3 stars – it was okay
I received a free copy of this book while attending the Rotary Book Fair one year and it’s been on my shelf ever since. This year, I figured I’d give it a go.
Read: March 2 – March 4, 2024
Genre: Sports, Hockey
Audience: Children, Middle Grade
Book contains: non-graphic description of a broken leg, near death experience by drowning, underage drinking, underage smoking
Unavailable for Purchase
Twelve-year-old Tristan Demarchier has just moved to a new town with his mother, and despite his love for hockey, he’s made no friends whatsoever, not even with the well-known group of pre-teen hockey players in town, the Pond Boys. Only after a tragic accident that puts their goalie out of commission do they tentatively allow Tristan to join their games, and he must adjust to the new position, or be outcast once more.
As a reader, writer, and editor, I wasn’t too sure bout this book. I couldn’t really tell it was a sports book until I read the back, and once I read it, it seemed all over the place. As a writer I always aim to make every scene cohesive with the ongoing plot, but a lot of the scenes in this book didn’t fit in well with the others; they all seemed thrown in without any impact on the bigger picture. Though Sports isn’t a genre I’ve read – ever – I still found the scenes of the boys skating and playing hockey to be enjoyable.
It took me until Monday to read this book, because I was vending at a show and didn’t have too much time for reading. I read it the old fashioned way as there isn’t an available audiobook.
This was a short book, less than 200 pages, and included hand-drawn images by Richard Brodeur, who was consulted about this book and also features in it as a character at the end. It’s told in limited third person perspective in the past tense, though the book starts in first person present as Tristan, the main character, is having a dream.
The characters themselves were decent. I found Tristan to be a relatable child character. He’s just starting out in a new town, trying to find friends, and he’s being bullied for things out of his control. Though he does eventually find friends in Luc and the other Pond Boys and in Celine, I was still somewhat indifferent to him as a character. I didn’t feel a drive to see him do well, which I usually gauge as the makings of a good main character.
The reason for Tristan and his mom moving to the new town is the death of Tristan’s father. It’s unclear whether this was a recent death, and while there are moments in which Tristan laments his father’s death, it didn’t feel like he was struggling much with the fact. He doesn’t have many friends at first aside from Celine, who is a girl in his mother’s dance classes who has taken to following him around. Eventually, after becoming a member of the team of preteen hockey players, we see Tristan come more out of his shell.
One scene that didn’t make much sense to me at all, from both a writing standpoint and an editing standpoint was after the boys play a match against a team of players from out of town and they decide to celebrate with a sleepover. The sleepover itself was fine, but the boys decide to drink beer and smoke, and it threw me for a loop because the boys are only twelve. I have no doubt this scene could’ve made a real impact on the story, but from how it was written, it just seemed to happen with no real consequence except an amused talking-to by an adult and a few hangovers.
I’m sorry to say that I found the overall quality of the writing to be not all that good. While the action sequences were well-written, the scenes weren’t very cohesive, and I had trouble identifying the plot structure. The editing was also quite poor, as I found dozens of different mistakes within the text, from punctuation to spelling to grammar. The design of the book was also middle-of-the-road, in my opinion.
There were some instances where the pacing was quite fast, sometimes so fast that it was hard to understand what was going on, and other times when the pacing was so slow as to drag on and leave me bored.
I’m not really sure who I’d recommend this book to. It was an okay read, but I could just as easily have not read it and been perfectly happy. The inclusion of underage drinking and smoking may be a turnoff for most parents who might otherwise read it to their kids to inspire them to continue striving for their goals.
Tigerpetal Press is a small book press dedicated to publishing local authors and poets.