Review

Eleven teenagers attending an end-of-school party, each with his or her own reasons and motivations to go, relate their stories. The narrative style is effective in showing that what is on the surface isn't always the whole story. The characters are strongly written, and teens will relate to many of the issues that they face.~ The Horn Book Guide Fall 2010

This novel, told from multiple perspectives, is about an end-of-the-school-year party at a typical middle-class high school. The 11 narrators include an outcast, a skater, an immigrant's son, a jock, and a lady's man, among others. All of these teens have their own expectations for the gathering, and their reasons for going range from simply getting drunk to expressing their love to making new friends. The first character presented, Beckett, is immediately intriguing, and the format allows readers to get to know her (and all the other characters) through the eyes of more than one person, lending depth to the story. ... This is a quick and entertaining read. ~ School Library Journal Apr. 2010

On this night in Santa Barbara, California, the stories of 11 very different high school students who live very different lives converge at an end-of-the-year house party. Each of them has a moment of realization, and each has a deep impact on every other person's life. Although the night begins at a very different place for each of the teens, it ends with a horrific scene that shows the true pain of their worlds. ... However, as we all know, there are those moments in our lives that we wish--over and over again--we could take back, moments that trigger some dark spot in our minds that switches our common sense, our hearts, and our feelings off. For each of these 11 high school students, one moment sears in their minds and can't soon be forgotten. Will they be able to get what they sought, or will they be left licking their mental and physical wounds, never to be healed? Party is Tom Leveen's debut novel and is an appropriate read for grades 9 and above. The issues that are discussed in this book range across sex, religion, suicide, hate crimes, drugs, and dating. Such challenges are a part of every high school student's life in one way or another, which should make the pages turn for most every reader in this age bracket. These controversial issues are dealt with in a very powerful way, much like the movie Crash, which dealt with similar issues. This book may help young people, who are trying to make sense of a very complicated world, as they experience the lives of Leveen's characters from the safe distance of reading. ~ Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy Dec. 2010

About the Author

Tom Leveen is the author of nine novels with imprints of Random House, Simon & Schuster, and others. His novel Hellworld is a Bram Stoker Award Finalist, and his novel Sick won the Westchester Fiction Award and Grand Canyon Reader Award. Zero was a YALSA Best Book of 2013. He has written for the comic book series Spawn with Todd McFarlane, and brings more than twenty years of theatre experience to his writing classes and school visits.

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