Fifteen-year-old Brett Gerson is the kind of kid you love to hate: smug, arrogant, and filthy rich. When his dad is jailed for insider trading, Brett loses the mansion, the Mercedes, and his beloved stereo--and is forced to take a summer job assisting the man who used to clean his family's swimming pool. Told in the first person and set in a fictional California town," Pool Boy" marks the debut of a gifted writer for young adults--and an almost equally engaging and infuriating anti-hero. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Gr 7 Up-Brett, 15, had it all: good looks, a winning personality, and a lot of money. That is, until the police busted his dad for money laundering and insider trading. Now the teen's posh lifestyle-like his dad-has gone to the dogs, and Brett, his mom, and sister move into their great-aunt's humble two-story on the other side of the tracks. Forced to help out in making ends meet, the teen takes a job cleaning pools in his old upscale neighborhood. With surprisingly sharp insight for a first novel, Simmons doesn't bat an eyelash in forcing his arrogantly smug antihero to combat a truckload of issues involving his new life in a lower-income bracket. Dubbed "pool boy" by the new owners of the house that his own family lost, Brett stubbornly comes to terms with forgiving his father for being a criminal and losing the family fortune. What results from Simmons's dead-on characterization in this well-told first-person account is a humorous yet thought-provoking journey through the life and mind of a self-centered young man who must now reconsider his own sense of responsibility to rebuild the life torn apart by his father's crimes.-Hillias J. Martin, New York Public LibraryCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information