Last Chance Joey

After being expelled, Joey is sent to the country to help an old man. Will it turn his life around or will his past follow him? Joey is sent to the country where his phone won’t work, he’ll be far away from his buddies, and has to live with his great-aunt. His mother must be nuts if she thinks he’ll go. But there isn’t any choice. This is the third school he’s been asked to leave. For fighting. Which is stupid because he doesn’t fight. It’s an unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sure, he disrupts every class he attends—a skill he’s proud of. Or at least he pretends to be proud of. He has to disrupt them to keep everyone from realizing he can’t read. But it turns out that Auntie Belle is not so old and not so bad, and when she asks him to help out a neighbor who’s recovering from a bad accident, Joey finds a world he can understand. Young Harry has horses and dogs and a bull. And he has a garden that produces more food than Joey has seen in the city supermarket. It looks like Young Harry will become his new best friend—better than the ones he hung out with on the streets in the city. Young Harry is eighty-five years old. He doesn’t have a phone either—or anything else from the 21st century. But even without electricity and the internet, Joey has never felt more at home. He likes the trust Harry has in him, hopes to join the local football team and he enjoys going for rides with Emily, the girl who looks after Harry’s horses. But that’s until the break-ins start. Robbie, who thinks Emily is his girl, points the finger of blame at Joey and the locals turn against him. And when one of his friends from the city is revealed as the culprit, he wants to recruit Joey in his break and enters. After all, he can’t change who he is, can he? And the locals will never accept him as one of them. Or will they? And will Joey betray Young Harry? Last Chance Joey is a great read for every kid who struggles to find acceptance and their place in the world. Joey finds not only somewhere that he belongs, but also the courage to stand up for what’s important to him and the people he cares about.