Review: Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick

Title: Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
Author: Matthew Quick
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release date: August 13th 2013
Source: Netgalley
Format: egalley

Rating: 4/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends. I want to say good-bye to them properly. I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I'm sorry I couldn't be more than I was—that I couldn't stick around—and that what's going to happen today isn't their fault.

Today is Leonard Peacock's birthday. It is also the day he hides a gun in his backpack. Because today is the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather's P-38 pistol.

But first he must say good-bye to the four people who matter most to him: his Humphrey Bogart-obsessed next-door neighbor, Walt; his classmate Baback, a violin virtuoso; Lauren, the Christian homeschooler he has a crush on; and Herr Silverman, who teaches the high school's class on the Holocaust. Speaking to each in turn, Leonard slowly reveals his secrets as the hours tick by and the moment of truth approaches.

In this riveting book, acclaimed author Matthew Quick unflinchingly examines the impossible choices that must be made—and the light in us all that never goes out.

This is the first Matthew Quick book I've ever read, he´s the author of The Silver Linings Playbook and I had while wanting to read one of his books. And Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, is a really good book and I liked it a lot even though is a very sad story..

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock tells the story of Leonard  a boy that on his eighteenth birthday plans to kill his former best friend and then commit suicide, so we follow Leonard for about 24 hours on which he plans to bid farewell to the people that the feels closer to and deliver gifts to everyone. But on this day we are inside the head of a boy that is angry with life, confused, lonely, with absent parents and he do not want to become an adult, because in his view becoming an adult he will be even more unhappy, so he feels that he has no other way out, so he decides to commit suicide, but first he plans on getting back at his former best friend.

But during the day we see more than in one occasion that Leonard is wishing that someone, anyone can see through him and stop him, he even put conditions to himself that if someone wishes him a happy birthday he will not go through with his plans, which I found very sad. But we also see a little of his life before and that happened to him to make this decision.

There are two characters that I loved, one is his neighbor Walt, with whom Leonard has a very special relationship as they spend the days watching Humphrey Bogart movies and communicate quoting dialogues of different films. And my favorite is undoubtedly Herr Silverman, Leonard´s teacher and the person that he admire the most, I really liked the way he counseled him and manages to actually see him.

This book is one of the saddest I've read, the story is real, raw and with a bittersweet ending, but the story is very well written and this book is worth reading.

I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.