Running With Lions

Author: Julian Winters

Rating: 2/5

Sebastian, a rising senior, enjoys his last summer at the football summer camp.

Spoilers ahead.

Detailed Summary

Sebastian, a bi-sexual boy, goes to football summer camp with his best friends Mason and Willie. When he gets there, he sees Emir Shah, his ex-best friend. Emir had left for England when they were young so Sebastian made new friends. When Emir returned, they didn’t quite click and hated each other. Emir is Pakistani and ridiculed for his terrible football skills. Sebastian (who’s really attracted to him) helps him improve. Soon, the two start kissing and stuff. Sebastian suffers from body image issues–he was made fun of for being fat as a kid. Mason is a jerk to Grey Patrick, the coach’s daughter, who has a huge crush on him. Willie has to get knee surgery and doesn’t really get to spend much time on the field but he’s still very happy and positive. Sebastian is very close to punching one of the team members who said something bad about Emir which makes Emir angry for some reason? Something to do with not letting him stand up for himself? Grey challenges Mason to a football game and if she wins, they’ll go out. She wins but refuses to go out with him. Mason asks her out later. After the summer, when high school starts, they play against the Spartans. Sebastian is made captain. They win by Emir doing some impressive footwork when Sebastian tells him to. Sebastian apologises to Emir and they kiss.

Plot and Pacing

Running With Lions is a fairly predictable novel with smatterings of important themes. The football camp (it’s actually called “soccer” but yuck, I’m going with football) is refreshingly diverse and open-minded when it comes to gender identity. Almost all the characters identify as queer and the coaches’ support of them was wonderful to see. I liked that Winters didn’t hesitate to discuss the discrimination Emir faced for being Muslim and the inner turmoil of Sebastian’s mind due to his utter confusion about his future.

However, I didn’t feel particularly touched in any way while reading. This was probably largely due to the writing (more on that later). I kept getting confused about where exactly the story was set–UK or USA?–though I guess “soccer” was a giveaway. Emir and Sebastian’s backstory wasn’t convincing and, honestly, I thought it was quite dumb. Them hating each other made little sense to me and was mainly based on the misunderstanding that Sebastian didn’t want to be friends with Emir when he returned.

I was also under the impression that the Lions (the name of the team) would be playing against the Spartans over the summer.  I didn’t realise it wouldn’t happen until school started so that led to some confusion on my part. There didn’t seem to be a climax. Emir stops talking to Sebastian because the latter defended him? I don’t know, that doesn’t sit right with me.

Characters

There was a variety of characters in this book each with their own main “thing.” Sebastian struggles with his body image, the taunts of his childhood clear in his mind to this day. He is worried that he won’t be a good enough player and will let the team and his friends down. Emir just wants to make his father proud and is mainly grumpy for most of the book. Willie is the poetic, romantic guy who everyone loves. Mason is the jerk but has a sad backstory–his father was an alcoholic and left the family.

The issue, however, was the lack of development of these characters. I liked the characters but I couldn’t really care about them. I obviously wanted them to be happy but unlike other romance novels, I wasn’t heavily invested in them. Again, this was due to the writing.

Writing Style

Okay, the writing was very difficult to read. The book is written in third-person present-tense which I’m not a fan of. I prefer when third-person books are written in past-tense. (The one exception I can think of to this is Red, White and Royal Blue.) It took a really long time to get past this. Then the dialogue felt very forced. The banter between the boys didn’t strike me as particularly amusing and everyone keeps punching each other for some reason.

Also, though the majority of the book is third-person limited (from Sebastian’s perspective), there were random interjections where we’d get insight into another character like Coach Patrick or Emir. That ruined the flow and was confusing to read. The writing hindered my ability to really connect with the characters. It was rough and the book could have been at least a hundred pages shorter.

With that being said, the premise of the story is really interesting. I just think the delivery could have used some work. I think this was Winters’ debut novel so that does explain some of the choppiness. I really loved his Remy Cameron book.