Drop [Hardcover]

Lisa Papademetriou (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2008

DON’T WE ALL harbor the secret wish that we won’t have to work for it? That luck—be it a spin of the wheel, a hop of the dice, the right card at the right moment—might just choose to favor us, whether we deserve it or not? That universal desire, along with many others, is played out in the lives of three teens who hope to beat the house, and control their futures. Come meet:

• Sanjay, who wants to be much more than the dutiful, hardworking immigrant’s son
• Kat, who wants enough cash to run as far as she can, from her past and who she’s afraid she might become
• Jerrica, who thinks she can foresee the cards, and maybe make them be what she needs them to be.

Each is irresistibly drawn to gambling’s alluring flirt, and to entanglements with each other, and within themselves. Themes of obsession and other risky business fuel the pages of this fast-moving, provocative tale.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up—Jerrica loves math and probability. She believes that the universe can be explained by equations and she is very close to cracking them, intuitively. Using this ability, she is often able to predict future events, including the outcome of the seemingly unbeatable game, roulette. Enter Sanjay, a new acquaintance in her Las Vegas high school, with a bit of a gambling problem. He is never ahead for long, often borrowing from the safe in his father's grocery store to cover his debts. Kat's mother is serving time for a hit-and-run and is now up for parole—and Kat isn't sure she's very enthusiastic about her mother's release. The three are out to take the casino world one small bet at a time. The characters are well drawn and the excitement of the gambling scenes is well executed. Additionally, some surprising details about the teens turn the story upside down, unraveling everything that readers thought they knew about them. A page-turner.—Leah Krippner, Harlem High School, Machesney Park, IL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Las Vegas teens Sanjay and his girlfriend, Kat, both need money—Sanjay to cover his gambling debts and Kat to run away from her jailbird mother, who is up for parole. Enter their classmate Jerrica, a mathematical genius who just may have a system for winning big at local casinos. The trouble is that the system, which involves precognition as much as probability theory, doesn’t always work. Worse, troubled Jerrica may herself be a few cards short of a full deck, which becomes really problematic when Kat’s dangerous ex-boyfriend, a drug dealer and small-time hood, gets involved. The plot starts to spin out of control, and its strangely inconclusive ending seems to have been tacked on simply to end the game. Nevertheless, the author does a fine job with the noir atmospherics of the Vegas strip and builds enough suspense in the first half of the book to hold readers’ interest to the caper’s conclusion. Grades 7-12. --Michael Cart

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (November 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375842446
• ISBN-13: 978-0375842443
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,812,391 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lisa Papademetriou is the author of Sixth-Grade Glommers, Norks, and Me (named one of the Best Books of 2005 by FamilyFun.com ) and co-author (with Chris Tebbetts) of M or F? She has written and/ or adapted over thirty books for children and young adults, including titles in the Lizzie McGuire, That s So Raven, Kim Possible, and Sweet Valley High Senior Year book series. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband, where she enjoys quilting, dancing around the house to eighties music, playing the guitar (badly), and drinking large amounts of coffee. Her next book, The Wizard, the Witch, and Two Girls from Jersey will be published in May 2006.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Anti-climatic, September 6, 2010

By 

Dreamer (SE USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Drop (Hardcover)

Drop starts out being the story of three different teens, Sanjay, Jerrica and Kat. Sanjay has a gambling problem and needs money to pay off his debts. Kat's mother is up for parloe and she needs money to get her and her sister out of town. Jerrica is either psychic or psychotic, she get visions of swirling patters that represent numbers. By using these visions Jerrica can predict which number the roulette wheel will land on. Jerrica, Sanjay and Kat frequent the casinos in order to get fast money.

While the premise is intriguing and the plot moves along nicely, there are many subplots that never come to fruitation. For example, who is it that beats up Sanjay and steals their money? Is Jerrica suicidal? Does Kat get back with Mike? We never find out the answers to these questions.

The climax is good as an individual scene, but as a climax to the whole book...well it isn't. We find out that Jerrica has pretty much nothing in her notebook, everyone thinks she is just crazy and they put off all their winings to coincidence. Then that's it for Jerrica. We never find out if she is suicidal, if she's crazy, or what happens to her after the climax (other than the fact that she places one last bet so we know it was not all coincidence). The ending makes the book seem to be about Kat who up till the end was in the perifery. Sanjay gets off easy with his dad, working off the debt in the family store. No rehab or anything. You'll find no public service announcements here.

Good book, but get it at the library.