But as different as they are, when Bennett and his mom lose their home, Mac’s got their backs. They’re family after all. Sure, it takes patience to live with the eternally smoked-out Bennett and the pill-popped Aunt Lily but he can handle it.
You know who can’t? Mac’s very pretty, very WASPy, very uptight girlfriend. So as his once-peaceful household gets completely crazy, Mac learns that wanna-be-Crips are thicker than water, that his little cousin - flawed, irreverent, and basically a Saturday morning cartoon gone horribly wrong - has become his mentor, and that he really has no idea what’s up with girls.
Mac Lethal is a white rapper who was living with his girlfriend, Harper. When his aunt, Lillian, her boyfriend, Tim, and her son, Bennett, become homeless, Mac invites them to move into this home. Harper isn't crazy about this but they had no money and nowhere else to go. Lillian is a drug addict who dozes in front of the TV and Tim doesn't work and plays video games all day. Bennett is 17, a wanna-be gang member and claims to have found out from a "family tree company" that he is 13% black. He swears a lot and is always scheming to get laid (and succeeds). He reminded me of a younger version of J-Roc from Trailer Park Boys ...
Having Bennett, Lillian and Tim living with Mac and Harper disrupts the household and by the end of the book, life has changed for everyone, surprisingly for the better as they become a family.
This book is written by real-life rapper Mac Lethal. It's different from what I usually read (I'm not into rap and I'm not much of a texter) and I enjoyed it.
The writing style was interesting ... it was a combination of the story told in first person (from Mac's point of view), texts between Mac and Bennett and screenshots of texts between Mac and Bennett. Mac's texts are easy to read ... Bennett's not so much as he texts phonetically (Bennett would probably type that word "fonetacly"). It slowed down my reading speed as I had to decipher what Bennett was saying (it took me a while to figure out what "N E" meant) ... but the style worked because that's how Bennett thinks and talks. Bennett swears a lot, using the F-word and N-word often but doesn't see anything wrong with it because that's how black gang members like him speak, right? Needless to say, this book is for mature readers given the language and activity.
I liked the characters. When they first got together, there was definitely friction since their values were so different. But as time when on, they grew to love each and learn from each other.
I'd recommend this book.
2 comments:
Interesting. I'd check this out.
I love Texts from Bennett. I can't figure out if it's real or not. Who can be that stupid? Lol.
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