cautionary?

Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: memoir, YA

Review: If the purpose of a YA memoir is to be a cautionary tale, I suppose this is a good one. Certainly it will make any teen think twice about accepting a job on a sailboat that's running drugs from St. Croix to New York. But perhaps Gantos's story of life in prison will not prove to be such a disincentive, since he gets a job in the prison hospital and never has to live with the general population. His biggest problem seems to be boredom. So yes, be cautioned, but Gantos's experiences overall are too atypical to really have much chance of changing the course of someone's life.