Review of Hoop Fanatics

[Youngreader720-OluwabukunmiWilliamsOso]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Hoop Fanatics" by E. D. Shorts.]

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1 out of 5 stars

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Hoop Fanatics (Dropping Some Unknown Knowledge on You) by E. D. Shorts (Big E) is a young adult novel that focuses on Coach-E (Eugene Davis) and his young group of students who were passionate about basketball. It all began at summer camp where Leonard "Lee" Davis, Lindsay "Liz" Valentine, Cordell "Chub" Creditt, and Edward "Ed" Valentine would sign up to be trained by Coach-E. Coach-E's methods would push them beyond their expectations, and there would be no middle ground between success and failure. Would the group adapt to his methods and achieve their dreams, or would they break in the face of stress?

The coach displays an excellent knowledge of the game of basketball in this story. He takes the group through developing jump shots, running laps, training on free throws, utilizing pump fakes, improving their defense, and low-posy drills, among other things. His idea that stepping onto the court is like stepping into a war zone is motivating, and he also imparts other lessons to the group, from the significance of giving your target everything you have to the importance of teamwork.

Unfortunately, there is not much else that I enjoyed while reading this book. Hoop Fanatics (Dropping Some Unknown Knowledge on You) by E. D. Shorts is a thoroughly disappointing and problematic read. The plot revolves around a summer basketball camp, but what could have been an exciting and engaging story is ruined by the subpar writing and offensive content. The writing is mostly in the form of dialogue, and you don't get to know a lot about the characters because the dialogue focuses mainly on training and basketball. Even when you get information about them, it is not information that endears them to the reader; for example, Coach-E pays child support but can't see his child, which readers can connect to, but he jokes about letting his gun do the talking for him against his child's mother.

The central character, Coach-E, is portrayed as a military-style coach, and while I like this feature, he uses inappropriate language and is insensitive toward young kids, and I highly doubt that those with low self-esteem or without natural sporting abilities can thrive under his leadership. He also does not set the best example for the young ones, as he is a womanizer and flaunts this aspect of his life in front of the teenagers while hurling occasional insults at them.

Furthermore, the author's writing style is clunky and awkward, making the reading experience a chore rather than a pleasure. The characters are poorly developed, and the dialogue is stilted and unrealistic, especially since all of the characters sound like children and barely have any in-depth conversations. The most interesting conversation they had as a group revolved around all the holidays in a year and what they enjoyed about them, which spanned the entirety of two chapters and did not add anything to the overall story.

Overall, Hoop Fanatics (Dropping Some Unknown Knowledge on You) is not a book I will be reading again or recommending to any target audience. The problematic content, poor writing, and weak plot mean that I will settle for awarding a rating of one out of five. Also, while I found three errors in the text, there were some other errors in the dialogue, which I could not mark, but I would say that the book seemed professionally edited.

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Hoop Fanatics
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[Patty Allread]

It can be really challenging to write a review on a book that has so many flaws. You did an excellent job explaining.

[ojukwu2]

It's always interesting to come across such wonderful review. I would love to commend the author for this master piece. Kodus