My letter “J” pick for the A to Z Book Challenge was JOYRIDE by Anna Banks. This book had a lot of promise. The rich, popular boy falls for the studious nobody girl from an immigrant family – but it just fell short of the mark in a several places.

First of all, Arden, the rich boy in this equation, is the son of the local sheriff and loves to play what he considers “harmless” pranks on people – a pastime that he shared with his late sister, whom he grieves deeply. He enlists Carly to be his partner in crime after he pulls a gun on an elderly man in the parking lot of the convenience store where Carly works the night shift, then promptly steals her bike to make his getaway.

Despite this turbulent beginning, they end up hanging out and becoming pranksters together. True, Arden was only faking the robbery on the old man–who happened to be his uncle–to keep him from driving drunk, and he did give Carly’s bike back and help her get a better-paying job. But Carly is a smart and careful girl. We are told this over and over again. She keeps her head down, her grades up, and she saves every single penny of her money to give to her brother so they can buy covert passage to get their parents back into the U.S. after they were deported. She will not do anything to jeopardize this.

This is where the narrative hits a roadblock for me. No matter how charming and helpful Arden has been with Carly, he is still the son of the sheriff who deported her parents. Is she really going to risk getting on the sheriff’s radar by romancing his son? Or by doing a drive-by throwing firecrackers at the mayor’s house for fun? I find that very hard to believe.

Of course, all of this ends up becoming a giant mess that jeopardizes not only their relationship, but everything Carly has been working for regarding her parents. This all resolved very quickly and a little too conveniently for me at the end. In addition, the story is told in alternating points of view between Carly and Arden, and when Carly holds the chapter, we’re in first person, present tense (common in YA), but when Arden gets a chapter, we switch to omniscient narrator, present tense, which makes his chapters read more like a stage script or screenplay. It’s jarring and kept me from really connecting with Arden like I might have if she’d just had him talk to us in first person.

Overall, a compelling plot with shaky execution. I’m going three stars on this one.