Ebb and Flow

Ebb and Flow is a story told through poems about a boy named Jett who is living with his grandmother for the summer to get a fresh start after some pretty terrible things have happened. I loved how the story was revealed a little bit at a time and how you got to see what Jett was feeling and thinking.

Recently I’ve read a lot of free-verse novels, and this was the best of the bunch. I thought it was very interesting to have a main character who regrets his mistakes but continues to make them. Each of the characters was unique and spoke very differently, so you could get to know a lot about them without the author just telling you what they were like.

Some of the scenes are very intense and violent–for instance, Junior’s dad is very threatening to the boys, and there is a lot of “bad” language, so it’s best suited for more mature readers (12+ years). Despite all of the hard things that are revealed, the book ends hopeful that Jett can learn from his mistakes, and he’s already started to fix relationships with people he has hurt.