COLGAN, Trevor J: The Stretford Enders

The Stretford Enders by Trevor J Colgan is the first book in his trilogy, followed by The Stretford Enders Away and The Stretford Enders-Square one.

The books are based in Ireland and each revolved around a boy named Luke Farrel. This 15 year old girl is moved from his beloved city of Rathdale across to Dun Laoghair, by his mother. He is forced to give up his football and is thrown into a social status built town, where anyone who’s anyone knows not to give the new guy the time of day. Luke finds it hard to make friends at first, until he becomes caught in the web of Cecilia (a prissy gold digger). But this is a dangerous relationship seeing as Swayne (the school bully who happens to be Cecilia’s boyfriend and soon to be ex) has only one thought about Luke, and that is that he must beat him to a pulp.

All through this, Ella (a smart girl who happens to be the coach of the Dun Laoghair’s football teams daughter, and who looks down on Cecilia’s gold digging ways) watches quietly from the sidelines as Luke tries to balance all these new people, relations and feelings while carrying the mounting pressure of getting together a suitable football team, in time for the season.

As this is the opening book in this trilogy, Trevor worked hard to make it worth while to make into a small series, by appealing strongly to a certain audience, in this case people interested in football. Although this was his target audience, I also hoped that there would be more as I reached the last page. Both because I enjoyed the story, but also because I felt like it ended randomly without you letting you know what had really happened.

Although the scenes were described well, it was sometimes hard to keep up because there are a lot of football terms and talk during the game scenes that may be difficult for a non-football fan (like me) to understand.

Another negative point about this story is how sometimes the scenes fail to blend into one another and one or two actually fail to end, leaving you wondering where the last scene disappeared to.

Bad points aside, this book can make a interesting read, though mostly if you are looking for a teen crises or sporty type book.

This book may be relatable through change, loss, bullying, the feeling of needing to be the best, or to just fit in.