My best friend in school, Christina, recommended this to me one day. I took her advice and picked up this book. Then I had no time to read it, but now I've gone back to read it again because she pressured me to read it once more. Now, I don't really know what to think about this. I tried to love it. I really did. But something about it didn't click with me. Congrats, Alabama Moon, for being my first 2 star review. 
 Summary: Moon Blake is only ten years old when his father passes away due to an infection that started in his leg. Moon and his dad lived in the forest, away from the law, and Moon's father hated the law, claiming that they did nothing for them. After Moon's father's death, Moon follows his advice to go to Alaska, but the journey proves harder than it seems. He is found by Constable Sanders, sent to a boys' home called Pinson, and undergoes many experiences afterwards. Along the way, he meets two boys, Kit and Hal, who become his first friends outside of his family. 
 Plot: The plot was possibly one of the hardest things for me to get into. After a while, I couldn't quite understand what Watt Key was trying to enforce as the main theme. Not many settings stuck around for long. Moon barely stayed in Pinson, he doesn't spend much time in "jail", and even his time in the wilderness isn't much. The setting changed constantly, and the plot was pretty difficult to keep up with. There's no way to summarize the whole plot without giving away spoilers and honestly, after a while the official synopsis got behind as well. I will agree that the plot is thought-out, but there are so many important but different plot points that it gave up on me for a while. This story was advertised as a surviving-in-the-wilderness story, but the times where the wilderness was present as a setting were probably the times when the filler content kicked in. 
 Also, the ending was a bit too happy-ever-after. 
 Characters: It agitated me how some characters just got along with Moon from the very beginning and didn't bother to question him. (view spoiler)[A great example of this is Moon's "family" that he is reunited with in Mobile at the end of the story. His whole family welcomes him and there's not ONE SINGLE PERSON who acts suspicious about him. (hide spoiler)] Furthermore, how old is Moon? Ten? I understand that he's lived in the wild for as long as he can remember, so he'll obviously be more skilled than regular ten-year-olds, but it was a bit difficult for me to believe that Moon was ten and not older. And I didn't feel any affection toward Moon in the reading much. A few times I was thinking in my head as I was reading, "Seriously? You're still doing that?" A few times, I actually did like Moon. But those times weren't often. 
 I didn't like many of the characters. I really only liked Kit, and at times, I even lost track of who was speaking. For example, towards the end of the story, Hal uses Moon's famous phrase, "whip/whip up", and I got so confused I had to start at the top of the page and backtrack from there. They blended in after a while. 
 Writing/Humor/Style: I'll admit that the pacing is good. The dialogue is solid because it was in the 1980's and it's in the South. And I did like reading about surviving in the wilderness. But enough is enough. I started skimming the parts when Moon talks about what he did in the wilderness. It got boring for me, and it's not like there's much of a chance we're going to end up in the wilderness anyway. I also liked the quiet humor that this book provided, like Sander's dogs always following Hal. This was pretty nice. 
 Overall, I actually enjoyed this book far more than it might seem. But I had so many issues with it that it became a struggle to even get myself through the pages. It isn't my type, so I think that's what happened. I recommend it for people who can deal with all of the issues I've mentioned before, and if you like survival stories, well, then, be my guest and have more woodland survival info dumped upon you. 
 2/5.