I enjoyed this tale of complex relationships and family dynamics ( )

When He Fell by Kate Hewitt packed a real emotional punch. Its a novel about two 9 year old boys - who were friends at school. Ben had always been kind of hyperactive and Josh had been extremely shy and neither had many friends until they became friends with each other. After a fight on the playground, one of them ends up in the hospital with brain damage and the other one always been won't talk about it at all. Both families are caught up in the ensuing turmoil surrounding fallout of the boys disagreement. As they struggle to find out what really happened, with little help from the school administration, secrets are revealed in each family.

The characters are very real and full of good and bad traits - at times during the book, I disliked all of the adult characters - especially the two mothers - but then found out later that they had reasons for the way they acted and then my opinion of them changed. There were times that the book was very difficult to read. Any time a child is injured to this extent, its very painful to read because its so emotional to any parent.

Overall, I highly recommend this book -- its a fantastic book to read and hard to put down once you start it. This is the first book that I've read by Kate Hewitt but I plan to read more of her books.
(Thanks to the author for a copy of this book for a fair and honest review) ( )