The actual heist is rollicking from start to finish, with plenty of mishaps and surprises to keep readers engaged.

The first half of the novel is gathering the players and setting up the heist, and the second is the execution. I'm a soft touch for character-driven work, and I love that these kids feel familiar and fresh at once. My favorite of the quartet is Audrey, a bubbly theater kid who’s dream role in the upcoming school play The Little Mermaid is Ursula rather than Ariel. He pulls together a dream team to achieve this, each fulfilling a specific role in the upcoming heist (the Brains, the Face, the Fingers, and the Muscle, respectively). Balancing time spent between the threatening halls of school and the neon floors of the arcade, readers follow Darius James/DJ, a retired ‘conkid’ who is forced back into the game when his best friend owes the notorious school bully a whopping 100,000 arcade tickets within a time limit. Ferraiolo, or The Great Greene Heist by Varian Johnson), and that’s part of what makes it so much fun. The events are heightened and hyperbolic (think The Great Splash by Jack D.

'Ocean’s Eleven meets kids in an arcade' is a fantastic premise in and of itself, and this story delivers on those promising expectations. I don’t typically write reviews, but this novel was written by one of the most creative and thoughtful writers I know and thus deserves a few remarks on why I love it so much.Ī high-octane middle grade heist story, High Score is snappy and smart in equal turns.

High score destiny howell