When We Ride
by Rex Ogle
read by Ramón de Ocampo
Recorded Books, 2025. 3 hours, 28 minutes.
Review written July 11, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
I’ve come to know and love Rex Ogle’s writing from his award-winning memoirs about growing up in poverty and his recent Printz Honor book about being homeless as a teen after he came out as gay.
When We Ride is equally heartrending. This time a novel in verse. Fair warning: Like the others, it’s not exactly pleasant reading. But the novel is worse than the memoirs because now we have absolutely no guarantee the main character will get through it and come out okay. And here’s a heads’ up without being too spoilerish: The ending does not at all leave me feeling happy.
However, reading this short novel will build your empathy. I heard the author speak at ALA Annual Conference, and he said he wrote it in verse to give it lots of white space, since that’s the only kind of book his best friend from high school would ever read.
And the book is about two best friends in their senior year of high school. They live across the street from each other, and they’ve been friends since elementary school, so close they call each other Brother. Benny is the one telling the story. He’s working hard to go to college and get funds to pay for it. His mother is a drug addict who’s gotten clean, and she wants nothing more than for Benny to make a success of himself. And be nothing like her. She gave Benny her own car and rides the bus to her two jobs. And she works hard to provide for Benny, who also works at a diner in a job he hates, but works to help out his Mom.
Benny’s best friend Lawson, though, has taken another route to make ends meet. He’s dealing drugs. It starts as only weed, but things progress over the course of the year. Lawson doesn’t have a car, and most of the poems in this book begin with Lawson calling and saying, “I need a ride.”
Since Benny is Hispanic, it’s all too easy for him to imagine being pulled over by cops when Lawson is carrying drugs and Benny’s entire future being ruined. Lawson tells him if Benny doesn’t know he has drugs, there will be no problem. And as his brother, isn’t he supposed to be there when Lawson needs him? So Benny goes back and forth with guilt and anger and fear.
All the adults in Benny’s life tell him that Lawson is bad news and he needs to stop spending any time with him. But the reader (or listener) comes to understand how deep that tie of brotherhood runs and to see the great things about Lawson that keep Benny’s loyalty. But none of that makes Lawson’s path any safer.
This book is short, but hard-hitting. These characters will live in my head for a long time. It made me care about someone I would have otherwise dismissed – helping me understand more deeply my own belief that all people are made in the image of God. Yes, even drug dealers. When you know someone’s story, it’s so much easier to see their humanity.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/when_we_ride.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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