How It Works : Everyone Gets the Angel They Deserve

After a day in which he is dumped by his girlfriend, sleeps with a prostitute, steals a wallet, and is almost beaten to death by a homeless man, eighteen-year-old Seb tries to turn his life around as he searches for the Good Samaritan who saved his life.

Grade 9 Up–Eighteen-year-old Seb's life is falling apart: he has been selling drugs and has stopped going to college. After his girlfriend dumps him, he spends the day engaging in various illegal pursuits and is nearly beaten to death by a crazed homeless man. At the hospital, he discovers that someone interceded and saved his life. Seb's near-death experience prompts him to turn his life around. He is determined to find the man who helped him in order to thank him. As Seb searches for the Good Samaritan throughout London, he also embarks on a journey of spiritual understanding, and soon contemplates the impossible: could this stranger be a guardian angel? All of the evidence leads to an affirmative that helps him to get his life back in order. The plot is driven by Seb's search, which initially creates a sense of mystery. However, the subplots are too easily remedied and do not adequately connect to the rest of the story. Seb doesn't actually seem to struggle, and everything just falls into place without much incident. Additionally, the characters lack complexity. Seb seems to learn something about faith, but his discovery is without emotion. The secondary characters are stagnant and generally uninteresting. Despite a great concept, the book falls short.–Leigh Ann Morlock, formerly at Vernonia School District, OR
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*Starred Review* Gr. 9-12. Seb's life is going down the crapper. He's flunking out of college and dealing drugs for a guy who is totally whacked. To get away, he heads over to London's West End, where, in a day's time, he's stolen a wallet, slept with a prostitute, been rolled by her pimp and beaten up by a homeless man. He winds up in the hospital, where he's told a bystander waded into the fray and saved him. In a cleverly interlocking story, Seb's efforts to find his savior, Jay Brill, lead him to questions about divine intervention, the interplay between randomness and fate, and the meaning of his own life. Marks deals with these heavy issues in a most down-to-earth way, and Seb is a startlingly real kid-- always on his "mobile," smoking, using bad language, and surprised to find himself rescuing the prostitute, opening up to his parents, and seeking meaning where before he could conceive of none. The ending is justifiably open-ended, though a bit more clarity would have been welcome. Teens will have to come up with their own answers, but they'll find that what leads to the questions is utterly fascinating. Ilene Cooper
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