Review: "A List of Cages" by Robin Roe

When Adam Blake lands the best elective ever in his senior year, serving as an aide to the school psychologist, he thinks he’s got it made. Sure, it means a lot of sitting around, which isn’t easy for a guy with ADHD, but he can’t complain, since he gets to spend the period texting all his friends. Then the doctor asks him to track down the troubled freshman who keeps dodging her, and Adam discovers that the boy is Julian—the foster brother he hasn’t seen in five years. Adam is ecstatic to be reunited. At first, Julian seems like the boy he once knew. He’s still kindhearted. He still writes stories and loves picture books meant for little kids. But as they spend more time together, Adam realizes that Julian is keeping secrets, like where he hides during the middle of the day, and what’s really going on inside his house. Adam is determined to help him, but his involvement could cost both boys their lives…

Many thanks to Disney-Hyperion via Netgalley for the free review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is a rather interesting book for me to review because my thoughts are so conflicting! While I was reading, I was fully absorbed, feeling all the feels, crying actual tears, loving all the characters, not wanting to put the book down. Then I finished, and my thoughts changed completely. I started to look at the book with a more critical eye, and certain elements just did not sit right with me. Let me see if I can more eloquently explain.

Adam was fabulous! He seemed like the most amazing human being to ever walk this earth. Giving and generous, genuinely caring and empathetic, he is the guy that everyone wants to be around, guys and girls alike. His ADHD only makes him more endearing, because he struggles with it and yet he's so open about it with his friends. He's a tiny bit clueless with picking up signals from girls, but again, it only serves to make us love him more. And yet...maybe he's a bit too much? Like, too perfect. He makes one pretty big mistake throughout the course of the book, and I blame his girlfriend for it more than I blame him. So yeah, a bit too perfect to be real.

Then there's Julian. I'm not sure what to think about Julian to be honest. I felt sorry for him on just about every page. To me, he was like a beaten dog - he kept getting more and more abused, and I didn't see a way out of that for him.  Like Adam was almost too perfect, Julian was almost too pitiful.  With all the crap and abuse this kid goes through, how can he ever live a normal life? He can't!!! He's going to be messed up forever! And no backyard barbecue birthday party is ever going to make up for that trauma.

The other thing, and probably the most important thing, that I wasn't able to buy into, was the villain. He was sooooooo bad, but we are never given a reason why. Did he have a traumatic childhood?  Did he have an untreated mental illness? Did he ever abuse other people? What was his motivation in treating Julian the way he did?  I ended up learning a couple of things at the very end of the book, but it was too little, too late - it was almost like somebody said, "Hey, your antagonist is really evil, but now we need some motivation - what can you stick in there?" and the author stuck in a couple of sentences to (barely) fill in the blanks. If an author is going to have this awful human doing awful things to another human in their book, that author's job is to make me believe that there is a reason for this.

These things, combined with a rushed, slightly ridiculous ending, forced me to drop a couple of stars. I enjoyed my time reading this book (when I wasn't cringing at Julian's suffering!) but I didn't love it as much as I was hoping.

My rating: 3 stars