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A review by theresidentbookworm
Barely Missing Everything by Matt Mendez
3.0
I love RivetedLit's 25 Days of Free Reads in December. I look forward to it every year because it gives me the chance to read some YA I haven't heard of or otherwise wouldn't have read. Barely Missing Everything wasn't on my TBR, and so I'm glad I got the chance to read it.
Barely Missing Everything is very much in the vein of Jason Reynold's All American Boys. It centers around three characters: Juan, a teenage Mexican-American basketball player, his best friend and budding filmmaker J.D., and Juan's mom, Fabi, who had him at sixteen. The novel bounces between these three characters. I always enjoying multiple points of view, and I like that Barely Missing Everything gives equal time and space to Fabi. Usually, YA novels don't spend much time with the parents, but I liked that Fabi was included. Her characterization, her fears and dreams and thoughts, both make the novel more nuance and help inform Juan's character as well.
Mendez is a master of characterization. I felt like Juan, J.D., and Fabi were all nuanced and complicated in ways that were different and interesting. Even when I felt frustrated with them (*cough* Juan and J.D. *cough*), I deeply sympathized with them. I wanted good things for them. However, I do wish the novel were better paced. It felt slow and steady most of the novel, and then it picked up a little too quickly at the end.
And the ending? Oh, that ending. I did not see Juan dying coming. It felt like a punch in the gut. I wanted him to live. I wanted him to get to go to college. Maybe, though, that was the point: the injustice of what happened to Juan. It's a special kind of devastating.
If you enjoyed All American Boys, I would give Barely Missing Everything a read.
Barely Missing Everything is very much in the vein of Jason Reynold's All American Boys. It centers around three characters: Juan, a teenage Mexican-American basketball player, his best friend and budding filmmaker J.D., and Juan's mom, Fabi, who had him at sixteen. The novel bounces between these three characters. I always enjoying multiple points of view, and I like that Barely Missing Everything gives equal time and space to Fabi. Usually, YA novels don't spend much time with the parents, but I liked that Fabi was included. Her characterization, her fears and dreams and thoughts, both make the novel more nuance and help inform Juan's character as well.
Mendez is a master of characterization. I felt like Juan, J.D., and Fabi were all nuanced and complicated in ways that were different and interesting. Even when I felt frustrated with them (*cough* Juan and J.D. *cough*), I deeply sympathized with them. I wanted good things for them. However, I do wish the novel were better paced. It felt slow and steady most of the novel, and then it picked up a little too quickly at the end.
And the ending? Oh, that ending.
If you enjoyed All American Boys, I would give Barely Missing Everything a read.