An exciting concept in this under rated genre that did not quite meet expectations. The story lines and individual back stories were incomplete. Richard L Dumont built a community on a Native American reserve and populated it with authentic characters and cultural observations. But it seemed as if the stories of everyday life were edited to make them more acceptable to readers. Conventional wisdom has proven the hardships of life on most reservations leave the children unprepared for life outside their community and without the resources to better their lives and environment. While Johnny Hunter did have many obstacles in his way, the manner in which he overcomes them was largely left to our imagination.
I enjoyed this book and will pass it on to my reading circle for their opinions but I feel that this could have been a great story.

I was provided with a digital copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately this book fell quite short for me. Whilst many aspects seemed well researched, much of the dialogue felt very stilted and many of the characters were left unfleshed out and felt a bit like props to move the story along when they could have been used to more effectively explore some of the issues that were raised.

I'm disappointed because I was really glad to see a book with more Native American voices taking centre stage but the writing made it a struggle to keep my initial levels of enthusiasm.

Thank you to @bhc.press and @netgalley for the advance reading copy of this Young Adult novel. It’s publishing date is February 28th, 2020. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy it. I found the characters to be two-dimensional and the plot line to be totally boring. I teach middle school, and I think it is more suited towards that level as opposed to young adults. It was also coded as historical fiction - but I didn’t really see any historical aspects.

Johnny is a Native American living on a Cree reserve while growing up. He attends high school and plays basketball, has a girlfriend and lives with his mother and grandfather. They don’t have very much money but they make the best of it. At the start of the novel, one of his friends commits suicide. There is some talk about it, but the novel doesn’t focus on the tragedy for very long. I did enjoy learning about some of the Native American traditions and culture.

***I was provided with an ARC of this book from BHC Press through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions below are my own.***

What I initially really liked about this book was the concept. As a huge fan of historical fiction and a reader that tries to read as many diverse titles as possible, this book was so exciting to me. While it did not completely live up to what I was hoping for, the book still had some solid merits.

First, the story takes place on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, so every character in the book is Native American. I rarely see books representing Native American culture, so this was a great find. The spiritual side of the Cheyenne people seemed well researched, and the characters had diverse backgrounds outside of race. Additionally, the language of the book would be accessible to struggling readers and readers who do not speak English as their first/primary language, which definitely meets some personal requirements for a book I'm looking to stock in my classroom.

However, even with all of these positives, there were parts of the story and writing that were really lacking for me. Character wise, many of the characters seemed two-dimensional, especially the main character, Johnny Hunter. Johnny Hunter never truly struggled in this novel; he merely mentioned a small complaint to the adults in the novel and suddenly his problems were solved. It also seemed like all of the characters were just meandering through the text, but they were not emotionally reacting to the events in the book. For example, there were multiple deaths and discussions on mental illness that took place, but the characters did not seem truly moved by any of these things outside of saying "it is so sad this has happened". I was really hoping this book would explore specific social issues that are affecting Native Americans, specifically those living on reservations, but many of these were mentioned in passing never to be spoken of again. Lastly, so much of the dialogue was clunky and unnatural. It was hard to get through the story when characters are constantly saying things like "You are a good basketball player, Johnny Hunter. Keep it up, young man." or "Thanks for being part of the plot, Mom".

My final thoughts on this would be that this book may have been categorized wrong. While I understand why this would be under the Young Adult tag, the writing actually made me think this should be considered a Middle Grade book. The book is also listed as Historical Fiction, but there was nothing in the book that would suggest this book was taking place in any specific time period except for the summary. This book could have been categorized as Realistic Fiction without changing anything.