Ball Don't Lie

By Matt de la Peña

Categories: Literature & Fiction, Sports & Outdoors

Ball Don't Lie is the first novel by Matt de la Peña, published in 2005. Sticky is a skinny white seventeen-year-old in Los Angeles who has grown up in foster care. He spends his days playing pickup basketball at a gym with older players and hopes the game can be his way out. Through basketball, his girlfriend and his memories of a painful past, the novel follows his struggle to find stability and a future.

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• John Green: “Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie by Holly Black, Ball Don't Lie by Matt de la Peña, The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen, and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Those are very different books, they'd probably be called respectively a fantasy, a sports book, a romance, and a contemporary realistic book.”