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Hurwin tackles the ugliness of hate in a story, told in alternating voices and based on true events, about two boys with more in common than they know at first. Jason, 13, works the streets in San Francisco after his religious mother refuses to accept his coming out. Then he moves to L.A., where Doug, 17, is barely speaking to his parents and is immersed in the punk scene. The narrative counts down to a night in 1980 in which a gay-bashing attack occurred, and the alternating chapters eventually give way to alternating paragraphs as the tension mounts. The dialogue and portrayals of street life are authentic and grim; Adam Rapp fans won't blink an eye. Hurwin frankly discusses sex, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, homosexuality, white supremacy, and other issues without being gratuitous or graphic. The years following the attack and a chance reconciliation (the story is based on the lives of Matthew Boger and Timothy Zaal) are less detailed than the early years, but their incorporation brings a more hopeful ending than that of famous victim Matthew Shephard.--Dobrez, Cindy Copyright 2009 Booklist

Publishers Weekly
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Inspired by the true story of a vicious hate crime in Los Angeles in 1980, Hurwin (Circle the Soul Softly) traces the converging paths of two teenage boys. Thrown out of his home for being gay, 13-year-old Jason lives on the streets, where he turns tricks and finds community, but is later brutally beaten and left for dead. Though he survives, he is forever changed by that hatred ("Before the alley, I didn't understand that people could stop being human and still live"). Doug lives with an abusive dad and racist family that, along with his embrace of punk culture, help form his skinhead roots. Hurwin's descriptions of Doug's addiction to violence are especially riveting ("getting hit more and more, hitting back and feeling how that is, my fist on their flesh, always forward. It's awesome"), giving readers insight into the 17-year-old who savagely beats Jason, believing that he killed him. Sympathetic to both characters without shying away from brutality-physical or emotional-the finely crafted story leads to a powerful climax of hope and redemption that will stay with readers. Ages 15-up. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal
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Gr 9 Up-Freaks and Revelations is based on a true story so emotionally detailed that it could easily be a memoir. Jason is 13 when he comes out to his Catholic middle-class family. His mother kicks him out and says he can return when he's done being gay. He learns to be homeless, and sells himself on the streets of San Francisco and then L.A. Doug is a 17-year-old neo-Nazi punk rocker. On March 27, 1980, he and a gang of other punks beat Jason nearly to death in the parking lot of "their" fast-food spot. The author saves the narrative from melodrama with masterfully sensitive and humanistic character development. Hurwin gets inside her characters' pain without sentiment; she presents each home and its horrors soberly. The story is set in episodes before and after the beating and unfolds with steady tension toward the climax. The seminal punk rock scene of late '70s Los Angeles is perfectly wrought, as are the excesses of pre-AIDS San Francisco. The author's prose is clear and incisive, and many chapters resonate like good short stories. Jason's narrative stands with Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson's Target (Roaring Brook, 2003) and Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak (Farrar, 1999) as a survivor's story. Doug's equally layered story-of coming full circle out of hate-sets it apart.-Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Tattooed, abused, racist, shaven-headed Doug smokes, drinks and travels with a pack of thuggish, troublemaking punks in Los Angeles. Kicked out of his religious mother's home for being gay, Jason lives on his own on the streets of San Francisco, earning his wages on street corners and befriending a pack of fellow teen male prostitutes. Chapter titles grimly count down to the two boys' inevitable and no doubt violent meeting. Hurwin's latest may sound like the perfect, gritty survival story that reluctant readers would love to sink their teeth into, but her motherly tone doesn't match either plotline or the voices of its characters, especially early on, in the emotionally tenderized descriptions of Doug's abuse by his father ("I hate that she says that word. It make me think that we're still not safe"). If readers can get past the schmaltz, they will find some genuine instances of street-smart edginess. Before they know it, the brutal climaxwhich should come as no surpriseis upon them. A sappy and cautionary denouement follows. A yawner of a story based on true events. (Fiction. YA) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.