Keir Sarafian knows many things about himself. He is a talented football player, a loyal friend, a devoted son and brother. Most of all, he is a good guy.
And yet the love of his life thinks otherwise. Gigi says Keir has done something awful. Something unforgivable.
Keir doesn’t understand. He loves Gigi. He would never do anything to hurt her. So Keir carefully recounts the events leading up to that one fateful night, in order to uncover the truth. Clearly, there has been a mistake.
But what has happened is, indeed, something inexcusable.
My final book from Molly Horan’s list of 15 Young Adult Books Every Adult Should Read was Inexcusable by Chris Lynch.
I did things a little different while reading this book. Instead of just reading it and writing a review after I kept a tab of my thoughts while reading the book. Below is what my thoughts were.
Thoughts:
• Oh man, is the main character going to be like Lenny from Of Mice and Men?
• Is he supposed to come off slightly special?
• Where is this book set? The dad sounds slightly Irish and the kids names (Keir, Mary, and Fran) are for sure Irish.
• Oh look another parallel to Of Mice and Men, Didn’t mean to cripple that kid just like Lenny didn’t mean to hurt the cats.
• Why is he calling his dad Ray? Who does that?
• This kid is supposed to be in high school, how is he drinking beer in a restaurant?
• Oh good the boy is drunk with his father and they drove around town. Now the book is talking about his hangover and not remembering playing Risk the night before. This is not a great example for young adults.
• Halfway through and its boring me. Where is the plot?
• Oh good now the football team is doing drugs, and pressuring the main character to do them too.
• They might be in Canada, is Norfolk in Canada? That could be how he can drink and explain the language.
• I finished the book. Still don’t know where the setting was.
• The ending sucked. Very unsatisfying.
• I thought they might shoot Keir at the end like Of Mice and Men.
As you can tell I didn’t really like this book. Some of it made no sense and I still don’t know where the story took place. I thought the topic was interesting, you don’t hear about rape from the victim as to try to prove his innocence. I hated that the story felt unresolved. Like what happened to Keir? That was never addressed, as was the problem that disconnected the family to begin with. I hated Keir. I felt like he was supposed to be this loveable dumb jock kind of person, and I didn’t find that very relatable.
Oh, and don’t get me started on the drug and alcohol use in the book. Ugh. I am fine with portraying teens as drinking, because I know they do. But let’s show some consequences to the actions, and how the drugs and alcohol affect your judgment. If someone took the amount of drugs as Keir did in this book they would be comatose and not walking around. Overall, it’s a short read, but really worth the effort.
1 Bard.
Moving! 