Orangeboy

By: Patrice Lawrence
Location: FIC LAW
Genre: young adult- contemporary


5 Words: Family, death, friendship, gangs, drugs.

Sixteen-year-old Marlon has promised his widowed mum that he'll be good, and nothing like his gang-leader brother Andre. It's easy when you keep yourself to yourself, listening to your dead dad's Earth, Wind and Fire albums and watching sci-fi. But everything changes when Marlon's first date with the beautiful Sonya ends in tragedy; he becomes a hunted man and he has no idea why. With his dad dead and his brother helpless, Marlon has little choice but to enter Andre's old world of guns, knives and drug runs in order to uncover the truth and protect those close to him. It's time to fight to be the last man standing.

"You know you're onto a good thing when you connect with a character from the first page: you hear his voice. That is how I felt reading Marlon's story. Such a nice lad, full of good intentions and normal teenage hormones, he is lead down a path which he knows is wrong but is so desperate to protect those close to him.

The story is face paced, full of emotion and times when you're screaming inside 'No Marlon, don't do it!' Yet there is humour too, some laugh out loud moments - I'll forever remember Marlon when I am chopping onions...

And books are supposed to open windows and this one did just that - a window to another community in East London, a window revealing the pressures under which black teenage boys live, gang culture and its consequences on family life"- Natalie