If You’re Reading This by Trent Reedy (review)

Mike has spent the last few years being the dutiful son, focusing on school and his part-time job and keeping his mother calm as she continues to grieve for his father, a National Guardsman killed in Afghanistan. This year, however, the high school sophomore is ready to cut loose, and a series of letters from his father, planned by the man before his death to arrive in the run-up to Mike’s sixteenth birthday, finally impel Mike to act on his restlessness. In each letter his father assigns him a “mission,” and Mike takes those missions seriously. To get involved in school activities, Mike forges Mom’s signature on permission forms for him to play football; to find a girlfriend, Mike rethinks his relationship with Isma, a Muslim classmate who’s also in the midst of resetting her submissive relationship with her parents. The actual sender of the letters remains a mystery, though, and as Mike pursues his identity, he discovers the lingering guilt that fuels his mother’s sadness, and the long-concealed pain within a neighbor who has been a support to the family over the past years. The letters themselves, though, are often outright mawkish, and the change football wreaks in Mike’s life, with his almost immediate star status, is contrived. Fans of Reedy’s recent blood and thunder thriller Divided We Fall (BCCB 1/14) may, however, be pleasantly surprised to see what he can do with a quieter, more thoughtful take on a boy stepping into a man’s shoes.