How My Second Serving from Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess Made a Swing and Missed.

I hate to compare, but I had a very hard time following this book that when I eventually decided to put it down at 50%, I let out a huge sigh. I was really rooting for them, especially after I read their other novel in verse a while ago and enjoyed it with my whole being. This book is certainly not Solo, best believe.

Swing is basically about teenagers, Noah and his bestfriends Walt and Sam as they navigate the wild that is high school. While Walt (who rebrands as Swing) dreams of being cool, playing baseball and becoming popular, Sam is dating the captain of the school baseball team and practically forcing her friends to his games, and Noah has it hard trying to keep his feelings for Sam in check despite Walt urging him on to tell her.

The book is broken up into six parts that flow from one to the next in a lyrical and poetic manner told from Noah's perspective. I didn't get beyond the first three.

I cannot tell you what I liked about the book because I do not remember. I disliked sooo much but the one thing I disliked the most is how long-winded and slow the pace was. I kept trying to remind myself what the story actually was because so much was going on, and the fact that it was all told in short and poetic parts didn't help.

You must embrace life with a metaphorical hug, and sometimes a literal hug, to really squeeze the life juice, the goodness, out of living.

The love for jazz and music that we got in Solo is still there, you can tell that Alexander and Rand Hess are patrons of music. They also brought back the trumpet-playing Robert from Solo, which I liked very much.

Our titular character, Swing, is like an encyclopedia on jazz music and dead people. Ask him about a dead personality and he will tell you who they were and how they died. He's funny and very random, and even with his irrelevant info-dumping at times, I didn't hate him. Unlike the others, he actually had a personality.

I feel like I've used too many words when I could've just said it didn't whelm me. That's all. It really didn't.