• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2019 March #2
  *Starred Review* Seventeen-year-old Ethan's life centers around the Green Street Cinema. He works there, retreats there, and reveres the art house as the special place he and his film professor father bonded. Now his father has been dead for several years, and the dilapidated movie house is going to be torn down, leaving its assortment of misfit employees out of work and disoriented. Ethan, the erstwhile manager of Green Street, feels obligated to save the theater, a Don Quixote-like endeavor; his windmills will include karaoke-singing real-estate developers and rats fat from gorging on Junior Mints. Add to the mix the reappearance of Raina, Ethan's first love, who has been making movies in Hollywood, and Ethan feels like he's in his own movie—one that probably won't have a happy ending. Characters are the thing here. Although the cinephile-as-awkward-hero is not unknown in YA books, Bognanni does a particularly fine job individualizing Ethan, who's struggling with so many different issues, yet is wry and hopeful, idealistic, and finally, realistic. A strong supporting cast contributes both the wisdom of elders and the zaniness of youth, while Ethan and Raina's awkward and sweet relationship dance makes for a tender core. Ethan's Glossary of Film Terms interspersed throughout extend the story. Film aficionados and fans of John Green will especially like this one. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

Peter Bognanni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His debut novel, The House of Tomorrow, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the ALA Alex Award and has been adapted into a feature film. He teaches creative writing at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.