Joker takes place mostly at Matt’s house and at the beach. Joker explains a struggling life of a boy named Matt. His dad gets divorced and soon gets a new dad. And ever since that day his life has been falling apart. Unfortunately Matt decides to run away and live with two friends on the beach. In the beach is where he starts thinking deeply on what’s been happening to his life.

As Matt goes to visit his dad, to figure out why his mom divorced his dad. He quickly enters the house and finds that his dad is beating himself up. “Stop beating yourself up dad!” Couple of minutes later his dad is tired and rests from his rampage. Matt then notices the apartment, the dishes were dirty, there was laundry that needed to be done. At that point Matt wishes to start his life all over again. Then the theme of Joker is “starting over.” The reason it’s “starting over” is because Matt is very depressed at his own life, evidence shows that his new parents are bullying him so he wants every bit of his life changed. The author did a great job on surprising the audience. Very impressed at the shocking ending. Finding out that Matt’s a ghost in the end.

Joker and Speak are the same by their struggling problems. Almost no one talked to them, they were both considered outsiders. Both of them just wanted to start their lives all over again. Melissa and Matt also had deep, dark secrets that they didn’t want the world to know about. Even at the end both of them had to face there biggest fear. They were both scared to confront their fears, both scared to fight the people that changed their life’s forever. Feelings for this book, it was a ok book. A recommendation, people who like confusing mysterious this is your book. Therefore, a level recommendation is for 8th grade and up, because the book uses some bad language.