As the city of San Juan pulses to summer's sluggish beat, its teenage football prodigy, El Brujito, vanishes without trace. Paul Faustino, South America's top sports journalist, is reluctantly drawn into the mystery (Goodreads).
Peet writes relatively well; the setting and characters are all described thoroughly, and the overall plot is pretty compelling in and of itself. However, to put it frankly, the book is dull. Not to a huge extent, but the writing is presented in a very bland way, and it's hard to be invested in the positives mentioned earlier when the plot moves slowly. Both plot lines have their moments, but the novel goes back and forth between them so much so that, as soon as one is invested, it switches back, and the reader is forced to start over. Those looking for a book about the sport of soccer (or football for the rest of the world) should look elsewhere, as the sport is not really a factor. Not necessarily a negative, just something of note. Faustino is a likeable enough character, but the rest of the cast echoes just about everything else about the novel: mediocrity. 6.6/10
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