Some of the art really took my breath away. The fighting scenes -- of which there were many -- as you would expect of a samurai story -- were pure chaos and I couldn't really hold on to the narrative. The story, based on a folk tale, also didn't really hold any surprises.

Needed more bananas for scale.

Noah grows up a lot during the summer between 6th and 7th grades. He's decent and polite to adults, but finds himself running with a bad crowd while his own crew is out of town on vacation. He's basically limited only by how far he can ride his bike, which is pretty far in his small town.

There's a lot about the boy code of junior high, where Noah learns about honor and manliness and integrity. He has to do a lot of this on his own because he lost his father previously in a hunting accident (not they way you'd think). He has his older brother, but his brother is also beholden to the boy code of high school, and maybe not the best role model (nor the worst, but still, brother Jack's a teen, not a father).

At the beginning of the book, I was struck by the nostalgia for 1981, in the same way that books in the 80s had nostalgia for the 50s and 60s -- The Body, The Outsiders. But then about 20% in, when I was thinking this was going to be an exploration of how to make friends and enjoy the summer, Noah suffers violence from an unpredicted direction, and that's when his easy summer vacation goes off the rails.

I didn't love the story, but I did feel compelled to read to the end, to see if Noah could get his life under control. I kept trying to figure out why Noah kept making these horrible choices, when his own inner voice was warning him off. Mostly, teen boy's gotta boy, I guess.

Nathan is the Dungeons and Dragons nerd ; Riley is the drama nerd. They agree to start fake dating for their own selfish reasons, but of course pretending leads to other things. "Fake it till you make it" is real.

Super cute. Loved all the people at the gaming store, and Riley's friends. As a D&D nerd myself, I really related. I don't feel like the Dad's story-line got enough exploration, but there weren't like huge gaps or anything unfinished, it just felt like there could have been ... more.