Mini Reviews: The Foxhole Court || When The Sky Fell On Splendor

The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic

Series: All For The Game #1
Genre: Young adult (?) contemporary (?)

Pages: 237

Publication date: January 2013

Content warning: Homelessness, violence, abusive relationships, drug use, offensive “jokes,” assault, death, gangs, mental illness

Neil Josten is the newest addition to the Palmetto State University Exy team. He's short, he's fast, he's got a ton of potential—and he's the runaway son of the murderous crime lord known as The Butcher.

Signing a contract with the PSU Foxes is the last thing a guy like Neil should do. The team is high profile and he doesn't need sports crews broadcasting pictures of his face around the nation. His lies will hold up only so long under this kind of scrutiny and the truth will get him killed.

But Neil's not the only one with secrets on the team. One of Neil's new teammates is a friend from his old life, and Neil can't walk away from him a second time. Neil has survived the last eight years by running. Maybe he's finally found someone and something worth fighting for.

Likes: It was free on Amazon. Honestly, I haven’t been this irritated at a book in years. I’m struggling to come up with “likes.”

I wanted to read something that got me out of my comfort zone, and this novel did it. I usually avoid sports books (and art and music books) because those things often don’t translate well to fiction. I enjoy them in real life, but they’re bland in books because you can’t see or hear them. The made-up sport in this book—Exy—is bland, but it has redeeming qualities. I like that the characters don’t have to be massive, muscular dudes to play on a university team. The teams are co-ed, and Neil is small.

Dislikes: The only reason I finished this book is because it’s short. Reading it was a frustrating experience because the author seems to have a deep aversion to research. It’s hard to feel grounded in a story where the details are vague, everything is made up, and nothing is believable. The sport is made up, the university is made up, the drugs are made up, the mental illnesses are made up (or so vague I don’t know what they are), the “medicine” for them is made up. If you’re going to fictionalize this much, you have to do a lot of explaining. The author didn’t do that, so I was confused for most of the story.

I don’t understand how the Foxes team is allowed to exist. They lose all of their games. The players refuse to practice, or they practice on their own without training staff. They do drugs and secretly drug each other (which the coach seems fine with?) They’re casually and pointlessly violent with their teammates (which could lead to injuries). They think it’s a good idea to bring knives onto the court when they play games (?!). What university is going to tolerate this?

I don’t understand the characters’ motivations. Neil is paranoid about someone uncovering his real identity, but he continues to hang out with his teammates after they roofie him, question him about his secrets, and assault him when he doesn’t tell. Why is he friends with these people?

The Bottom Line: I can’t suspend my disbelief this much. Everything is made up, and nothing makes sense. I shouldn’t have bothered finishing this one.

When The Sky Fell On Splendor by Emily Henry

Genre: Young adult science fiction

Pages: 384

Publication date: March 2019

Content warning: Death, injury, neglect

Almost everyone in the small town of Splendor, Ohio, was affected when the local steel mill exploded. If you weren’t a casualty of the accident yourself, chances are a loved one was. That’s the case for seventeen-year-old Franny, who, five years after the explosion, still has to stand by and do nothing as her brother lies in a coma.

In the wake of the tragedy, Franny found solace in a group of friends whose experiences mirrored her own. The group calls themselves The Ordinary, and they spend their free time investigating local ghost stories and legends, filming their exploits for their small following of YouTube fans. It’s silly, it’s fun, and it keeps them from dwelling on the sadness that surrounds them.

Until one evening, when the strange and dangerous thing they film isn’t fiction–it’s a bright light, something massive hurdling toward them from the sky. And when it crashes and the teens go to investigate . . . everything changes.

Likes: Look at me, reading a book right after it comes out. Usually my preorders sit on the shelf for a year before I get around to reading them. This one was too tempting to leave on the shelf.

When The Sky Fell on Splendor is a fast-paced story about six teens who became friends after a steel mill explosion. This could be a straightforward novel about grief and friendship, but it’s not. The author puts a creative spin on typical teen book topics. While the teens are filming a video one night, something falls from the sky. Do the bright light and the strange creature who steps out of it have something to do with the mill explosion?

If you like plot-driven books, this is a novel for you. The plot gets moving early and doesn’t let up. The twists kept me awake for most of the night. I couldn’t put the book down until I discovered what the alien wants. I didn’t expect the book to end the way it does, but I was satisfied with the conclusion. It wraps everything up nicely.

Can we have more teen friendships in books, please? I want to read about friend groups. I like the banter and the quirky-yet-flawed characters in this one.

Dislikes: Too many characters. Since the plot moves fast, we only get superficial details about some of them. I think those characters could have been deleted without hurting the story.

A few of the plot events are too stereotypical sci-fi/horror for me. You’ve got your creepy fog, your sinister FBI people, the weird neighbor, some comic-book-style superpowers. I’ve seen all of this stuff a million times before.

The Bottom Line: I didn’t love it as much as I thought I would, but it definitely entertained me and kept me guessing. If you like science fiction, I recommend it.