Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles (review)

Marvin is worried about his twin brother, Tyler, who has gotten involved with a gang. When an out-of-hand party results in several shootings and Tyler is nowhere to be found, Marvin and his mother go from worried to frantic. The news turns out even worse than they had feared: Tyler's body is found, and a viral video reveals that the unarmed boy was shot by a police officer. Marvin is thrown into grief and his long-held dreams of going to MIT are endangered, while his neighborhood rages at yet another police shooting of a young black man. It's an impactful story, and Coles is effective at making it clear how much the odds are stacked against kids like Marvin and Tyler all along; the reading out, at the subsequent protest, of the names of those killed for their race is stirring and heartbreaking. However, the writing too often tells rather than shows, undercutting its emotion, and the characters are unevenly drawn; while the college plot leads to a reasonable outcome (Tyler decides that it's important for him to go to Howard) it is also less successful, marred with improbabilities along the way. Thomas' The Hate U Give (BCCB 3/17) is still the gold standard on the topic of police killing, but this is an appropriately saddening reminder that it's far more than a single story. DS