Date Published: September 6, 2011
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Description:
Mickey Bolitar's year can't get much worse. After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools.
A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving - until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn't who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey's father. Soon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury - and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.
First introduced to readers in Harlan Coben's latest adult novel, Live Wire, Mickey Bolitar is as quick-witted and clever as his uncle Myron, and eager to go to any length to save the people he cares about. With this new series, Coben introduces an entirely new generation of fans to the masterful plotting and wry humor that have made him an award-winning, internationally bestselling, and beloved author.
Review:
I will start of by making a number of confessions: 1) I tossed this book on top of my library stack at the last minute (after having spent quite some time wrangling my three year old away from the puzzles and forcing my seven year old to narrow his book pile down to something he could actually carry himself) - which is to say, I didn't read the book description and so knew nothing about it but that I thought the cover interesting. 2) I have never before read anything by Harlan Coben, therefore naturally know nothing about his Myron Bolitar series. 3) Had I known that Harlan Coben writes bestselling adult thrillers, I would not have come NEAR this book. After the condescending, lazy tripe being offered to the YA market by other adult-gone-ya authors (James Patterson's Maximum Ride series and John Grisham's Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer both immediately come to mind), I'd have to have some pretty compelling reasons to purposely give another such book a shot. (Or do so by accident. Ahem.)
Shelter and I just didn't mesh for so very many reasons. I would like to say that it was just not a book for me - that I came into it expecting not to like it so didn't - but I just don't think that is the case. There are so many things going on in Shelter that it is hard to sort it all out. Coben seems to have some 'life lessons' he feels need to be learned, and some Important History to tell, oh, and also a plot line or two that don't necessarily have to have anything to do with each other or anything else and defied plausibility at every turn. I will try to sort out some of what was going on, and my reactions.
I am all about letting teens read about the real world. I think it is important that kids know what is going on around them, what life may be like for people unlike themselves. But there is a matter of perspective and voice - two things that were often on my mind while reading Shelter. I am sorry, but there is no way I buy Mickey as a fifteen year old teen. Mikey never reads as fifteen, but rather, what a grown man may have wished he was at fifteen. It isn't a matter of intelligence or maturity, it is so far beyond that. Mickey is strong - really, really strong. And amazing at martial arts. And really tall. And super hot - but really nice and kind, too. He is romantically interested in two different super hot girls - but only because they are also super nice. He's really smart and wise. He's the absolute best at basketball, but so humble that he doesn't need to tell everyone at his own school. And so magnanimous and open minded, too. I mean, he befriends fat kids and geeks and plays basketball with black kids! Isn't he so wonderful? I know I am laying the sarcasm on pretty thick there, but 6 pages in and Mikey had already ticked me off. He's that guy that thinks it's okay to make racist jokes because he's 'got black friends' - like that somehow makes it all okay. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:
"Another girl in my group, an incoming freshman dressed all in black, was on the fat side. I know I should call her something other than fat, something more politically correct, but I'm not sure what without sounding condescending. Large? Chubby? Heavy? I say that without judgement, the same way I might say small, bony, or skinny." (p 6)
He should have risked 'condescending', maybe then he would have avoided 'like a jerk'.
"A kid who would definitely fit into the geek camp came up to me with a tray in his hand. His pant cuffs were set at flood level. His sneakers were pure white with no logo. He pushed up his Harry Potter glasses and lifted his tray in my direction." (p 17)
Mikey goes on to basically ignore everything this 'geek' says, and doesn't even bother to learn his name, calling him Spoon for the rest of the book, because that is the first thing the kid talked to him about.
"The well-to-do grassy environs of Kasselton were only seven miles from the gritty streets of Newark, but the two cities seemed to be from different planets. I'm told that Newark is on the mend and while I see pockets of it, I mostly see the old decay. Poverty is still prevalent, but I go where the best basketball is and while you could talk prejudice or racial profiling, I'm still one of the very few white guys down here after school." (p 89)
Never mind that the main kid he plays with is well-off, with an awesome and involved dad who has a great job. Let's just pretend all African Americans live in poverty but rock at basketball compared to their well off white counterparts (Mikey excepted, of course.) It is in this way that three of what will be the four most helpful 'friends' Mikey has are introduced. For someone who is supposedly so nonjudgmental, he spends a lot of time labeling his friends. Would that entire tangent about the political correctness of adjectives even have been used it as thin girl had walked up? I think not; and it is disingenuous to say that it was not judgmental. Most of the characters were quintessential stereotypes: the jocks were jerks, Mikey's 'nerdy' friends naturally were whizzes at computers, technology, and obscure historical and literary references. Mikey's (and, for that matter his Uncle Myron's) primary competitor at sports is blindly a douche, purely out of jealousy, of course! The strippers, and every one else who worked at the club were nasty and stupid. His junky mom falls off the bandwagon the first chance she gets. The bad guys were evil through and through with no obvious motivation. The 'good guys' act morally superior while practicing a revoltingly snobbish form of vigilantism.
I think the thing that bothered me the most about all of this is the way in which it is employed. There are (very good) examples in the book of how I am wrong about each and every one of the things I have said. The Abeona Society base their vigilantism on the actions of a (fictional) holocaust survivor. But there is a nuance here that Coben is missing - what is acceptable in the lawlessness of a genocidal war, and what is acceptable when there are legal means in place are very different. In the end, the Abeona's are still murderers themselves. But Coben calls on the Holocaust to protect their actions from scrutiny. The Holocaust should NEVER be reduced to a plot device. There is one redeemable stripper; so it is okay that all the rest aren't. One of the cheerleaders turns up nice; so it is okay that everyone else who is 'popular' is cruel and deserving of contempt. To revive my former analogy, there is always the one black friend used to excuse the racist joke. And it just ticks me off.
Even with all these problems, there were times when I truly found the book to be an enjoyable read. Coben really is a good writer. But here is where we come back to perspective - had the main character of this story been an adult rather than a teen, some of it would have been more believable. I could then buy him having spent enough years to become deadly at martial arts or a enough experience to slip in and out of the seedy underworld of human trafficking mostly unscathed. Or how Mikey could have acquired the skills and experience necessary to attract the interest of a secret vigilante justice society. I appreciate that Coben doesn't condescend to his YA audience, I just don't think he ever provided a truly YA hero. I may still try some of Coben's adult novels, but I think this is it for his YA.
Borrowed from my Local Library
Review also on Goodreads