyle is a pretty normal kid, so it makes the ending very jarring. It shows how little mistakes always lead to larger ones and if we lose track of who we are then we run the risk of losing everything. This is a tough, raw, gritty book that will likely leave you stunned.

Center Field by Robert Lipsyte YP FIC LIPSYTE

Mike Semak knows his Junior year is going to be his time to shine. He’s dating Lori, one of the prettiest girls in school (the other being her twin Tori), he’s the top choice for center field, and is respected by the whole school. Everything changes when a new kid from the Dominican Republic joins the team and takes Mike’s shot at center field. Mike’s frustrations lead him to lash out at an unpopular student. This gets him community service working with the Cyber Club where he learns his coach isn’t the man he thought he was. Now his coach wants him to be a spy against the club and Mike isn’t sure if he can, especially since he has developed feelings for a strange and troubled girl in the club. As his life on and off the field becomes more and more complicated Mike has to decide what kind of team player he wants to be.

This book is (forgive me but I truly cannot help myself) a home run (again, sorry)! The baseball scenes are exciting and so is the off field action. I picked this up because its baseball time and I was looking for a good baseball book, but this is just a great read all around. The central conflict between Mike and his coach gets very tense and had me racing through the last chapters. Mike’s character changes a lot through the book, but he’s not a boring boy scout. He’s a great example of the dangers of wanting to win for winnings sake. But it’s really the adults that have caused all the problems that Mike and his friends are grappling with. This is really a story about the abuse of authority and what harm it can cause even on a small scale, so it really fits well with the world we live in. A great read for baseball fans or people that like good drama.

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit Volume 1 by Motoro Mase YP FIC MASE

“Congratulations! You have been randomly selected by the government…to die in 24 hours!” In the near future, Japan has come up with a solution to apathy: randomly killing one citizen every day by a time released poison administered in grade school. Everyone knows they could die at any moment so they work hard to live full and productive lives. When Fujimoto starts his new job delivering the ikigami or death notices he starts to question if all these deaths can really be for the greater good.

This is a chilling and dark look at how a government or society can control our fates. The idea of a nation so devoted to productivity that it murders its own citizens is a great allegory for the excesses of a consumer society. The even bigger hook is the idea that every victim is notified 24 hours before they die. “What would you do if you had just one day left to live?” is an old question, but Ikigami looks at in a very fresh way. I can’t wait for more books to see how the different people react and if Fujimoto will defy the system. The art is done in a cool realistic style and adds to the overall creepiness of the story. I think Death Note fans will especially like this one.