Just Finished Reading Bullet Point by Peter Abrahams

Bullet Point is a 2010 standalone novel by Peter Abrahams, an American writer of books in the young adult genre, most of them being in series. It's about a teenage boy Wyatt who lives in an economically-depressed small town in a western state.  How economically depressed? Due to layoffs and the consequential drop in property taxes funding the local high school, they decide to drop baseball as a sports option...just when Wyatt, an enthusiastic and talented player, was about to join up.  He's also in an antagonistic relationship with his stepfather...his own biological father whom he never met, Sonny, is away in prison for murder.  With little in his hometown, other than his mother and little half-sister, to keep him there, he secures a transfer...effected by his school's former baseball coach...to a school down the road, one that has a baseball program.  Unfortunately, due to a technicality in the rules he must wait out a year residing there before he can qualify to play.  Wyatt is disappointed, but goes to his classes at his new school, doing the best he can.  He meets a young woman, Greer, with whom he quickly jumps into a very physical relationship...much to the consternation of just about everyone around him.  Greer's father is at the same prison as Wyatt's, which incidentally is on the outskirts of his new hometown.  Through Greer and her father Sonny contacts Wyatt by phone and the two begin to talk for the first time ever.  Greer thinks Sonny may be innocent and helps Wyatt investigate the original crime and trial...you're welcome to take over from here as a reader since I don't want to give away the story...

After reading Bullet Point, I checked out the Goodreads website to see what others thought about it.  The reactions were generally consistent: they liked the general flow of the story and the characters...until the ending that is, which was almost universally panned for its content and brevity.  I, on the other hand, thought that Abrahams was ingenious with this story's resolution, while I had trouble identifying with the character of Wyatt, who seemed to me to be something of an oversized crybaby with chips on both shoulders about his lot in life. Still, I recommend it although many of the topics are more adult in nature than you'd find in a typical "teen", "junior", or "young adult" genre novel.  One other thing: the author inserted references to Shakespeare's tragic play Hamlet throughout the story as a theme, making me wonder whether I might take a tour of that famed English bard's collection of works sometime in the future...