Rookie Year
by J. Kilburn
Genre: General Fiction / Family Life
ISBN: 9798989915200
Print Length: 430 pages
Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski
Coming of age in rural Vermont isn’t all fun and sexual frolic. Or is it?
The entertaining love triangle of Brittany, Bruce, and Tabitha hits some bumps (and baby bumps) as “adulting” takes on new meanings for each in J. Kilburn’s sequel to Before.
Now attending college, Bruce Sutton is working hard to get an education while also working his way through the Vermont State Police Auxiliary Trooper program. He dreams of having a real job, just as he dreams of keeping his feisty-yet-flighty girlfriend Brittany with him after her breakup with her former girlfriend Tabitha. While Tabitha and Brittany co-parent, Bruce struggles to find his footing both in his relationship with Brittany and his professional training with the Vermont state troopers.
Making matters more confusing is the fact his auxiliary trainer is ex-Air Force veteran Christine Henri, a woman with a meteoric rise through the ranks that confounds most of the police force—except for a top secret cadre of law enforcement officials who have bigger plans for both Bruce and “Henry,” as most refer to the female super trooper. There is still a biker gang to infiltrate, and it will require two highly trained undercover agents to break through their ranks. Will these two new rookies cop to what their superiors have planned for them?
Kilburn focuses on Bruce’s maturation. The young college boy eagerly jumps back into Brittany’s waiting arms while he walks a tightrope with her family: her redoubtable yet tender-hearted grandmother and her father—a retired State Trooper, college professor, his academic advisor, and the principal consultant on a major state task force to bring down Vermont’s largest organized crime syndicate. Of course, the last qualifier is quite secret, indeed.
The story is told in a lively fashion. Kilburn has an ear for idioms and the more libidinal forms of communication often used by young people. His characters inhabit a world of sex positivity, but the nonjudgmental adults all read a bit wishful. The real strengths of Rookie Year are not in the endless “come hither” moments with Bruce and Brittany but rather the comedy that graces a plethora of situations, conversations, and even quiet moments. Kilburn delivers script-ready dialogue that at times is laugh out loud funny.
The pace can be pretty slow at times, and the story soaks a tad long in a hormonal teenage bath, emphasizing Brittany’s oversexed plans to bed and wed Bruce (who does not mind at all). But perhaps the Three’s Company-on-Viagra approach is part of the point of this coming-of-age tale.
The portrayal of rural Vermont and memories of older times rings true. In his more rhapsodic moments Kilburn strings together touching prose that captures the bond Brittany and her grandmother share living in the old farmhouse in The Hollow:
“The children were dead or away on the Opposite Side of the World, and Hattie was alone with a baby. Brittany was just past a toddler then, living there in the care of her grandmother. She didn’t even remember the cows, probably, but she’d lived there, in the farmhouse. Both when it was a Working Farm and also after.”
The action does pick up—especially after a shocking moment on duty threatens Bruce’s future as a state trooper. Rookie Year is a light-hearted adventure of young people in love, lust, and looking for their direction.
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