Gut check / Eric Kester.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A darkly comic high-school drama about brotherhood, body image, concussions, and toxic masculinity from Eric Kester, the Boston Globe bestselling adult author of That Book About Harvard .

Wyatt has wanted nothing more than to play football on Grayport's championship-winning team. But not for the fame, glory, or girls. It's his last chance to build a relationship with his older brother Brett, the star quarterback, before he leaves for college. Now that their team has gained national attention, a big win could be just what the small town needs in order to rebound from a fishing season that has been devastated by Red Tide. But when Brett suffers a terrible concussion, Wyatt must decide if keeping his brother's secret is worth risking his scholarship future.

Told with irreverent humor reminiscent of Carl Hiaasen, and a stark honesty about brotherhood and masculinity for fans of Andrew Smith, Gut Check explores the struggle of grappling with uncomfortable truths.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

School Library Journal Review

Gr 8 Up--In the fishing town of Grayport, only two things matter: having a blue-collar sense of toughness, and football. Which is why making the team is so important to Wyatt Parker. That, and it's his only chance to bond with his brother Brett, the star quarterback. When Brett suffers a concussion during a game, he begs Wyatt not to tell and ruin his chance to play in a televised game against Grayport's rival team. It's the only chance the team has to win and help the town recover from a resurgence of red tide. Wyatt struggles with the impossible conundrum of deciding what's more important: saving his brother from a potentially irreversible injury or saving Grayport from even more hardship. Tough topics such as body image, poverty, and bravery are treated with equal parts humor and sincerity. Wyatt's self-deprecating wit is used as a shield from a seemingly distant older brother, an alcoholic father, and a football team fueled by toxic masculinity. The author deftly paints a clear picture of Grayport as a worn-down coastal town, which creates a perfect backdrop for the story. The football stadium itself is set on a rocky bluff overlooking the ocean and Wyatt describes hearing the ocean waves crash against a stone embankment "like a communal heartbeat…defiant and surviving despite it all." VERDICT Even though the conflict resolution seems a bit pat, Kester's debut novel will strike a chord with teens. Give to fans of Mike Lupica or Carl Hiassen.--Kimberly Castle-Alberts, Akron-Summit County Public Library, OH

Booklist Review

Wyatt, 16, overweight, lives in the poor Grayport, MA, coastal town where football rules. Cut from his high school's football tryouts his freshman year, Wyatt has finally made the team his sophomore year. He's a terrible player, admitting, ""I played football like I lived my life: a game of flinches."" Despite this, he's desperate to stay on the team to impress his older brother, Brett, the team's star quarterback. They're not close, but agree that their angry, hard-drinking fisherman father is a ""heartless old bastard."" A former Grayport football star, their father is living through Brett's football success, while ignoring or belittling Wyatt. Gentle and kind, Wyatt wryly describes some of his more awkward moments, many involving his crush on Haley. He's embarrassed by his weight, and humiliated and bullied by others, especially his teammate Trunk. When red tide cripples the town's economy, it threatens to cancel the big football game against rival Blackmore, potentially ruining Brett's chances at a college football scholarship. Like Friday Night Lights, this compelling debut breaks the fourth wall at times. It's filled with memorable characters, especially Nate, Wyatt's smart, acne-prone best friend. Even football neophytes will root for this winningly heartbreaking, humorous, and hopeful story.--Sharon Rawlins Copyright 2019 Booklist

Horn Book Review

Football is often called a game of inches, but for Wyatt Parker, a sophomore at Grayport High in coastal Massachusetts, it's "a game of flinches." With a body "more carved from marshmallow than from marble," Wyatt sees no future for himself in the game, but playing just might be a way to forge a closer relationship with his older brother Brett, the handsome, athletic star quarterback. Their father, whose own glory days were as Grayport's quarterback, is an alcoholic who lives his life through Brett and ignores Wyatt. With red tide threatening the fishing industry-the bedrock of Grayport's economy-football is the one thing that gives the dying town a little hope. In Kester's debut novel, Wyatt and Brett are good-hearted teens doing their best against a somber set of circumstances. The protagonists, the town, and the culture of high-school football are richly developed with keen insight and pithy prose ("Murray Miller was the answer to what a Cabbage Patch Kid would look like if it were fifty years old, balding, and sporting a fuzzy mustache"). Football action sequences are vivid and testosterone-fueled locker room fights (and talk) brutal, but ultimately this novel is less about football and more about people getting by in a town on the verge of collapse. And that's where the real gut check sometimes is. Dean Schneider November/December 2019 p.88(c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

Readers don't have to like football in order to love this book.Wyatt couldn't be more different from his older brother, Brett, the quarterback and football hero of a Massachusetts town struggling with a collapsing fishing industry and a red algae bloom. Their father embodies the luckless town's obsession with the only consistently positive facet of life: high school football. Feeling anything but cool, Wyatt describes his own large physique in unflattering terms and is on the receiving end of most of his alcoholic father's verbal abuse and neglect. As he struggles to align an accidental sports success with a secret his brother implores him to keep, Wyatt can't decide whom to disappoint. In his brilliant debut, Kester links a litany of teenage woes with the yearning to escape a dying town and a dead-end life. Recognizable characters, locker room language, and guy humor accompany thorny ethical dilemmas. Buoyed by self-deprecating wit and rare insight, Wyatt endures the humiliations of fat shaming, taunting, bullying, and being the odd man out in a family of three males. The storyline plays both offense and defense with perfection while all-star resilience and a plucky best friend save our hero from a Gordian knot of a problem. Can the hero of a sports story be an overweight, ignored, nonathletic team mascot plucked from obscurity to land in the limelight? You bet! All characters are white.A winner. (Fiction. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.