Guys Read: Believing in Brooklyn audiobook

Believing in Brooklyn by Matt De La PenaIt’s about a kid named Benny whose Grandmother is sick so is best friend Ray and he decide to invent a wishing machine to help his grandmother get well. Every day going to school Benny would always walk by a homeless man and donate money. After they wished for his grandmother they also wished for a fresh pizza. Benny woke up the next day and there was no pizza. So then he waited until after school and then found a fresh pizza on his bed. He knew his grandmother didn’t do it because she was too old and fragile. So the next day at school he investigated all his friends, but he couldn’t find any reason. But when he walked home, he saw police cars outside his house. He saw a man being arrested and his grandmother being carried out on a stretcher. A police officer said a random man and saved his grandmother’s life. He then finds out the whole story. It turns out to be the homeless man that he donated to every day heard about the wishing machine and the pizza and when he was going to give him another pizza, he found his grandmother in her chair so he called 911 and saved her life.

** spoiler alert ** All of the "Guys Read: Thriller" stories gave me the chills. I loved "Believing in Brooklyn." It was a really amazing story of how a kid whose grandmother was dying gave some coins to a homeless person every time he walked by a deli. The reason why was that the guy reminded him of his grandmother. And despite his friends' disapprovals, the kid kept giving the man his spare change. Meanwhile, the kid's friend gave him a drawing of a "magical wish machine," and the kid taped it up on his wall. Soon, the kid began to wish for stuff. And he got his wishes at odd times, but they were always a little different than what he had asked for. He suspected the people around him were pulling a prank on him. He even suspected his sick grandma to be the one doing it. So one night, he asked for the only remnant that his grandmother had of her dead husband that she had lost some time ago: a silver necklace. An odd series of events happened next. When he was coming back from school, the kid saw ambulances and police cars in front of his house. When he got there, he saw his grandmother being loaded into an ambulance. He found out from a police officer that his homeless friend was in the house with a gold necklace that looked exactly like the one the grandma lost. When the man went into the house, he saw the grandma passed out on the floor and he dialed 911. The man just wanted the kid to believe in the wish machine, all because of the spare change the boy gave him. In the Guys Read books, genre doesn't matter at all as much as theme. Because it's genre that grouped these books together, but theme that set them apart. The theme here could be "Give a little, get a lot" or "A little goes a long way."

Really good book but has a bit of a cliff hanger in its ending.