Leverage

AN ALA FOR YOUNG ADULTS PICK • A relevant book about bullies, their victims, and a high school football team where winning is the only thing that matters.

“Sometimes there’s a book so powerful and so ruthlessly brilliant that it makes you gasp and cheer. Leverage is that book.”—Carrie Jones, New York Times bestselling author of Need

“Leverage proves that no matter how bleak our past is, our fate, in the end, is in our own hands.”—Mohammed Naseehu Ali, author of The Prophet of Zongo Street

“About as dark and disturbing as YA literature gets.”—School Library Journal

There’s an extraordinary price for victory at Oregrove High.

It is paid on—and off—the football field. And it claims its victims without mercy—including the most innocent bystanders. When a violent, steroid-infused, ever-escalating prank war has devastating consequences, an unlikely friendship between a talented but emotionally damaged fullback and a promising gymnast might hold the key to a school’s salvation.

Told in alternating voices and with unapologetic truth, Leverage illuminates the fierce loyalty, flawed justice, and hard-won optimism of two young athletes.