Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick

Title: Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

 Author: Matthew Quick
 Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Release Date: August 13th, 2013

First Published: January 1st, 2013

Pages: 288

Source: Personal Copy (Hardcover)

"In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends. I want to say good-bye to them properly. I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I'm sorry I couldn't be more than I was—that I couldn't stick around—and that what's going to happen today isn't their fault.

Today is Leonard Peacock's birthday. It is also the day he hides a gun in his backpack. Because today is the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather's P-38 pistol.

But first he must say good-bye to the four people who matter most to him: his Humphrey Bogart-obsessed next-door neighbor, Walt; his classmate Baback, a violin virtuoso; Lauren, the Christian homeschooler he has a crush on; and Herr Silverman, who teaches the high school's class on the Holocaust. Speaking to each in turn, Leonard slowly reveals his secrets as the hours tick by and the moment of truth approaches.

In this riveting book, acclaimed author Matthew Quick unflinchingly examines the impossible choices that must be made—and the light in us all that never goes out." - Goodreads

I chose to read this book because I had heard such great things about Quick's other books and I thought that I was missing out on something great. I was really hoping that I would like this book and that it would be one that I would want to read more than once. Unfortunately that was not the case. 

There were some things about this book that I liked (e.g. parts of the storyline), and some things that I just really did not care for (e.g. the footnotes). When I read a book I like to glide through it, not to have to stop in the middle of a sentence to read a footnote at the bottom of the page and then have to re-read the sentence that I was on just to get the flow back. Also there were some pretty repetitive points in this book, like when Leonard is constantly wondering why his teacher Herr Silverman is always wearing long sleeve shirts. I just thought that the book was just too slow for my taste. Another thing that I didn't like was how the book came to such an abrupt ending.

However, there were some points in the book that I really did like. The relationship between Leonard and his neighbor (Walt) was very interesting to me. Even though they didn't talk much about things, you could tell how deeply they cared about each other and how worried Walt was about Leonard. Another thing that I liked was how Herr Silverman (Leonard's Teacher) opened up to Leonard so much and looked out for him in a way that his mother never did. Quick definitely has an understanding though about how the modern teenage mind works and he portrays his characters very well.

Overall, I didn't absolutely love this book. But that doesn't mean that you won't! If you have read some of Quick's other books and really liked them, then I would advise you to give this one a shot.