He was a Skater Boy and yet... I didn't say see you later, boy

 

Today I’m talking about Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada. I could not tell you where I found out about this book, but it’s one of those that’s been sat on a wishlist for ages and one year I just told my friend to get me it for a birthday or Christmas.

The blurbtina Aguilera says that Stonebridge High’s resident bad boy, Wesley “Big Mac” Mackenzie, is failing senior year – thanks to his unchecked anger, rowdy friends, and a tendency to ditch his homework for skateboarding and a secret photography obsession. So when his mom drags him to a production of The Nutcracker, Wes isn’t interested at all… until he sees Tristan Monroe, Mr. Nutcracker himself. Wes knows he shouldn’t like Tristan; after all, he's a ballet dancer, and Wes is as closeted as they come. But when they start spending time together, Wes can’t seem to get Tristan out of his head. Driven by a new sense of purpose, Wes begins to think that – despite every authority telling him otherwise – maybe he can change for the better and graduate on time. As a falling out with his friends become inevitable, Wes realises that being himself means taking a stand – and blowing up the bad-boy reputation he never wanted in the first place.

The book starts off with Wes bullying this kid who filmed him keying the principal’s car. Wild. He mentions that he was given the punk moniker the moment he moved to town, and that he has an image to keep up. Then obviously, he’s caught harassing the kid, and he ends up in this meeting where he’s threatened to straighten up or he won’t graduate, and that his real only path is community college. And then it all goes from there when he goes to the ballet, I believe it was a community production of The Nutcracker with his mum and the man, Tad, that his mum is dating and has been proposed to by. It’s there when he sees Tristan for the first time and everything spirals out from.

It did take me a second to realise the Avril Lavigne reference of the entire book. The book being called Skater Boy, the main character being a punk, and the love interest doing ballet. Can I make it any more obvious? But that did immediately make me wonder whether Wes and Tristan were going to end up together in the end. I know with romances, pretty much all the time they get together, but in the song, the punk and ballet dancer don’t end up together, and I wondered whether that would follow over to the book. I’m not going to spoil the ending as of this point, since the book has only been out just over a year, but yes, for those wondering, the book does eventually reference the Avril Lavigne song. I think it would have been a crime, personally, had it not.

I quite liked reading a book where the main character was, admittedly, a bit of a piece of shit. It made that struggle with being who he really was all that more painful. Like you want him to be good, you want him to be able to feel like he can be himself, but you can just tell he doesn’t believe it. It was nice seeing Wes try and be a person. One of his plots throughout the book is that he’s basically been typecast as the punk and that’s how he’d lived his life. But then as he goes on, he tries to change. There’s a point where he sits with some new kids – new in the sense he’s not sat with them before, not new kids to the school – because he’s beefing with his friends, The Tripod, and since he doesn’t know how to communicate properly, he contemplates offering them weed. And that just sent me. Poor guy. That’s part of why I liked Wes, he was just trying so hard throughout the whole book. He’s crusty, and he owns that, even when he’s trying to be better, or even when he gets it called out, or called it out himself. And in all of that as well, he was not only learning to accept himself as gay but was also learning how to be in a relationship as well. He was that character archetype of, “I’m gay, but I’m not okay with being out.” Once again, it was nice seeing the POV of that character since I feel like that archetype ends up being the love interest that the main character leaves behind, wanting better for themselves.

Wes and Tristan’s chemistry ate. I think part of that links back to the whole POV of it all, with Wes being the closeted one figuring himself and Tristan being the one who knows what he wants. There was a part of me that did think that Tristan had very little going on in the book, but then when I stopped and had a Nicki Minaj blink moment to consider the fact that the book isn’t about the romance, or really Tristan. Tristan is, even though he’s the romantic interest, a side character. And I mean that in the sense that since the book is more about Wes’ self-acceptance than the romance, it makes sense that Tristan isn’t going to have all that much going on, besides his audition in New York. Tristan already knows more or less who he is and what it is he wants to do, whereas Wes is struggling on basically all fronts of his life.

This point, I don’t want it to come off as negative in any way, especially since it’s a point I make in a lot of these posts or about a lot of books. And that’s that Wes’ friend group, The Tripod, of him and two other guys, I wish there had been more of the three of them together. I understand that Wes’ arc in the book followed him thinking that maybe that the other two in The Tripod were bad for him and holding him back or keeping him as a punk. But I really liked the dynamic that the three of them had together, if you ignore when they would bully people. Because, like I’ve said already, seeing this book from the POV of someone who’s more rotten, seeing his friend group allowed a different side I wouldn’t have normally seen in a book with this vibe. So I wish we’d seen a little more of the three of them together. I understand that the three of them worked together in a pizza restaurant, but I wanted to see more of them together, that’s all this point is.

I really liked this book. It’s another one of those, like Felix Ever After, where I kind of wish that I hadn’t waited so long to get around to reading it. I say that like a friend didn’t get me it and we just didn’t see each other for ages and that wasn’t why it took so long. It was quite easy to read – to be honest, I might still be a little brain charred from the Dragon Age books – and quite quick as well. Big fan, overall.

Okay, bye!