Voice of Youth Advocates
( August 01, 2005 ; 0-399-24332-1 )

Travis is a high school junior when his already frustrating life takes a turn for the worse. In denial, his parents keep his older brother's room a shrine after Richie's suicide. When Travis tries to enter the room, his father becomes intensely angry, and Travis responds by running out and throwing rocks at random, damaging the windshield of tough football player P.J., for which P.J. demands compensation. In the midst of it all, Travis believes that a new classmate, Daniel, has become a friend. This friendship, however, is a deadly one. Daniel is an expert on lying, stealing, and manipulating people. He zeroes in on Travis' weaknesses and insecurities, playing a sick game that turns Travis against his two real friends, causes him to alienate the girl he likes, convinces him to keep a list of people who need to be shot, and teaches him to shoot a gun. The stress and trauma build as Travis and the odd inner voice that plagues him buckle under the influences of Daniel's demented schemes, until Travis reaches a breaking point and uses a gun to kill his parents before going on a rampage at school. As in Walter Dean Myers's Shooter (Amistad/ HarperCollins, 2004/VOYA June 2004), this story reveals the first-person downslide of a mentally and emotionally needy teenager while integrating the points of view of others via interviews. It is an unnerving depiction beyond common definitions of peer pressure. The psychological undermining of Travis and the book's chilling conclusion are heartbreaking, just like the all too frequent real events in the news.-Diane Tuccillo. The relatively static characters here leave the reader aching for development in the worst way. Travis is not a particularly sympathetic main character, and the author seems to lack motivation in developing his human side. This book is slightly redeemed by a thoroughly disgusting antagonist in Daniel, but other than that, it lacks parity with such books as Todd Strasser's Give a Boy a Gun and Walter Dean Myers's Shooter. 3Q 2P -Luke Lambert, Teen Reviewer.