Title: Forgive me, Leonard Peacock
Author: Matthew Quick
Pages: 288
Published: August 13th 2013
by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Notes: This was given to me curtious of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and Netgalley for an honest review. Thank you.
Summary: In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends. I want to say good-bye to them properly. I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I'm sorry I couldn't be more than I was—that I couldn't stick around—and that what's going to happen today isn't their fault.
Today is Leonard Peacock's birthday. It is also the day he hides a gun in his backpack. Because today is the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather's P-38 pistol.
But first he must say good-bye to the four people who matter most to him: his Humphrey Bogart-obsessed next-door neighbor, Walt; his classmate Baback, a violin virtuoso; Lauren, the Christian homeschooler he has a crush on; and Herr Silverman, who teaches the high school's class on the Holocaust. Speaking to each in turn, Leonard slowly reveals his secrets as the hours tick by and the moment of truth approaches.
In this riveting book, acclaimed author Matthew Quick unflinchingly examines the impossible choices that must be made—and the light in us all that never goes out.
MY REVIEW
Forgive me, Leonard Peacock is a
story about Leonard who has a plan of killing his former best friend Mason and
then killing himself by the time the story finishes. In the process he gives
gifts to those that meant something to him. You find out through the stories of
his friendships what lead up to the final moments.
I couldn’t finish this book. I
love gritty teen novels like this one, and it was written well however I could
have dealt without the obsession with the Nazis or the jumping back and forth
between future letters to the present Leonard from the future Leonard in a way
that spoiled the ending for me. If he’s writing a letter from the future, you
know the ending.
I put this book down at 37% and
couldn’t read any more.
