Dark Ride by Lou Berney

 "This is not the plot twist that my life required. I wish I'd never noticed those kids on the bench. I wish I'd never walked over. I wish, most of all, that I existed in a version of the multiverse where hurting kids with the glowing tip of a cigarette falls far beyond the boundaries of the human imagination. But I don't and it's not."

 

Hardly Reed is not a hero. He's a twenty-one year old college dropout who spends his days blissfully stoned and his nights working at an amusement park as a scare actor for minimum wage. And he's extremely content to drift through life hardly working, hardly trying. It's how he got his nickname. 

Then he spots two young children sitting silently, alone, scared, and sporting cigarette burns. And something inside Hardly shifts. He has to help those children. And when CPS does nothing, he knows he'll have to do it himself. 

"I'm not delusional. I know this is kind of crazy. I do. But look me in the eye and tell me it's not worth the risk. How many times in a lifetime do you get an opportunity to actually make a real difference. Like, a true life-changing difference. This might be the one point in my entire life that is the entire point of my life."

My thoughts:  From the first sentence to the last, this book is brilliantly written and compellingly intense. And such great characters! Hardly is a funny, engaging, and heartbreakingly likable narrator. I loved him and all his quirky friends. And everything he does to save those kids! What a gripping ride. He makes mistakes along the way and some of the outcomes are brutal, but he never gives up. This is a book I won't soon forget. It reads fast and packs a punch. And it might make you cry at the end. 

My rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