#all american boys

★★★★☆

“Had our hearts really become so numb that we needed dead bodies in order to feel a beat of compassion in our chests?” 

All American Boys was another tough one to read. I read it after The 57 Bus, and my emotions were already running high—I kept waiting for it to get worse. Luckily, though, it never got as bad as I anticipated. This book did a really good job of showing that your heroes are human, and not always deserving of the pedestal you put them on—not to say that they are bad people, but that even decent people can do bad things. Though this story ended on a fairly good note—I know it would have been an entirely different story if Quinn had not been at the scene and seen with his own eyes what happened. This would be a good book to help encourage readers to stand up for what is right, to question their heroes even though that is really difficult, and not to not be complacent and expect that problems will just fix themselves—especially when those problems are ones that you could ignore from a place of privilege.