Purple Phantoms, by Julius Thompson
My review: ★★★★
This book is told from the point of view of a basketball coach leading a team that’s down on its luck. Their fortune changes when five ghosts of former players from the school team return to inhabit five current players from the team. Obviously, the story requires an immediate suspension of disbelief – you have to be willing to accept that premise and go on to see how the story works out. That said, it’s a fun basketball tale as well as a story of human struggle.
I used to play basketball myself in high school, and also used to live in Atlanta. So I enjoyed both the game scenes as well as the little glimpses of real places in Georgia. The characters are relatable and have their own realistic sets of behaviors and flaws. I felt that too much of the first part of the book dwelled on “Are they ghosts? Yes, they’re ghosts! No, not really – wait, could it really be ghosts? No. Yes.” Also the choice to use constantly-varying paragraph widths and combine speech from multiple speakers into the same paragraph drove me a bit batty. There’s a lot of reading,
“
Y
o
u
g
o
t
t
h
a
t
?
“
“
Y
e
s
,
c
o
a
c
h
!
“
Aside from that, it’s a fun tale that will definitely appeal to folks who love basketball. The author dedicates the book to the players he lost as a coach himself, which really shows this is a story from the heart. I enjoyed reading it, and you will, too! Recommended reading for anyone 10 and up.
