Period .8, Chris Crutcher

You could easily make a case that Chris Crutcher helped build the booming young adult genre with books like Stotan!, Iron Man, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, and Whale Talk. His 2013 release, Period .8, hits a number of the same notes as his previous novels: high school students who have a variety of issues in school and in life meet with an older, very wise teacher for guidance in mostly off-the-record sessions. In Period .8, students meet with an about-to-retire teacher known as Logs during their lunch period to talk. The only rule here is that no one gets hurt. It's voluntary group therapy, but when Mary Wells (aka Virgin Mary) is absent several days in a row, Logs becomes concerned. Paul Baum (aka Paulie Bomb) is a long-distance swimmer who often trains with Logs and a member of the group. Paulie believes in telling the truth whenever possible, but is finding that has some painful consequences.  Paulie just admitted to Hannah, his girlfriend, that he cheated on her, and she dumps him and starts seeing Paulie's rival, the manipulative class president Arnie. Like all Crutcher books, there are plenty of life lessons to be learned from the teens as well as the sage.

Crutcher's fans will find the expected amount of sports and intricate plotting in Period .8, but the author has stepped up his game and added a good deal of mystery and suspense that hasn't been present in previous works. However, the novel feels less than polished compared to Crutcher's early novels. The answers to questions about Mary's disappearance and growing suspicion about her involvement in something sinister prove disappointing, and several characters come off as props and stereotypes in the end. I read the ePub version through Overdrive on my iPad, and while all ePubs struggle with formatting, this intricate book was made more confusing due to the lack of visual clues (even as simple as a few ...... between paragraphs) that indicated scenes or even conversations had changed. Crutcher fans will likely look past most of the flaws, and I hate to say this about one of my favorite YA authors, but Period .8 probably could've been made a little better by an additional draft and better suggestions from the editor.