After the Shot Drops is a tense and gripping novel that uses basketball to explore friendship, loyalty, and what it means to make the right choices. The two main characters, Bunny and Nasir, are trying to bridge a rift in their friendship while faced with some tough ethical decisions that frustrated me with how impossible they were to navigate. The book also doesn't hesitate to draw attention to issues of race, class, and privilege where applicable. Even though I'm not a big sports fan or basketball fan, I was still drawn into the story and immersed the dynamics of the sport/game by the author's deft prose.

Tense story with characters you feel for and who had to make hard decisions. Lost me in the descriptions of the basketball games, but overall a good read.

I do love a good book about Basketball and there's honestly not enough in YA or anywhere. This book tackles topics important to teenagers like me, friendship, loyalty, identity, and privilege. This book just resonated with me beyond words

Sometimes I find that multiple POVs in a book lets it down, or feels like a lazy attempt to get more words, but this is an instance in which it worked really well. A well-written sports novel with deep and interesting themes.

Nasir and Bunny were best friends, more like brothers, until a few months ago when Bunny transferred from their local public school to play basketball at the elite St. Sebastian's. Now Nasir won't speak to him and Bunny feels isolated as he tries to navigate everything on his own.

It might look like Bunny is popular because he's the star basketball player but he feels out of place. Because he lives in Whitman. Because his family isn't rich. Because his skin is shades darker than the majority of the student body. He aspires to have a better life, not just for himself but for his whole family. But does moving toward those goals mean that he has to let go of other things?

Nasir is also missing his best friend but he refuses to let Bunny see how hurt he is. Instead, he turns to his cousin Wallace. But Wallace has troubles of his own. As Nasir tries to help him, he begins to notice how the world chooses to offer opportunity and access to few but not all. He begins to wonder why no one is helping Wallace, who obviously needs it more.

Nasir is torn between trying to save Wallace, who continues to spiral out of control, and attempting to repair his fractured relationship with Bunny. Sometimes, nothing seems like the right thing. But ultimately, we are the choices we make, and we have to take responsibility for them, no matter the hand that life has dealt us.

For readers who love The Crossover and Long Way Down

When high school basketball prodigy Bunny Thompson leaves his neighborhood high school to attend an affluent private school on scholarship, he’s looking for a way to finance his future college career. He never dreamed it would mean his best friend, Nasir, would stop speaking to him, and he didn’t realize how alone he would feel as one of the few black students there.
Nasir faces his own problems, trying to help his cousin Wallace. Wallace’s desperate living situation is driving him to ever more desperate acts, and he is dragging Nasir into it. Nasir wants to be supportive of his cousin, but he has to decide how far he is willing to go to do that.
As Bunny and Nasir try to navigate the complicated path of their sophomore year, they have to decide if their friendship is worth the hard work of learning to trust each other again.
Author Randy Ribay skillfully injects parental wisdom while letting Bunny and Nasir tell their own stories in alternating voices. Their parents wisely counsel them to try to understand each other’s position. Bunny and Nasir each have loving, supportive parents who are actively guiding their children as best they can.
This engrossing and thoughtful young adult novel addresses the realities of racial, class, and economic differences, as well as the push and pull of friends and family when teens are working out who they are. The problems these young men are dealing with are difficult, and the stakes feel real to the reader. Between the suspenseful plot and the excitement of the basketball games, After the Shot Drops is hard to put down. Due to some language, I’d recommend this for high school and up. (HMH)

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Bunny and Nasir used to be the best of friends. When Bunny takes a scholarship to play basketball at a private school across town though, Nasir feels betrayed and left behind. Bunny does his best to fit in with the students at his new school, but the differences between the lives they live are glaring reminders that he doesn’t belong. Because Bunny has been spending more time with his classmates and teammates, Nasir fings himself hanging out with his troubled cousin Wallace. Nasir eventually finds himself right in the middle of his cousin’s bad decisions when he starts making bets against Bunny’s team all leading up to Nasir having to navigate tough decisions about loyalty and friendship. Can friendships overcome all the hardships that life places on it, and more importantly, how can someone make the impossible decision that will in the end let someone down?

Ribay has written a very timely novel with After the Shot Drops. Told from alternating perspectives of Bunny and Nasir, readers will really get to see what each charatacter is thinking and feeling about all of the new changes he is facing. Three dimensional characters, and realistic situations all help to make this novel readable, intense, and thought provoking. Both Bunny and Nasir are forced to make tough decisions that can forever affect the path that they are on. Readers will watch from the outside as each teen wrestles with their choices, and learns from his mistakes. This novel touches on friendship, race issues, and the harsh realities that many teens face on a day to day basis. I was happy to see that even though this story switches from narrator to narrator, it doesn’t distract from the story itself. I highly recommend this book for all library collections.

Suspenseful, powerful, complicated, and deeply moving: this book was everything I hoped it would be. Filled with complex, real characters and a griping story, I had a hard time putting this one down. It would not surprise me to see Randy Ribay elevated to the likes of Jason Reynolds.

This was a good yalit read and would be especially good for young men who don't necessarily enjoy reading. It was high interest and engaging and explores how young men navigate making decisions which aren't popular, but absolutely necessary and how those decisions impact their close social circle emotionally.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved how this book was told from two boys POV and how it really focused on their friendship and how it changed over the course of the novel. It was such a impactful novel and it was super hard to put down. I thought the racial elements in this book was super well done and it was handled so well. I loved how sports was used to increase tension in this novel. I was equally invested in both POVS and loved the cast of characters that populated this world. I was super impressed by this novel as well! I will def.check more stuff by this author in the future!

