I enjoyed this book. Initially it sounded like a nice read about the multiverse, but it actually has a lot of meat to it. Every time Ash takes a really hard hit he moves to another version of both himself and his world in general. He eventually understands what's happening and starts trying to get back but each world gets worse and it soon may be too late. It covers racism, biggotry, abusive relationships, the various things women have to put up with. I really like it and would recommend it. ( )

To give a Neal Shusterman book a low rating is like a dagger to my heart. You see, I always love Neal Shusterman. His writing is descriptive, unique, creative, and compelling. The worlds he creates are ones that suck me in and refuse to let me go. "Unwind" and "Scythe" are books I always recommend to teens. "Dry", while not one of my initial favorites, also resonates with me.

But Game Changer......it was a book where I honestly question its motives....

You see, I feel "Game Changer" struggles with a lack of direction. At first, we think it is a story about football and concussions. Then it is about space/time continuums. Then we encounter worlds in which Brown vs. Board of Education had not been passed. THEN we discover the character identified as LGBT. THEN the character takes on the identity of a girl (but not as a transgender way--remember space/time continuum). Yes ultimately the book is about how there are ripple effects and waves in the world.

And do we keep creating a world that is best for us yet SUCKS for everyone else?

I found this book way too existential. Here is the thing: I also love that Neal Shusterman decided to talk about race, gender, and sexual orientation. However, he doesn't usually. So to be honest, this felt like a cash grab/trying to appeal to current political climates. I want authors to be true to themselves. And sure Shusterman might be that way in real life, but his books never have been....not really anyway.

So yes, I skimmed a good third of the book. And I cannot exactly recommend it either. I think my expectations were too high when really, it is like how "The Toll" ended up--disappointing. ( )

I always LOVE Shusterman's books. He is a versatile writer who delves into realistic fiction, science fiction, and fantasy with equal aplomb. But this one just didn't work for me. As Ash, a high school football lineman, is jolted into different universes where his life is altered each time he makes a big hit on the field, he confronts new issues in the new universe. The issue laden book deals with race, class, gender, sexual orientation, dating abuse, just to name a few. I really wanted to like this one. ( )

I love love love Neal Shusterman, and he's really been hitting it out of the park recently, so when I saw he had a new one out I immediately ordered it and took it home to read.

And I'm... disappointed. Let down. I know Shusterman was very earnest about the issues he explores in the book (racism, sexism, homophobia, abusive relationships...I'm sure there's more I missed) and he tries to take as much time as he can (as many times as he can) to have Ash say that he's not the center of the narrative and how he can't understand because he's not been there, it's just all too much, and badly packaged.

I don't need Ash giving me foreshadowing every second sentence, I don't need constant "but how wrong I would be" asides, and I definitely don't need another white man going on a soul journey to finally realize how bad other people have it and decide to do something about it. The whole tone was so meta and flippant that it detracted from the seriousness of events. Something about the writing was cringe and dated and felt like it was trying too hard to be "young".

I appreciate the Shusterman has a lot of strong opinions about these issues, and that he has Ash say many (many many) times that he was ignorant and that ignoring the issues is the same as perpetuating them, but he needed an editor. He tries to address so much in this book, but a) he can't do it all with the same quality which leads to b) the fact that I literally rolled my eyes and took a little break from the book when the big change in this new universe was that Ash was now and girl AND dating the abusive asshole he's spent the whole book trying to get his friend to break up with

At a certain point, it's almost offensive - but I can see the audience for this. There are young white boys out there who don't pay attention to issues of race or gender and think that willful ignorance makes them good people. This book might be the one to open their eyes.

Not that I'm necessarily praising it. There's a lot of things that rubbed me the wrong way (: Ash being the literal center of the universe, Ash being crazy celebrated for coming out as gay (which read a little false to me in 2021 but who knows), the terrible handling of abusive relationships (yes, it's very very hard for the victim to see what situation they're in, but Ash basically just hand waves it away as "oh, yeah, OK, now I see that he's not all bad wow people sure are complicated" AND he only cares because he's trying to get into Katie's pants the whole time) ( )

I'm a great fan of Neal Shusterman's books, particularly the Unwind "dystology" and the Arc of the Scythe trilogy. Game Changer is a very different kind of book, and it took me a while to get into it.

Ashley, the main character, is a white high school senior and a lineman on his school's football team. When the story opens, he has a best friend who is black, Leo, a math tutor named Paul, a brother Hunter with whom he is not close, a quarterback Layton who is a quiet bully toward his girlfriend Katie, who Ashley wishes he could help, if not date. His father was a high school football player as well, but never had the chance to go to college and now runs an auto parts store.

When Ashley tackles an opposing team player during a game, the blow knocks him into another reality, where his life and everything he knows is slightly different; for example, stop lights are blue, not red. He begins to notice a skateboarder he hadn't seen before. This skateboarder, it turns out, is from another dimension. With each of the next few games, his reality is knocked off kilter a bit more, and the skateboarders, named Ed, begin to multiply. They exist to try and guide Ashley back to his original reality. The plot of the story is Shusterman's set up to say some things about racism, homosexuality, and sexism.

I didn't get into this story for a while. I was tempted to stop reading. I could see what Shusterman was up to. For example, in the next new reality, Leo is not his friend and neighbor. Ashley's tackle has altered reality so that segregation is still the law and Leo lives across town in a slum, while Ash's father is a retired pro footballer and the family is wealthy.

Shusterman has Ash experience what racism is really like, and then in turn, what life is like for LGBTQ people, and finally, women. I think the part of the story about Leo and racism, is one of the best, and clearly was influenced by the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.

One quote really hit home for me:
"No matter how smart we think we are, we simply can't know all there is to know -- and if you spend all of your time thinking about those things, it will drive you crazy. Mostly, we're okay with the things we don't get...But not everyone's like that. There are people who are so threatened by things they don't understand that they feel a need to stomp them out. They have to crush them so that each thing killed is one less thing to tax their brain. It's the force behind the worst things that human beings are capable of. It's also the cause of the small injustices we comes across every single day."

He uses the example of left-handedness, which was considered a sign of the devil in the middle ages. Even 100 years ago, teachers tried to make lefties use their right hands. Why? Fear that something was wrong with people who were left-handed. The fear of people and things that are different from us causes many to label the people and things as evil. The same kind of fear haunts all of the wearers of MAGA hats, in my opinion.

There is real food for thought in this novel. ( )