Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Review: Cry Baby by Ginger Scott

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Synopsis

Tristan Lopez is loyal to his brothers. He doesn’t really have a choice, born into a gang that has a chokehold on every kid that roams its streets. He gave his life to them willingly, knowing if he did then one day this kingdom, led by boys drunk with power and ruled by fear, would all be his.


He was loyal through it all. Loyal when prison took his dad away. Loyal when his face was touched by the cold metal of the rival gang’s gun. Loyal even though his mom begged him to run the moment she returned home from rehab.


He thought about becoming someone else. It was hard not to crave the life of a regular 17-year-old. It’s the only reason he stayed in school—to pretend. But he always fell back in line.


Loyal.


Riley Rojas didn’t belong in Tristan’s real world. She should have only been part of the fantasy, one of the many faces he got to pretend with amidst rows of metal chairs and desks and whiteboards with assignments. But there she was, moving boxes from the back of an old pick-up into a house Tristan had shot up on a dare with his friends only a few months before.


Tall enough to look him in the eyes and strong enough to fill his shadow, Riley took up space on his streets, her loud mouth fearless in the face of the gang leaders who terrified everyone else. She pushed Tristan around on the hard court, and she balled better than his friends—better than him

sometimes. She challenged him. She needed him. He liked it. And when her pale blue eyes stared into his, he quit wanting to pretend.

He couldn’t ask her to leave because she’d only dig her heels in deeper. He couldn’t ask because he didn’t want her to go. She was blurring his lines. She was testing his loyalty.


He was falling in love.


And it was going to tear him apart.


About the Author:


Ginger Scott is an Amazon-bestselling and Goodreads Choice Award-nominated author of several young and new adult romances, including Waiting on the Sidelines, Going Long, Blindness, How We Deal With Gravity, This Is Falling, You and Everything After, The Girl I Was Before, Wild Reckless, Wicked Restless, In Your Dreams, The Hard Count, Hold My Breath, and A Boy Like You.

A sucker for a good romance, Ginger’s other passion is sports, and she often blends the two in her stories. (She’s also a sucker for a hot quarterback, catcher, pitcher, point guard…the list goes on.) Ginger has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and blogs for more than 15 years. She has told the stories of Olympians, politicians, actors, scientists, cowboys, criminals and towns. For more on her and her work, visit her website at http://www.littlemisswrite.com.

When she's not writing, the odds are high that she's somewhere near a baseball diamond, either watching her son field pop flies like Bryce Harper or cheering on her favorite baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Ginger lives in Arizona and is married to her college sweetheart whom she met at ASU (fork 'em, Devils).

Social Media Links:
Twitter: @TheGingerScott


My rating: 4 of 5 stars




When you pick up one of Ginger Scott's YA books, you know that you're about to get a story that addresses serious topics, not just your garden variety, young love fluff. In Cry Baby, she tackles the subject of gangs and their effect on the youth. How living in this environment all your life can shape and mold your future, and how you can feel imprisoned in your circumstances. Tristan was born into this senseless, violent life. Because of the choices his father made, and ultimately died for. He was placed onto a path of self-destruction, and by the time he realized it, he could only face his future with resignation and hopelessness.

     I sold myself to this life when I was a kid, blinded by these criminals I idolized and the stories they told me about my dad.

In Tristan's world, there were only two places you ended up if you stayed in that life. Prison or an early grave. It could be a drug deal gone bad, a rival gang getting revenge, or someone close to you stabbing you in the back. Or it could be something as simple and arbitrary as walking to the convenience store. He'd become almost numb to his daily life. Fortunately, not so much that he lost all sense of right and wrong. It wasn't that he didn't think about the murders that he witnessed, or the drugs that passed through his hands-in fact he hated himself for his involvement.

He was a young man with an old soul, and the weight of the world on his shoulders. His nickname Cry Baby was given to him because of his inability to cry by the head of the 57, Dub. Dub was a sociopath, plain and simple. A man without conscience, morals, or mercy. And he had his claws sunk deep into Tristan with no plans to ever let him find his way out of the darkness.

Riley was the new girl in town. When she runs into Tristan as she's unloading some furniture in front of the house, she mistakenly believes that she's found a quick friend to shoot hoops with down the street. What she doesn't know is that first impressions aren't always what they appear, and he has no plans to let her anywhere near his crowd. This sets off a streak of stubbornness in her to gain entry into what she believes is a sexist boy's inner circle. Riley was unbending. Fierce, and full of confidence in her own worth. I loved that confident side of her. There was no room in her head for dating or boys when all of her focus was already centered on getting herself on a team again to secure a spot in college. She may have had an easy road with her mother taking off, and bouncing from school to school, but she wasn't afraid to brush herself off and work for what she wanted.

The romance between Tristan and Riley took a little while to unravel. Neither was looking to fall in love, one because they were reaching for a bright future, and the other because they had none. But once she got a glimpse into the kind of physical and mental battle he was dealing with, everything changed. His mother and Ms. Beaumont had been pushing him to strive for more and change the direction of his life, and Riley's added faith seemed enough to push him over the edge and start to believe.

    There’s something about Tristan that speaks to me, and no matter how many warnings I get—from him, from Lauren…from the universe—I still want to let him in. I want time with him. I want to know why my friend thinks he’s so awful, because I just don’t see it.

There was one thing that bothered me about Riley and that was her lack of concern for her own safety. According to her, she has lived in tough neighborhoods before. Maybe not quite that dangerous, but you would think that it was common sense to lock up your car and home to protect yourself. Or to not go out at night alone! She said that she didn't want to allow them to have power over her life and how she lived. It's one thing to be brave, another to be reckless with your own life. It didn't really add up to me that she felt this way.

I think that reactions to the ending could be a mixed bag for readers, but personally I appreciated the stark reality of how the conflict was resolved, as well as the fact that she didn't compromise her goals over what happened. There isn't always a picture perfect answer, but this felt right and necessary. Sometimes important people drift from us in our lives, but the tide will always bring them back when it's the right time. I always take away something from Ginger Scott's books, and this one was no exception. She didn't shy away from showing the gritty realities of gang life, and what a wide scope of tragedy they have.

    Criminals aren’t born; they are made. This world made Tristan, and he fights to break free of it. That hold, though—it’s vicious.

Highly recommended for readers who like YA on the mature end of the genre.


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