A good book about a high school basketball season at St Anthony in Jersey City. The ups and downs of inner city school with a coach who is old school but still wins his way. ( )

I have a hard time rating this book because I hated it for a good majority of the time. Hurley reminds me of my worst teachers who always told me and my class we would always amount to nothing -- and I'm kind of like Lamar (from the book) ... I take what someone tells me to heart so I always believed we would never amount to nothing and I have always despised the teachers that have told us that. But Hurley sees it the other way around -- if you take what Hurley tells you about yourself to heart, that you're a failure and then you actually become a failure ... to him you're just proving his point, that you're a failure. He doesn't see it as he being the failure in actually affecting this kid positively. Hurley's an asshole and throughout the book I wished one of his students would have beat his face in.

And then the last chapter of the book or the last couple of pages of the book it actually gets good, which is why I don't know how to rate it ... was it fair? Was it good? Was it very good? Through the whole book I would have said fair as I would never had read this book again. But at the end I would have said very good because I would take it with me on a deserted island ... so does that make it good?

Adrianne ( )