Brooks, Nick. Promise Boys. Holt, 01/2023. 304pp. Fiction. GRADES 9 – 12. $19.99. 978-1-250-86697-4. OUTSTANDING.
This succinct and hard-hitting YA murder mystery illuminates the systemic racism facing Black and Brown young men from impoverished backgrounds. When Principal Moore of the Urban Promise charter school is shot dead, three students, who were in detention, immediately become the prime suspects. JB, Trey, and Ramon each know that they are innocent but, because the police aren’t interested in digging deeper, they must team up to investigate the murder themselves. Only when they are able to look beyond the assumptions they’ve made about each other can they begin to make progress. The author effectively uses multiple perspectives to peel back the layers of the three teens’ lives, families, and communities, successfully drawing the tension between their deep-rooted hopes to use Promise as a launch point to break out of the cycle of poverty and their chafing at its often petty, quasi-military regime. The mystery itself is somewhat secondary to the character and world development but is satisfyingly worked through. With a scarcity of YA mysteries giving agency to BIPOC characters, particularly young men, this is a book all public and school libraries serving teens should purchase to add diversity to the genre.
Hayley Beale—San Francisco University High School