Being God

Being God is book 2 in the Farrington High series and the sequel to Pull, a 2012 YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Malik Kaplan, the villain of Pull, has a cross to bear, or maybe it's a Star of David; being the black teenaged son of a Catholic mother and Hebrew Israelite father frequently makes life confusing. His grandfather, uncle, and older brother all ruled as the neighborhood BAMF. Only his father is a "forgotten Kaplan," and seems disinterested in his only surviving son. Malik is determined to be the worst of the worst and not repeat his father's mistakes; even if that costs him the people he cares about. At least he can drink. Alcohol keeps him going; alcohol is destroying his life. But he doesn't see any problem, not even after he finds himself in court, blamed for a crime he didn't commit. Suddenly he's faced with court-ordered community service shepherding an angry ten-year-old who hates the world, an "offer he can't refuse" from the boy's gang leader brother, and an opponent he can't crush: Barney, a fourteen-year-old girl who watched her alcoholic father abuse and murder her mother. She wants nothing to do with any bad boy, especially not one who thinks drinking is the way to forget his sins. Malik will have to learn to face his own problems and repair his relationship with his father to have any hope of a future - and the girl.