Trouble Review

I just finished Trouble by Gary Schmidt and very much enjoyed it. It was a pretty quick read, but I loved the plot. A 14-year-old boy’s brother is hit by a car and killed. The driver of this truck happens to be a Cambodian, and not accepted into the snooty society of Massachusetts. When the boy and the Cambodian are thrown together, Trouble is sure to follow. The plot of this book moves are a good pace, it seems to me. It doesn’t spend too much time dwelling in one part (although I thought I was going to have a heart attack before they finished the crew regatta!) and it didn’t go too quickly either. In the ending, it seemed like everything was resolved really quickly, and I would have like a little more time spent developing the ending. I would recommend this book to any middle-schooler or early high-schooler. It’s pretty easy to comprehend, but the themes are a little dark. Overall, Trouble is a classic “journey” story.