Plank’s Law
$14.95
Trevor has known since he was ten years old that he has Huntington’s disease, but at sixteen he is informed that he has one year to live. One day while he’s trying to figure stuff out, an old man named Plank finds him standing at a cliff by the ocean. It’s the beginning of an odd but intriguing relationship. Both Trevor and Plank decide to live by Plank’s Law, which is “just live.” This means Trevor has to act on the things on his bucket list, like hanging out with real penguins, star in a science fiction movie and actually talk to Sara―the girl at the hospital who smiles at him.
With the aid of Plank and Sara, Trevor revises his bucket list to include more important things and takes charge of his illness and his life.
Publisher : Orca Book Publishers
Publication date : September 12, 2017
Language : English
Print length : 192 pages
ISBN-10 : 1459812492
ISBN-13 : 978-1459812499
Item Weight : 8 ounces
Reading age : 12 – 17 years
Dimensions : 5 x 0.5 x 7.5 inches
Grade level : 8 – 12
Lexile measure : HL640L
Best Sellers Rank: #3,589,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1,039 in Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Boys’ & Men’s Issues (Books) #1,310 in Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Death & Dying #475,013 in Children’s Books (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 8 ratings var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
Holly Claxton –
A Cute Teen Romance
This review contains mild spoilers for the book. Please read with caution.I received a digital copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.Stories about terminally ill characters are often predictable. You know the main character is going to die. You know their fate before you even open the book. You know the story itself, as much as it tries to be heartwarming and cheery, still has a bittersweet reminder that it’s got a sad ending. That’s how I felt when I read the summary for Plank’s Law, and subsequently decided to read it just to see how true my assumptions would be.Oh, how wrong I ended up being.Plank’s Law is, by far, my favorite young adult novel I’ve read this year. It has so many good qualities between the characters, the storyline, and the life lessons we can pick up along the way. I found myself reading large portions of the book at a time, even going back and rereading some sections because of how much they stood out to me. With so many positive things about this book, I really can’t think of anything I would change with it. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it.One of my favorite aspects of this book comes in the characterization. Most of the characters we get to know over the course of the novel are terminally ill. Trevor, the main character, has Huntington’s Disease, and presumably has lost his will to power through life because he knows he’s going to die relatively soon. But, despite his outlook on life, Trevor meets and reacquaints himself with extremely lovable characters along the way. Plank, an older gentleman who has a pretty negative outlook on life due to old age, is the first one to teach Trevor to live life to it’s fullest potential. Outside of Plank, Trevor meets and falls in love with a girl named Sara. Sara is battling cancer, and proves over and over again that she is not going to let it define her. Trevor also spends time with a childhood friend, Antonio, who is a great example of living with mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. (Antonio wound up being my favorite character in the whole book, and I could write pages and pages on how important his character is.) These characters are strong, well defined, and relatable. They also normalize and bring awareness to how short life is.The story also has a sweet, incredibly well written romance. I did not expect a romance story when I started reading, but I’m so glad this story features one. The way Trevor and Sara are written together warms my heart, and makes me nostalgic for my days of dating in high school. Their story is unique, of course, and I would highly recommend anyone who loves sugary sweet romance give this story a chance. I had to give myself an opportunity to “awww” over passages here and there because they’re just so adorable. Beyond the romatic relationships, Trevor’s friendship with Plank and Antonio are also strong. Trevor trusts these two more than anything, even depend on them to make choices he wouldn’t have made at the beginning. All of Trevor’s relationships help him grow.The only negative thing I can say about this book is it is too short. There isn’t much to the story I would add, but I couldn’t help wanting more at the end because I had just grown to love these characters so much. I will most likely be looking into more of Lesley Choyce’s work in the future because of this book!
Robert August aka August von Orth –
A worthwhile novel dealing with very serious subjects.
I must admit that I was first drawn to this title because I’m a physicist and I inadvertently read the title as Planck’s Law, the law of physics involving blackbody radiation. I was curious to see how somebody could make fiction out of this physics principle. Of course, the title is actually Plank’s Law, and has nothing to do with physics. I didn’t realize this until I was reading the plot blurb about the book. When I realized my mistake, I was momentarily annoyed that someone would try to trick physicists in this manner. Until it occurred to me that the ‘fiction for physicists’ market would be so infinitesimal that the author would have to be nuts to seek it out on purpose. By this time, I’d read the blurb and was interested anyway.The book concerns a teenager, Trevor, dealing with a fatal Huntington’s diagnosis. Given that this is a YA book, this is pretty heavy subject matter. The novel opens with Trevor on the edge of a cliff, beginning to at least imagine what suicide would be like, and if it might be a better option for everyone. This is when Plank shows up, a quirky 93-year-old with a snarky manner that interests Trevor and distracts him from his morbid thoughts. They begin a friend/mentor relationship that advises Trevor throughout the book. Plank’s Law turns out to be a personal philosophy to “stop trying to make sense of things and bloody well live your life.”Key characters as the story develops are contemporaries Sara and Antonio. Antonio is a reckless best friend who disappears from the story, much to Trevor’s dismay, because of a move far away. Sara is a cancer patient with an easy beauty, both inside and out, who embraces Plank’s Law with Trevor as they deal with their diseases together. She eventually helps Trevor get back in contact with Antonio. The way these relationships develop is engaging and convincing and drew me along through three-quarters of the novel. Near the end, things seem rushed and less convincing. I found myself feeling unsatisfied by the end, probably because I expected a better wrap-up after such an artful build-up. Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile novel dealing with very serious subjects.
Bruna Miranda –
Meh…
The story is told by Trevor, a sixteen year old boy who suffers from Huntington’s Disease and who has pretty much one year to live. His story begins when he’s standing on a cliff looking at the waves and thinking about… well, not jumping, but flying. There he meets Plank, an old man who lives close by and they kind of become friends. So far so good, but from the start I had some problems with the writing style. To me it sounds like a movie narration, and usually that’s not always a bad thing, but in here it just felt a lot like “i want the main character to have this too cool for school narration style, that didn’t match with the character’s personalityThere’s a unexplainable insta-love – stalkerish, as well. The guys meets a girl in the hospital, the old man says: that’s her, go get her! He goes to the hospital every day for a week until they meet. And she thinks it’s adorable that he’s done thatIt was really easy, really fast – the book has less than 200 pages and I think that was a mistake.The author builds up this whole list of things Trevor wants to do before he dies, his love for penguins, how he’s a nice guy, his grandfather is in jail for manslaughter and their relationship is kind of unsure – and I have no idea why that was added to the story cause it has no relevancy whatsoever with the rest. I just wanted to see more things happening, unfortunately, it was not enjoyable, once I was done I felt like the author tried to create a new The Fault in Our Stars and it just ended being kind of a rip off that didn’t deliver.I would love to see this story with 250-300 pages, developing the characters the way they should be developed, not just trying to fill up space.