The First Part Last by Angela Johnson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Summary: Bobby’s a classic urban teenager. He’s restless. He’s impulsive. But the thing that makes him different is this: He’s going to be a father. His girlfriend, Nia, is pregnant, and their lives are about to change forever. Instead of spending time with friends, they’ll be spending time with doctors, and next, diapers. They have options: keeping the baby, adoption. They want to do the right thing.
If only it was clear what the right thing was.
The First Part Last was a pretty short and simple book about a teenage boy trying to raise his newborn daughter. It had quite a bit of self-reflection and purple prose, but it was still mildly interesting.
The story alternates between the past, when the main character Bobby finds out that his girlfriend Nia is pregnant; and the present, where Bobby is attempting to raise Feather, his daughter, with some help from his family. I noticed a couple of punctuation/grammatical errors through the book, but they didn’t really impede my ability to understand what was going on. Though, they were a little distracting.
Honestly, most of the book was Bobby thinking about how tired he was, and wishing people would let him be some, and learning how to be a better parent– there’s really nothing more to it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really connect to the characters, but it was interesting reading about the usual teen pregnancy story from the father’s perspective.
I’m not sure I would have remotely enjoyed this book if I hadn’t been so tired and utterly bored when I read it, but it was okay. Not great, but not bad, either.
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