XL by Scott Brown - OPTIONAL

XL by Scott Brown, 310 pages. Alfred A. Knopf (Random House), 2019. $16.

Language: R (282 swears, 13 “f”); Mature Content: PG-13; Violence: PG-13

BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

Will is 15, going on 16, and still stands under five feet tall. This vertical challenge is hard on any guy, but especially on a basketball-loving and shorter-than-his-crush guy. Then -- miracle! -- Will starts growing with no sign of slowing. Everything is changing. That’s a good thing, right?

I wasn’t a huge fan of Will’s story (no pun intended). While I appreciated the difficulty I had in predicting what would happen, I also felt a separation from the story; I didn’t relate, and I wasn’t engaged. Readers could learn a couple lessons from this book, like how the grass isn’t greener on the other side or how everyone has issues to deal with, but maybe you should just take my word for it and read something else. Overall, Brown’s story was well written but not fun to read. The mature content rating is for underage drinking, alcoholism, mentions of masturbation and rape, partial nudity, sex between animals, and sex between people. The violence rating is for blood, mentions of suicide, and death.

Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen