Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

In J.R. Thibeault’s Michael’s Loop, fourteen-year-old Michael Wilson moves with his mother, Linda, away from Toronto to Southford, a small town hollowed out by closed businesses and a shrinking school. Basketball earns him a place at Eastgate, where he meets Jessica, a history-loving girl most students avoid, and Tommy, a feared teenager who controls people through violence. When Tommy knocks Jessica to the ground, Michael attacks him and loses the fight. Instead of leaving Michael alone afterward, Tommy invites him to play basketball and starts pulling him into his circle. Michael keeps returning, even after seeing what Tommy can do, while his friendship with Jessica becomes more important. When Linda announces that they are moving again, Michael must decide whether leaving Southford means escaping Tommy or abandoning Jessica.

“Southford… This place isn’t what we hoped it would be.” J.R. Thibeault’s Michael’s Loop is a wonderful coming-of-age novel, and Thibeault uses Michael’s habit of reading people through history brilliantly. Michael compares Tommy to Stilicho, the Roman general whose violence became difficult to separate from the violence he stopped, which says everything about Michael’s divided view of him. Southford is excellent. Downtown shops are shut but painted with fake window displays and silhouettes of shoppers, while Eastgate has corridors of unused classrooms. The basketball scenes are excellent, and I especially like how Michael begins to understand Tommy through the way he plays. Jessica’s dry humor works wonderfully, especially when she hands Michael a Byzantine history book because he needs it more than she does. Well written and very human, readers who enjoy coming-of-age fiction with a twist will adore this.