Ghost by Jason Reynolds (208 Pages) is the story of a boy, named Castle Cranshaw but prefers to go by Ghost, who wants to move forward but can’t seem to forget the night where his dad shot at him and his mom in a sort of alcoholic rage. Castle spends a lot of his time, when he’s not at school, eating sunflower seeds and watching people do exercise. But, one day after Castle gets his watching people at the gym fix, he goes to the park and sees people running and slowly becomes more and more intrigued. And after seeing this one boy, he wants to try to randomly prove himself. After getting told to get off the track for a bit, he does eventually get allowed one race against the other boy and surprisingly they’re even. This leads to Coach Otis, asking him to join. Which then leads to Castle becoming more and more involved with the track team.

A favorite character for many, Mr. Charles, while he only really runs the store Castle frequents for sunflower seeds. Mr. Charles ends up being a sorta Uncle figure to Castle. His store is also both a safe place and a place of bad memories for him. Castle also seems to trust and confide in Mr. Charles by telling him about his botched shoe operation.

One of the characters who has the most development throughout the book is Lu. Lu starts as a sort of antagonist, he’s also a driving force behind why Castle runs in the first place. But slowly, and especially after the “Newbie Dinner”, the new runners, the main cast, become closer. This leads to Castle and Lu slowly becoming more like friends and less like enemies. Lu just comes and shows that some people could just be misunderstood.

In chapter nine, after Coach confronts Castle about something, during their big argument, Coach says “You can't run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be.”. Coach says this to Castle in what he was trying to teach him. This point in the story is basically the “melting point” . If I could describe it I would say imagine a pot full of oil, boiling and it accidentally catches on fire and there’s a huge unstoppable fire roaring. That is basically what goes on during this chapter, but throughout the book, we start learning more and more about Castle. And, one of the things we learn about him is his sad past, but following him, we get to see how truly he is stuck up in the past. We also learn that Coach is not very different from Castle, especially in their similar pasts. Accepting who or what makes you up and trying for self-betterment is better than trying to avoid who you really are.

In the end, I say that this is definitely a 4-star book. I found the book really enjoyable but I feel like, near the end of the book, Castle just loses what makes him himself. For the first part of the book Castle goes on a lot of random tangents which I feel like makes the book a really “sweet” read, it has its charm but near the last 3 chapters, it just goes away, you don’t see his inner thoughts as much. But, I think it is mostly due to it being only 10 chapters. Other than that, I say you should read it since Castle is relatable, and just overall a very good protagonist, he has a nice charm, the interactions between the characters are very nice, their bonds grow throughout the book, while it does pull a bit of the sudden friends trope, I still think their interactions are nice, and it faces issues regarding someone’s past. If you want to read the charming yet sadly short story of Castle Crenshaw, or Ghost, then read Ghost.