This YA book is in screenplay format, so it took a little bit for me to get into reading it that way, but I really enjoyed it. It’s an interesting perspective to read about—that is, the non-white kid who gets tangled up in a crime without ever really doing much of anything or even making a deliberate decision to be involved. But even the prisoners in the book who had more involvement in a crime tried to explain away their responsibility and come up with a reason why it wasn’t really their fault. I think a lot of people do this when they make a mistake (myself included)—you try to come up with a reason why it wasn’t your fault. “I wouldn’t have cut them off if they weren’t hanging out in my blind spot!” or “I wouldn’t have messed up dinner if the instructions were written better.”

I found myself empathizing with these prisoners who didn’t really want to believe they were “bad” people, which was both a little unnerving for me and a good thing. Maybe we don’t put ourselves in others’ shoes often enough.