Matt Petrick
803

No Mans Land

One book I read this summer was called, No Mans Land, by ST Underauhl. It was about a kid named Dov who's brother, the good looking, insanely athletic, kind, and perfect person went off to war. He was shipped off with his National Guard program trying to pay for college. He proposed to his insanely beautiful girlfriend, Victoria, right before he left. Anyways, the book mainly has to do with Dov Howard. He is a junior in high school and his friends, Miranda, Koby and Ali are known as the "emo" kids. Along the way he meets a very pretty girl named Scarlet, who at first doesn't really become friends with Dov, but then does towards the middle of the book and joins his "emo" group. What I liked about this book was the way Dov's life was all about fear about his brother coming home or not. I really like the way the author portrayed it. For example, Dovs biggest fear was getting the call saying that his brother hadn't made it back. One day he was eating lunch in the cafeteria, and all of a sudden the speaker booms on saying for Dov Howard to come to the main office. The text states, "All my friends know im scared that something might happen to Brian in Afghanistan." This is right after the speaker tells him to come to the main office. He stumbles to the office scared out of his mind. Also, he would always go home everyday and find his mom lying on the couch with red eyes and a tissue box staring at the tv, on the channel of the special Afghanistan report. This shows how depressed the mom got when Brian was away.     When Brian got home, I thought the way the author wrote about Brians epiodes were very strong and scary. I also liked how Dov's gecko, Leo, who was given to him by his brother before he left for war , which symbolized their friendship/relationship, died at the end. I think that it was a strong way to show  what kind of person brian had become, getting DUI's, having episodes, being very rude to everyone, and wanting to go back to war, and also how Dov's relationship with his brother had dramatically changed.

What I didn't like about the book was how the mom and dad didn't notice Brian's episodes and trauma until the very end of the book.