Rating: 4/5
Alex is being bullied and he doesn’t know what to do. He struggles anyway because of his serious OCD condition, and has sworn to the bullies that he won’t tell anyone what they’re doing to him. If he does, they say they’ll kill him.
The bullies have attempted to dunk his head down the toilet, called him names, thrown his schoolbooks in a puddle, thrown his trainers over a telephone wire, left him in an empty cave in the middle of nowhere, and spat on him. Alex is terrified and spends his days trying to avoid them, but knows they’ll get him again tomorrow.
Alex’s OCD has been getting increasingly worse, meaning that it’s hard for him to leave the house in the morning even without the bullies waiting for him at school.
One of the tormentors, a teenage boy called Dan, begins to feel guilty about what he’s been doing to Alex. Ever since he became friends with Sophie, he’s tried to impress her by doing unspeakable things to the weakest target in the school. But now he steps into Alex’s shoes and thinks about the horrible position he’s in.
Then the boys’ mums arrange for Alex to help Dan with a raft he was building with his brother. Ever since Ben went to prison, Dan has had angry outbursts and spends all his time in a lonely cave by the seafront, working on Shooting Star. The last thing he wants (and the last thing Alex wants) is for “that weird kid at school” to come and mess it up for him.
But Dan is angry, and misses his brother. He soon realises that Alex isn’t all that bad. He can impersonate Yoda, C-3PO and R2-D2. However weird he is, he’s actually pretty cool.
Only thing is, Dan still wants—needs—to fit in with the other bullies at school. He can’t show Sophie that he doesn’t think Alex is a wimp after all…
Whenever we read a book about bullying, we always like the victim and hate the bully. That’s that. But I found it interesting how in this book, Dan begins to repent what he’s been doing to Alex. I think it is also clever of Foster to make each chapter alternatre between Dan’s and Alex’s points of view (almost like a diary of each put together). This means we get to know both of them individually; we know that Dan begins to feel guilty, but he doesn’t want to show Sophie and the Georges that. And we know how much he misses his big brother, Ben, and how excited he gets when he’s told he can go and see him. And we know in depth about how Alex feels when his OCD begins to get the better of him, and when being bullied mingles with that.
Overall, I thought this book was very sad at times, but also exciting and fun at others. I am looking forward to reading Foster’s other books, The Bubble Boy and We Used to be Kings.