I read Kings of B'more and here's what I thought

 

Once again, I am coming to you with a book that I found out about because of Twitter. Today, it’s Kings of B’more by R. Eric Thomas. I’m pretty sure I saw it, like I just said, on Twitter, but I think I saw Julian Winters tweet about it. It was one of those that just ended up sat on my wishlist for months until it finally came out.

The blurb says that with junior year starting in the fall, Harrison feels like he’s on the precipice of everything: Standardised testing, college, and the looming pressures of adulthood. The one good thing is that his bestie, Linus, is going through it with him. However, Linus then tells him he’s leaving the state at the end of the week. Then to keep himself from losing it, Harrison plans a Ferris Bueler’s Day Off-style send off for Linus to squeeze in a bunch of last-minute experiences that include their first pride, a rooftop party and a mini road trip. And they’re doing this in secret from their parents. The two make a pact to do all the things, big and small, that they’ve been scared to do, but nothing is scarier than saying goodbye to someone you love.

Chapter one opens up with the boys just hanging out in a graveyard, you know, as you do. Linus notices that Harrison is anxious about college. Harrison mentions, or brings up, that he’s been thinking about the two of them going to the same college. They’re just talking and vibing, and then Linus drops the gig of how he’s moving away. We then get a little backstory of how they met, and the pandemic gets mentioned, which was weird. Like, it’s not the first book I’ve read that’s mentioned it, but it’s still weird to read about. I’m definitely the type of person that kind of just wants to, “I pretend I do not see it” when I’m reading a fiction book, personally. Also, the chapters aren’t numbered, they’re separated by day and time. Still, the second chapter is Linus worrying about the move, and we get given the backstory as to how he found out about it. One minor thing I have to say is that I do wish that books would just tell me straight up when a chapter switches POV, because I’m dumb, and when I’m not told, I always have a moment of confusion where I realise the POV has changed. Still, then we go back to Harrison, and he spends a lot of his next day moping, until his family’s movie night where Linus turns up after Harrison was ignoring him in his mope. They’re watching Ferris Bueler’s Day Off, which explains the send-off from the blurb. So, Harrison decides to have a Ferris day, then ends up planning the whole thing, and has his friend, Aparna, make an itinerary for it. Wild stuff, really.

We also find out that there’s something going on with Corinne, Harrison’s sister, pretty early on. You do find out what it is eventually, but in like the last 10% of the book. And then, outside of Harrison and Linus, the only other character that really only has anything major going on is Harrison’s friend, Aparna. And to be honest, I really don’t think any of the other characters needed to have anything go on, for a reason I’ll explain later.

In the morning of their Ferris Day, from both of the boys’ POVs they mention that the vibes of their trip seems a little weird. There was the obvious fact that Linus was leaving, so that impending event was maybe dragging them down. I did wonder that since they were best friends, that perhaps it was a little more than just the two of them being sad that one is leaving – that maybe it was something deeper. I’m not going to say whether that is the case in this book, because I want this to be spoiler-free. But this book is about Harrison and Linus and this Ferris Day that they have together. Their last hurrah, not specifically about romance.

It was once the actual Ferris Day started was when I felt this book really got going, as well. This is going to be a stupid statement to make, but it’s when it felt like things were actually starting to happen in the book. To me, everything before the Ferris Day felt like set up, like, when Harrison and Linus watched Ferris Bueler’s Day Off, and when he was planning it. And once the Ferris Day was happening, it kind of felt like reading a highlights reel, because I guess that was technically the intent of the Ferris Day – giving Linus one final slay of a day that he’d never forget.

I definitely got a good idea of who the characters were from the get-go. This book did a really good job of letting us get to know both Harrison and Linus. I will say, I definitely got to know Harrison more than I did Linus, especially in the beginning, but I never felt like I missed out on getting to know Linus and learning about his life and his situation. You definitely got more of Harrison in the first half of the book, then more of Linus in the second half.

The book is long for a contemporary YA book – just over 400 pages. And I will say, it felt like there were points that went on longer than they needed to. Like, I was never fully bored by the book, but there were definitely moments where I started thinking, “Okay, can move along from this bit now?” And these were the points where I could definitely feel myself teetering on the line of getting bored. I’m not going to spoil anything by giving a specific example, but I’ll word it in the way that Harrison gets all up in his head occasionally, and sometimes he’ll end up going off on a tangent and the book gives you some backstory on something. Some of these stories I liked, like perhaps they related to family, or history, in some way. But I don’t know whether all of them were necessary. Some of them also ended up being full blocks of text as well. So, I’m not going to lie, there were definitely a few moments, during these blocks, where I found myself skim reading, just so I could get back to what was happening in the present faster.

To stay on the length of the book for a moment longer, I was glad that only Corinne and Aparna had something going on (plot-wise) outside of Harrison and Linus, because I know for a fact that if anything else had been going on in the book, then I definitely would have ended up getting bored.

And even though this story was primarily about Harris and Linus and their Ferris Day, I truly felt that this book was strongest towards the ending, or like the last 10% of the book. Because the both of them were so used to being watched by their parents all the time, they really didn’t know how to handle freedom, so there were parts of their Ferris Day that felt a little like there was something missing. And I do think that was because they’re 16, and, again, don’t know what to do with freedom. But as to why the last 10% of the book was my favourite, that’s when their parents were more heavily in the picture, and I don’t know how to explain it other than saying the last era of the book had the vibes I wish the whole book had. The whole book was on this solid level (that dipped occasionally), but the last bit of it was on full slay mode.

Now, I mean this final statement in a non-shady way, and I just wanted to say that because how I word it might sound shady. But. The best part of this book was the ending. I think it did everything that it wanted to achieve but could have benefited from being just a little bit shorter overall.

Okay, bye!