Bruiser by Neal Shusterman
Hardcover, 336 pages
820L

I’ve been waiting for Bruiser since April of last year (edit: this was written in 2009), and it was well worth the wait. In Bruiser, Shusterman uses multiple perspectives again, and more successfully than in Unwind. This time, we’re only in the heads of the principle characters, rather than many different characters.

Brewster is an empath. He absorbs the feelings of the people that he likes. I can’t imagine what it would be like to absorb the feelings of the people whose company I enjoyed. I think about the empath in an episode of Charmed, who had to shut himself off, living in an abandoned building to get away from the feelings of all the people in the city.

Because I don’t want to ruin the story for my faithful readers, I’m not going to say anymore than that. Enjoy!