Troublemaker

I really enjoyed this book. Tackling a lot of complicated issues I thought it could be preachy, but John Cho gives the story and his characters such heart, that although there is a lot of food for thought and some lessons along the way, it was anything but preachy. It is important, however, to have stories like this. Especially for young adults. It is an engaging story, but also truthful in its portrayal of those tumultuous teenage years of raw emotion and the complicated dynamics of family and realizing your parents are human too. That's the center if the story, but then it's surrounded by the much bigger event of the LA riots of the early 90's and the parallel to today is uncanny and certainly makes you question if/how things will ever change. There is no magic answer here, instead John Cho ends with a positive and hopeful note on a more personal level that I believe is a great message in and of itself. I think it would be a great book for discussion with a young adult, but it also made me ponder a lot on it too. I really liked the characters and I think that was what really pulled me into the story, as well as the family dynamics. Overall a really excellent book, well worth the read.

Jordan, the main character, was a strange character who jumped between acting like an adult and acting like a kid. A lot of the narration felt like it was definitely coming from an adult's mind, not a kid's, with far more nuance and knowledge than Jordan could have had.