This was a book club pick and I'm glad because I wouldn't have read it otherwise. ( )

This novel left me unsatisfied - the story was too depressingly real to life. People relegated to class, rejected out of hand, not to mention the minor fact of the pyschopath brother. I wanted to like this, but in the end I just didn't. ( )

If Jack's In Love is a suspenseful coming-of-age story about a 12-year-old boy named Jack, taking place in 1967. Jack has had the fortune to be born a Witcher, the town's least favorite family. His dad is unemployed and his brother is a stoner. No matter how well Jack does in school or behaves himself people only think of him as low-class.

Jack makes an unlikely friend in Mr. Gladstein who has his own label: Jew. Mr. Gladstein relives his own youth as Jack tries to make Myra his girlfriend. Jack desperately wishes Myra could forget which house he lives in and see him for the person he is. The odds are against Jack since his brother has an ongoing grudge match with Myra's brother, which only worsens when her brother goes missing.

I love a good coming-of-age story and this book did not disappoint. It had a pleasing proportion of mystery, young love, drama, humor, heartbreak, and suspense, with a pinch of magic. This is Stephen Wetta's first novel and I hope he writes more! ( )

A powerful story of a bright, Southern 13-year-old boy dealing with the burdens of being a member of the pariah family in a middle-class Virginian town in the late 1960s. The story is well written, although a little slow in pacing, as young Jack pines over a girl who’s a member of one of the upper-crust families, while having to deal with both his unemployed dad, who wants to rob the jewelry store of a man who’s befriended Jack and with his violent older brother, who abuses and threatens the older brother of young Jack’s crush. Jack pines over Myra, who returns his affection because he is the only one in their class at school who is as smart as she is, and that connection enables her to look past his family’s lower social standing. But when her older brother, Gaylord, goes missing, the whole town suspects if was Jack’s brother who did something to him, and that dooms young Jack’s relationship. The novel offers a wonderful portrait of the dilemmas of being an outcast and the perils of feeling threatened by one’s own family members. If you enjoy this book, I strongly recommend Dallas Hudgens’ Drive Like Hell, which offers a similar portrait of a young teenage boy coping with the challenges of being in a white trash family, although in a more comic vein. ( )

Read from September 11 to 19, 2011

Great coming-of-age story with a little mystery tossed in. I loved Jack, but toward the end it got a little draggy. Solid debut from Wetta...it was even a little reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird and Cold Sassy Tree. ( )