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Jugando Con Fuego (2013)

by Niall Leonard(Favorite Author)

3.36 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Montena

series

Crusher

review 1: It is a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and don't see any reason to pick it apart. I can understand how other readers do that though. To me it reads like an action flick--something teen age boys love to see in the summer. It is fun and unbelievable in that same way. He gets terribly beat up but just keeps bouncing back. I bang a knee and I'm moaning about it for weeks. Not so with Finn Maguire! I really liked Finn. My husband is a Brit so I had to keep asking him what all the British slang meant. It opens up a different world for the American teen reader--adds color to the book. And it does have some sexual content that teen boys might relate to but is done tastefully so it won't gross-out the more innocent YA tween. The reader knows Finn gets a hard-on but it is told ... morein a subtle humorous way so if you were a thirteen year old girl you might just miss exactly what is going on. Fortunately it also sets a good example by mentioning the use of a condom when Finn has a more intimate moment with a gal that he doesn't know well. Many young adult books set in the grittier sections of London are often too grim and filled with swearing, drugs,drinking and abuse. Too close to real life for me. This book mentions those things but with a lighter note. They are there to show that Finn has grown and put a life a crime behind him. He's a good guy now trying to turn his life around and survive in difficult circumstances. You feel the close bond he has with his step-dad and it seemed incredibly heart-warming to me. There is one thing that made me love this book--Finn has dyslexia and refers to it frequently. Some people are under the impression that people with dyslexia see letters backwards. But that often isn't the case. There are all kinds of reading disabilities that fall under the dyslexia diagnosis. Having my own struggles with this I can appreciate the fact that the author shows us the trouble this condition causes for Finn. I could totally relate to the fact that he doesn't want to go through the pile of bills. I really wanted him to just ask someone else to go through them for him. I was worried that something bad would happen if he didn't. Unfortunately, many people with reading disabilities end up in a life of crime just as Finn did when he dropped out of school. Our prisons are filled with them. Good school districts have special programs to help kids that struggle with this but many others do not. I thought it is encouraging to youth who have trouble reading to see a character that has this problem but is trying to make the best of his life despite the limitations imposed upon him. It was so brave of Finn to finally admit to an adult that he had difficulty reading. It was a good reason (rather than an excuse) for ignoring an official letter that arrived in the post. Of course, this letter turns out to be one of the most important clues in the story!
review 2: Finn Maguire gets home from his job at a fast food place to find his father dead -- bludgeoned to death at the kitchen table, his laptop missing. When the police seem to be focusing on Finn as the murderer, he decides to try to find the killer himself. This sends him into the realm of organized crime and a "godfather" whose enemies tend to end up dead.I listened to the audiobook of this novel and was hooked from the very start. Finn is an interesting character -- he's not really that broken up over the death of his dad, but can't stand the thought that no one seems to care to figure out what happened. The secondary characters are all interesting, even the police detectives who are investigating the murder. The action is quick and there are plot twists that kept me listening. A good mystery, and a good character sketch of a young man finding his own way despite the odds. less

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