Our Beautiful Boys - by Sameer Pandya (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

When the star players on a high school football team are accused of violence by another student, their secrets--and the secrets of their parents--threaten to shatter their entire community in a gripping novel of race, class, and privilege from the author of Members Only.

"Timely and timeless . . . gorgeous yet understated storytelling . . . The struggles in Our Beautiful Boys are not exceptional dilemmas but rather uncomfortably common situations."--Nic Stone, The New York Times Book Review

Vikram Shastri has always been a good kid. He's got a 4.6 GPA, listens to his parents, barely hits the parties, and is on track for a fancy college. But when he gets the chance to play on his high school football team, his world suddenly starts to shift. Basking in their recent victory, Vikram and his teammates Diego and MJ attend a party at an abandoned house in the Southern California foothills, located right below three ancient caves. They find themselves lost in the dark of night in one of the caves, carried away by male bravado, with a classmate who has annoyed them for years.

But when the kid emerges with injuries that prove to be more serious than the all-star boys intended, they are suspended for the rest of the season, and the boys' parents are brought in to manage the situation. As the parents try to protect their boys, they are also managing their own complicated family and professional lives. While the parents work with, and against, one another to figure out the truth about that night, the boys must come to terms with how much of their own secrets they're willing to reveal to clear their names.

Insightful and deeply human, Our Beautiful Boys is about race and class, parents trying to raise good boys in our fraught times, and the conflict we find when all of these slam together. It's about the kids inside each parent and the games the world makes each of us play.

Review Quotes

"Timely and timeless . . . Pandya presents flawed but understandable people trying to navigate a murky situation with high stakes: the futures of these boys. Above all else, [it] is a book about the lies we knowingly or unwittingly tell ourselves."--The New York Times Book Review

"Absorbing and timely."-- San Francisco Chronicle

"Pandya reveals not just the secret heart of adolescence but also the fragile veneer of an adult world striving--and often failing--to guide it."--UCSB, The Current

"Our Beautiful Boys is a gift arriving in bookstores, coming in like a lion, as approachable as a lamb. The novel's prose is pellucid, straightforward, enveloping the reader, insinuating in the way serious fiction turns us in the culture, facets our seeing, our understanding."--Zyzzyva

"In Pandya's riveting latest, a Southern California high school is roiled when three football players are accused of assaulting a classmate . . . As tensions ignite between the families along class and racial lines, the boys' pact breaks down and the plot ramps up . . . This is a stunner."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Compassionate and propulsive, Our Beautiful Boys imbues a page-turning thriller mystery with moral force. . . . A deftly woven tale of fraying loyalties and family secrets."--Tania James, National Book Award longlisted author of Loot

"A kaleidoscopic marvel, at once sweeping in scope and intimately detailed.Sameer Pandya delivers a blazing portrait of the contemporary American family."--Kirstin Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Counterfeit

"Flat-out remarkable . . . A sports story--sure. But one that reaches deep into the souls of its characters to excavate complicated and necessary revelations about race, loyalty, and the complexity of masculine identity."--Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women

"Our Beautiful Boys is such a tight spiral, knitting together themes of identity, sports, and what-would-I-do? moral ambiguity. . . . A triumph, by turns, of literature, sports writing, cultural criticism, and ethical philosophy."--L. Jon Wertheim, 60 Minutes correspondent and author of Strokes of Genius

"Engrossing and suspenseful . . . Pandya deftly reveals the vulnerability beneath the swagger of not just our teen football players but their parents. . . . A compulsive read that explores the fragility of trust and how bad decisions set off a chain of irreversible consequences."--Marjan Kamali, national bestselling author of The Lion Women of Tehran

"Tense and tender . . . I would have read it in one sitting, but I had to set it down to call my son."--Sonora Jha, author of The Laughter

"Investigating masculinity, ethnicity, education, privilege and social standing, Pandya has delivered an incisive and thoughtful novel that not only speaks to our contemporary culture."--BookPage

"Our Beautiful Boys is a moving, suspenseful portrayal of young men pushing past the bounds of 'all the people that had come before him' on the complicated playing field of American identity."--Booklist, starred review

About the Author

Sameer Pandya is the author of the novel Members Only, a finalist for the California Book Award and an NPR "Books We Love" of 2020, and the story collection The Blind Writer, longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award. His cultural criticism has appeared in a range of publications, including the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic, Salon, and Sports Illustrated. A recipient of the PEN/Civitella Fellowship, he is currently an associate professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.