January 31, 2014

Reality Boy - A.S. King

Title: Reality Boy

Author: AS King
Pages: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

From goodreads.comGerald Faust knows exactly when he started feeling angry: the day his mother invited a reality television crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he’s still haunted by his rage-filled youth—which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle—and his anger issues have resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education room at school.
Nothing is ever going to change. No one cares that he’s tried to learn to control himself, and the girl he likes has no idea who he really is. Everyone’s just waiting for him to snap…and he’s starting to feel dangerously close to doing just that.



My first A.S. King and I LOVED IT.  I was a little nervous at first because I knew it was magical realism (and I've never read magical realism before,) but it worked so perfectly here that it didn't even seem weird.

You really carve a place out in your heart for Gerald.  He's been done so wrong by everything: his parents, his sister, his experiences.  You can't help but want things to get better for him.  I loved that Hannah wasn't a magical cure for everything in Gerald's life.  It gets messy and he wants things to go slow because he's been burned by pretty much everyone he's ever encountered.  Also that her family is far from perfect and she has issues of her own.  This book is really a portrait of imperfect people and families who are doing what they think is best to survive.  It turns out that their best isn't working.  All the slow reveals have perfect timing.  I can't wait to read more from A.S. King!


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