In The Silent Swan, Lex Keating follows Gabriel, the protagonist of this story, through his school and home life where he reigns supreme in all things. He gets the girl, he’s captain of the baseball team, he coaches a junior baseball team, he’s king of his brothers… until a new rule imposed by his parents throws him into the path of one girl, Tam Swann, who changes him forever.

I don’t think I was quite prepared for what an emotional journey The Silent Swan turned out to be. And it was a good emotional journey. It wasn’t one of those depressing stories with no hope. It was one of those stories with some depressing parts that ends up full of hope.

The Silent Swan is very long (I read the electronic version from NetGalley, but the Amazon listing puts it over 500 physical pages). If I could change one thing about it, I’d make Gabe a first person narrator rather than telling the whole story in third person. I was able to connect with all of the characters in third person, but I really would have liked that first person connection with Gabe. Or even alternating first person points of view between Gabe and Tam.

Regardless of my POV preferences, The Silent Swan is a heart-warming story that will stick with its readers. One huge plus to this good YA novel is also that it’s pretty much completely clean, and the length and vocabulary should make the lexile level pretty high up there. I’d be totally comfortable having this in my middle school ELA classroom as a challenge novel to advanced readers.

The Silent Swan releases on September 10th. Click here to find it on Amazon!