YA Book Review: The Closest I've Come by Fred Aceves

The Closest I've Come by Fred Aceves

Sophomore Marcos Rivas has just been nominated a special program at school called Future Success. It’s for students who show a lot of promise, but might have other obstacles to overcome-- such as trouble at home.

Marcos certainly has that. His mom’s boyfriend Brian is a drunk, racist, and abusive man with a short temper who frequently beats Marcos up. Despite having learned many ways to avoid Brian, Marcos can't completely avoid the insults and beatings. Marcos's mom hears the abuse, but Marcos isn't sure if she simply doesn't know about the physical beatings or if she simply chooses to ignore them.

Marcos is embarrassed to join the Future Success program because he’d rather play pranks on his teachers and hang out with his Maesta boys in their poor Tampa, Florida neighborhood. Being smart was never a survival tactic before. He’s also surprised that a teacher saw any promise in him, since no one has ever called him smart.

But when the program begins, Marcos meets Zach, a boy who seems to have everything together, and Amy, a girl who is Marcos’s polar opposite: she’s white, tough, and a fan of punk. Inexplicably, Marcos falls hard for Amy, and somehow these three become more of a family than Marcos has ever had.

This is author Fred Aceves’ debut novel, and he tells a compelling story about trying to overcome obstacles and finding support in the most unusual of places. What sets this book apart from the bulk of YA today is in the way we see street-tough Marcos fighting his own doubts and demons, and the way in which Aceves shows us a tender, caring side of Marcos that up to now his friends never have. Teens will relate to Marcos's inner turmoil, and his heartbreak when he realizes that his new friend Amy, who makes Marcos absolutely swoon, already has a boyfriend she's never mentioned.

Rather than a tidy happy ending, The Closest I've Come has an ending more in line with real life. This isn't a rags-to-riches fairy tale where Marcos beats all the odds to win it all.

The ending isn’t exactly happy, but it is fitting and offers hope for a kid who had the deck stacked against him from the start.