The Trouble with Heroes - Kate Messner

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆

Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"One summer. Forty-six mountain peaks. A second chance to make things right.

Finn Connelly is nothing like his dad, a star athlete and firefighter hero who always ran toward danger until he died two years ago. Finn's about to fail seventh grade and has never made headlines...until now.

Caught on camera vandalizing a cemetery, he's in big trouble for kicking down some dead old lady's headstone. But it turns out that grave belongs to a legendary local mountain climber, and her daughter makes Finn an unusual deal: climb all forty-six Adirondack High Peaks with her dead mother's dog, and they can call it even.

In a wild three months of misadventures, mountain mud, and unexpected mentors, Finn begins to find his way on the trails. At the top of each peak, he can see for miles and slowly begins to understand more about himself and his dad. But the mountains don't care about any of that, and as the clock ticks down to September, they have more surprises in store. Finn's final summit challenge may be more than even a hero can face." 

This was one of the books under consideration for our state book award that I read in July, and it has stuck with me since I finished it. For starters, the format was pretty unique, told mostly through poems written by Finn for part of a make-up project to pass one of his classes. Reading his poetry, you could see Finn's outlook slowly shift as the summer went on, and readers got to know him so much more deeply seeing his thoughts in poetry form than we would have with a more traditional narration style. I also thought it was such a nice touch that after he finished the project, he told his teacher that he was going to continue writing poetry.

Another strong part of this story was the character building. Finn went hiking accompanied by a rotating group of "trail nannies" - there were three, each very different from each other, and the way they interacted with Finn as they hiked and brought things out in him in their own different ways was so sweet to read. It was especially touching reading his interactions with Coach, an older hiker who had previously been his dad's coach when he was in high school and had stayed in touch to support him in other ways later in life. I cried so much reading this book, but I swear I cried the most during the Coach hikes. 

Finally, one of the things I loved the most reading this was Finn deciding to come up with a different type of cookie to represent his experience on each hike. I loved the creativity of it, and it was such a surprisingly open, emotional thing to do - a bit silly, a bit tongue-in-cheek, but also Finn introspecting on his experience even before he was really willing to admit that he was embracing his mountaineering project. My biggest regret is that I didn't copy down the recipes before I returned my library book, so I guess I'll need to check it out again so I can try some of them. We've been talking about hiking when it gets cooler outside, too, and this makes me want to come up with some cookies inspired by some of our local mountains!