Hero-Type

By: Barry Lyga

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Rose

Barry Lyga has received high praise from publications like Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.

A frank novel combining realistic teenage dialogue and biting comedy, Hero-Type addresses many questions on the minds of contemporary teens. After rescuing a classmate, otherwise unremarkable Kevin Ross is hailed as a hero. But then he commits a shocking act that destroys his new popularity and threatens to reveal a dark secret.

©2008 Barry Lyga, LLC (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"This neatly plotted look at what real patriotism and heroism mean will get readers thinking." ( Kliatt)

Read............Faster.............Please........

Because Barry Lyga knocked it out of the park with Boy Toy, I decided to try out Hero-Type. It's basically this story: kid with a secret saves a girl from a masher but then gets painted as a traitor because he doesn't have a "support the troops" ribbon on his car. Tension ensues, his secret comes out, and after a bizarre didactic sidebar on Catholicism, he learns and grows. Blah blah blah.

To be fair, I can't really say whether this story starts out as a hodgepodge and descends into a mishmash or whether the painfully slow reading by the narrator just sucks the life out of it. I suspect both. This is the slowest, flattest reading I've ever encountered outside a middle school classroom. It amazes me that an entire production company stood by while this narrator eviscerated any signs of life the story may have been emitting.

Apologies in advance if the narrator is post-stroke and this recording is a fundraiser for him--- in that case, he did a great job. But if he's an able-bodied fellow, he needs to quit his day job, and anyone in the room who didn't file strenuous objections should be contacted by Barry Lyga's lawyers.

Painful on a Bad Playhouse scale.