The Donut Prince of New York

Starred review from September 15, 2024
A plus-size playwright stars in his own high school drama. Eugene Guterman, a fat Jewish high school junior living in New York City, aspires to be a famous playwright, but he just can't seem to put pen to paper to write the drama club's fall play as promised. Meanwhile, new student Daisy Luna has caught his eye, but he struggles to imagine a story in which the big guy gets the girl. When a misguided attempt to impress Daisy leads to his accidentally breaking the school quarterback's wrist, Eugene joins the football team as an offensive lineman to make amends, even though he knows nothing about the game. Now, both popularity and Daisy's affections are within reach, but as he continues to blow off both his playwriting duties and his friends, he must decide who he truly wants to be. Eugene is instantly lovable, with a nice balance of sincerity and snark, and his experiences as a fat kid ring true, from his mother's unwanted comments about his weight to his reluctance to dance in public lest he become a meme. The secondary characters are well rounded; even quarterback Harry Habib and his cronies have depth to them, and Eugene's best friends, Mia Kim and Ishaan Iyengar, are equally nuanced. Theater references sprinkled throughout add some fun for thespians, but readers need not be familiar with either the stage or the football field to enjoy this excellently crafted novel. A pitch-perfect journey of self-discovery.(Fiction. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2024
Grades 9-12 Eugene, budding playwright and donut aficionado, has set his sights low for junior year: produce a show better than last year's ill-fated one-act play (that reviews said felt like five). Sadly, that's still too high. Even worse, on the first day, he embarrasses himself in front of his crush and dashes his school's football hopes by injuring Harry, the star quarterback. But Harry hatches a scheme for Eugene to join the football team, his girth a perfect shield allowing Harry to continue playing, injury unnoticed. Eugene accepts, thinking that the social cachet of being a jock could win his love's heart. He soon finds out that balancing romance, theater, and athletic glory might just be too much to manage. The story beats are classic for sports-themed YA and, in less adept hands, might have been stale. Thankfully, Zadoff's gift for dialogue and knack for character rises above the plot. Though packed with hilarious zingers and witty one-liners, Eugene's story--including his complex relationships with food, his plus-size body, and the social expectations of attractiveness--is one that will tug at readers' emotions.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 2, 2024
A fat teen tries to balance his new social status as a football player with his playwriting ambitions in this uplifting tale from Zadoff (Wild and Chase). Unlike his best friends Mia and Ishaan, Eugene Guterman isn’t convinced he’ll have a “junior peak, senior slide” at the start of his junior year of high school in N.Y.C. He’s self-conscious about his weight (exacerbated by his doctor mother’s diet schemes) and he hasn’t even started writing the play he promised to pen for the drama club. Worse, he might be pulled from the only class he shares with his crush, transfer student Daisy, and placed in adaptive gym, a pilot program boasting a more “personalized fitness setting.” After he literally crashes into star quarterback Harry, the football coach, impressed by Eugene’s physique (“Pudge don’t budge”), cajoles him into joining the team’s defensive line. But as he grows closer to his teammates and finally starts making romantic progress with Daisy, Eugene’s other relationships become strained. Laugh-out-loud humor, depictions of genuine teenage connections, and sly reworkings of evergreen tropes surrounding body image and high school stereotypes make for a subversive coming-of-age romp. Eugene is white and Jewish; supporting characters are racially diverse. Ages 14–up.