This was a powerful book in the style of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and Dear Martin by Nic Stone. "After the Shot Drops" is one of those books that captures an experience we don't get to read or see too much in the mainstream media/culture. I loved that it focused on a male friendship between Bunny and Nasir, and the class differences they faced after Bunny accepted a basketball scholarship at a prestigious school. I thought the dual POV was a great choice for the narration and I couldn't put the novel down. This book definitely deserves to be discussed in the same vein as Thomas' and Stone's books.

Have they read Slam, The Hate U Give, Hooper, All American Boys, or The Crossover? After the Shot Drops by Randy Ribay brings an amazing cast of complex characters together and tackles important topics like friendship, loyalty, identity, and privilege in a way that will be sure to resonate with readers. Basketball may be the hook; there are some great hoop scenes, but the relationships, for me, were the fire that kept this story burning to the very last shot.

I felt physically uncomfortable reading After the Shot Drops by Randy Ribay. I was the kid who left town for a different life. I didn’t realize what or why I was doing at the time. Looking back I see the consequences of my choice, and what would have happened if I stayed. That’s why this book made me so uncomfortable.

Bunny is the local star high school basketball champion. The local media attend his games. The local community is proud. There aren’t many success stories in the poor, African-American community, so Bunny is their hero. Unfortunately, Bunny was convinced to transfer schools to the rich, and rival, St Sebastian’s on a full scholarship. It’s a better basketball team, which will give Bunny better opportunities for college scholarships. There’s no way his parents can afford college. Transferring was hard, but Bunny knew it was the right decision.

Then there’s Nasir. He was Bunny’s best friend until Bunny transferred schools. Nasir took it hard. Why does someone like Bunny get all the support and fame when Nasir’s cousin, Wallace, is struggling to pay the rent and he’s about to be evicted along with his elderly, infirm grandmother.

After the Shot Drops alternates between Bunny and Nasir. Bunny describes the difficulty of being the only black kid in school, of feeling left out when his peers want for nothing, of replacing his teammates because he’s the better player and new school star. Nasir describes trying to help his cousin get his life together. Of Wallace’s desperate and ill-thought out plan to bet against Bunny’s team in the State Championships. Of his feelings of betrayal while missing his best friend. Of Bunny dating the girl he’s crushed on for years. Bunny feels guilt over that too.

And that’s just the start of the issues. The story is very real, thus my anxiety. As Wallace becomes more desperate, he fixates on the bets as ending his financial issues. But Bunny keeps winning, getting Wallace in more and more trouble with the illegal bookmakers. He gets Nasir to help try to find something that’ll disqualify Bunny from playing. I knew it couldn’t end well, but it was like a band-aid. Do I binge read and rip off the pain at once, or put it down so I’ll feel better but be anxious again the next day? I paced it.

After the Shot Drops has been grouped with the recent amazing real-life YA novels like The Hate U Give, but there are differences that make this less impactful, but in some ways more. After the Shot Drops gives closure, which makes it feel less real. No one gets their happily ever after in high school, and that’s what I loved about The Hate U Give—the end was a pause. Bunny is also a little too perfect. He played a flawless game, and the other players were only there to fill the court. He was the wise one.

I’m curious to read other reviews and interviews with Randy Ribay. As After the Shot Drops was released yesterday, I need to wait a little, so you should read it.

I've heard a lot about Ribay's debut so when I saw that he had another contemporary YA coming out about basketball, I decided I had to read it. After the Shot Drops is a wonderful sophomore novel about friendship, responsibility and community.

Bunny and Nasir were best friends, at least until Bunny transferred to St. Sebastian's, a fancy private school. Nas feels betrayed because Bunny didn't tell him, and he's leaving their basketball team. Bunny feels abandoned in the months that follow as Nasir ignores him. As they drift further apart, Nasir becomes closer to his cousin, Wallace, but quickly finds that things are not always as simple as they seem. After the Shot Drops is ultimately about friendship and responsibility, and the way that the two may intersect in unexpected ways. 

Nasir and Bunny had their own distinct voices so I felt like their POVs worked really well. I really liked reading about their experiences separately to see how they both interpreted the circumstances of what happened to their friendship. I liked seeing how they started to reconcile by the end of the novel and how important they were to each other. I don't read a lot of YA novels about two young men being best friends, like brothers, and that type of friendship is definitely something that we need more of in YA.

The first half of the novel wasn't as fast-paced in terms of plot but I liked that the characters still made the story compelling enough to keep reading. The second half of the novel definitely has more plot so I do recommend this novel to readers looking for a realistic but thrilling novel as well as readers looking for something with great characterization.

Overall, After the Shot Drops is a fantastic novel that I definitely recommend for fans of Jason Reynolds. This is my first Randy Ribar novel but it definitely won't be my last.

Bunny and Nasir have been best friends and teammates forever but when Bunny gets an opportunity to play at a better school, Nasir feels left behind. Bunny tries hard to hold on to the friendship but Nasir's new crown and a shocking turn of events may shatter their bond forever.

This fast-paced and realistic story was a compelling read from start to finish

An excellent new YA read about basketball, friendship, and the choices we make in life. After the Shot drops will appeal to readers of Paul Volponi.