If you thought the author lacked nuance in the first book around the experience of losing a sibling, just wait for her take in this one on poor people!
Look, I appreciate where the author had wanted to take this. Just like the casual misogyny in the first book, you can tell it wasn’t a conscious intention that brought it forward but rather an ignorance around the complexities of sociopolitical issues. I won’t go into a tirade on this subject as a whole, but I do think it’s significant to address it as it pertains to the book.
In this book we are introduced to a new character who has just moved to Spring Hill High School from Rawley Heights High School.
It is clear enough throughout the books that Spring Hill is a particularly affluent area; many of the characters introduced have parents who own their own businesses, live in large houses, and have the financial liberty to provide their children with first-hand vehicles. Rawley Heights, on the other hand, is described as particularly impoverished. Through the newly introduced character, we learn the students of Rawley Heights live in varying states of poverty. The school has metal detectors at its entryways, police presence, and a large issue with gang-related activity. With regards to the theme of football, it’s stated many times that the opportunities supplied to these students are limited, where scouts for athletic scholarship offers refuse to visit due to the many issues that are derived from the impoverished state of the area.
The author makes an effort to address the complexity of this character and the motivations behind his actions, but I just felt as though they fell short. He is characterized as another antagonist to the main characters. Reid offers him no empathy or understanding, and while it has already been established that he has the emotional maturity of a saltine cracker, it would have been nice to see him demonstrate any amount of kindness towards him as even just a form of character development. He is described by many characters as being “dangerous” and “conniving”. When a group of students from Rawley Heights appear at Spring Hill High School to threaten the character (equipped with weapons of varied sorts), he is blamed for “bringing those thugs around” and “putting Briar in danger.” It is constantly treated as though the presence of a poor person is like an infestation in the school that brings more. Briar offers a bite-sized amount of empathy towards him, but the author refused to let her say anything kind without offering a myriad of comments about how much of “an asshole he is” or “by no measure a good person.”
This particularly bothered me because all the character’s actions were an attempt to escape the cycle of poverty. I cannot name a single action that had anything to do with intentionally trying to be a barrier to the main characters just for the sake of it. He, in fact, goes out of his way to help them, and the author still damns him to the inevitable and sad fate of taking his only chance to escape poverty away from him.
Though race is not something described in this book series, it should be well known by anyone that poverty and race have a deeply intertwined past and present. So it is no surprise to me that the poor neighbourhood of this book is characterized within the stereotypes of black communities and neighbourhoods.
I am thus left sad and disappointed by the ending of this book, where Reid (obviously) gets the All-State scholarship, on top of a payout from the legal trouble Sasha is faced with. While I understand the price of education in the U.S. is absurd, it just ended up feeling like “rich white kid gets a full-ride scholarship and a hefty severance (specifically more than all school costs) while poor kid is forced back to the poor neighbourhood without even a chance at a scholarship.”
I truly wish the poverty plot point was not included at all, rather than being addressed with such a lack of tact.