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Boy21

by Matthew Quick

Basketball, pressure, and an unexpected friendship

Regular price $13.38 USD
Regular price $22.30 USD Sale price $13.38 USD
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AlbakiReads Editorial

Basketball, pressure, and an unexpected friendship

In Boy21, basketball is more than a sport: for Finley, the game offers a brief refuge from the burdens of life in Bellmont, where family responsibilities and neighborhood tensions shape his days. Russ arrives carrying a different upheaval, distancing himself from the game and insisting on a new name. Their meeting brings the novel’s two strands—Finley’s hopes of leaving town and Russ’s changed circumstances—into the same high-school year. The story connects friendship and basketball with grief, isolation, family care, and the pressures of a community marked by violence and racial division.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Teens and young adults interested in basketball-centered fiction.
  • Readers drawn to stories about friendship amid family and community pressures.
  • Those seeking young adult fiction that addresses grief and isolation.

Themes

Basketball as refugeFriendshipGrief and isolationFamily responsibilityCommunity tensions

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

You can lose yourself in repetition--quiet your thoughts; I learned the value of this at a very young age.

Basketball has always been an escape for Finley. He lives in broken-down Bellmont, a town ruled by the Irish mob, drugs, violence, and racially charged rivalries. At home, his dad works nights, and Finley is left to take care of his disabled grandfather alone. He's always dreamed of getting out someday, but until he can, putting on that number 21 jersey makes everything seem okay.

Russ has just moved to the neighborhood, and the life of this teen basketball phenom has been turned upside down by tragedy. Cut off from everyone he knows, he won't pick up a basketball, but answers only to the name Boy21--taken from his former jersey number.

As their final year of high school brings these two boys together, a unique friendship may turn out to be the answer they both need.
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