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Summary
Summary
This wasn't the way it was supposed to go.
You're just a typical fifteen-year-old sophomore, an average guy named Kyle Chase. This can't be happening to you. But then, how do you explain all the blood? How do you explain how you got here in the first place?
There had to have been signs, had to have been some clues it was coming. Did you miss them, or ignore them? Maybe if you can figure out where it all went wrong, you can still make it right. Or is it already too late? Think fast, Kyle. Time's running out. How did this happen?
You is the riveting story of fifteen-year-old Kyle and the small choices he does and doesn't make that lead to his own destruction.
In his stunning young-adult debut, Charles Benoit mixes riveting tension with an insightful--and unsettling--portrait of an ordinary teen in a tale that is taut, powerful, and shattering.
Advance praise for You:
"You is authentic, ambitious, and gripping. A serious book that reads like a suspense novel, the story it tells--of the ways in which we become imprisoned by our own choices, big and small--is both frightening and frighteningly real."
--Lauren Oliver, New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall
"Charles Benoit has written a shattering, gut-wrenching novel that puts You right in the center of the story. Pick it up and you won't put it down!"
--Michael Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Gone
"I sat down to start this book--and didn't get up until I'd finished it, a riveting three hours later. You is pitch-perfect: funny, real, touching, brimming with tension and foreboding--and still surprising right up to the last page. one of the best ya novels I've read in years."
--Patricia McCormick, National Book Award finalist, author of Sold and Purple Heart
"A sandstorm of a novel, as harshly real as hell or high school. I loved it."
--Robert Lipsyte, Margaret A. Edwards Award-winning author of The Contender and Center Field
"Wanna know who the real bad guys in your school are? Read You. This book will keep you reading, and then it will start you thinking. And talking. You is good stuff."
--Chris Crutcher, Margaret A. Edwards Award-winning author of Deadline
Author Notes
Charles Benoit taught high school social studies in the Rochester City School District and at international schools in Kuwait and Trinidad and Tobago. He currently works in advertising and writes books for young adults and adults. His young adult novels include Fall from Grace, You, and Cold Calls. His novels for adults include Relative Danger, Out of Order, and Noble Lies.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-Charles Benoit's debut young adult novel (HarperTeen 2010) is told in the second person, hence the title. Listeners meet 15-year-old Kyle Chase, a smart, angry, bored slacker who is a member of his high school's "hoodies" group. The teenager is trying to find his way through a crush on a girl, his mother's constant questioning of what he is doing with his life, and the attention of some school bullies and Zack, the new kid in school whose daring escapades turn into something much more dangerous. Through David Baker's deep vocal patterns and deliberate pacing tinged with appropriate levels of judgmental undertones, listeners become Kyle Chase, once promising student and now frustrated and slightly apologetic slacker. The crafting that Benoit does to make Kyle seem at once sympathetic and infuriating is skillfully and convincingly conveyed in Baker's powerful performance that takes listeners through each decision (and indecision) that Kyle makes to bring him to an unforgettable impasse with his final choice to act on behalf of the girl he loves. This edgy, disturbing novel drives home the reality that each choice you make or do not make leads to real consequences that can be life changing.-Stephanie A. Squicciarini, Fairport Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A sense of doom pervades this gripping YA debut from adult mystery writer Benoit, made all the more devastating by an empathetic main character. Second-person omniscient narration invites readers into Kyle's grim story: "Welcome to the official start of tenth grade. Welcome to the last year of your life." Previous bad choices have landed him at Midlands High, and as one of the school's burnout "Hoodies" (so-named for their requisite hooded sweatshirts), Kyle finds his world increasingly circumscribed. "Every day you get up, go to school, fake your way through your classes, come home, get hounded about your homework... and the next day you get to do it all over again." Bright but unmotivated, Kyle is easily swept into newcomer Zach's sinister orbit, as the wealthy and psychologically brutal Zach defends, charms, and then seeks to destroy him. Kyle's internal thought processes (frequent lists, parental nagging, one-sided conversations) convey a conflicting swirl of emotions-rage, distrust, betrayal, empathy, and love-while an overarching defeatism prevents him from acting on constructive impulses. Disturbing content blends with skillful, fast-paced writing, adding a thriller spin to the novel's vicious realism. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Although written as prose, this portrait of a high school "hoodie" seems that unlikely thing, a verse novel for boys, capturing the emotions, both torpid and turbulent, of adolescence in brief, charged paragraphs. Tenth-grader Kyle, addressed as "you" throughout the book, is one of those slouching, go-along kids, not a delinquent but not really much of anything else, either. He's always on the verge of flunking out, he won't get a part-time job, he won't ask out the girl he likes, Ashley. "Every day you get up, go to school, fake your way through your classes, come home, get hounded about your homework...go to bed-and the next day you get to do it all over again." But school becomes a bit more interesting with the arrival of Zack, kicked out of private school for reasons "you" won't fully understand until the last chapter. But in the meantime, Zack seems to want friendship, even helping Kyle out (with diabolical genius) when the school jocks decide he needs a lesson. The blackboard jungle evoked here is somewhat generic, and the second-person narration sometimes seems didactically shaped to diagram what goes on in the heads of the boys who sit at the back of the room. But the voice is consistent and convincing, and Kyle's awakening conscience, however thwarted by events, makes for a story not all that far from the Shakespeare plays his English teacher doesn't think he understands. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Peanuts comic strip than parents. The novel's disturbing, ambiguous conclusion will provoke discussions about choices, right/wrong and responsibility. Harrowing. (Fiction. 12 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Fifteen-year-old Kyle is a member of the hoodies. So named for their ubiquitous hooded sweatshirts, they are the slackers/burnouts/freaks common to every high school. In fact, Kyle would be the first to admit his commonness he gets picked on by bullies, he serves detention, he pines after a girl. The deadness he feels is impinged upon by the arrival of Zack, a private-academy transfer who wears sports coats, quotes philosophers, laughs at Shakespeare, and seems to have every student and teacher in the palm of his hand. Zack takes on Kyle as a sort of project, but his swank parties and daring escapades soon turn to deeds far darker. Benoit's stylistic gamble here is the use of the second person you, the reader, are Kyle. The gimmickry of it quickly fades; in fact, the reader identification helps fill in the gaps of an otherwise watery protagonist. Zack is a theatrical, Iago-like villain, and he makes a great foil to Kyle's antihero in their twisted relationship. This is a brutal, fast, and satisfying read.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist