Review of “The Believer Within You” by Tyrone Burnett

Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)

The Believer Within You is an ambitious fiction book by Tyrone Burnett. It is brilliantly illustrated by Lena Tusevljakovic Orlovic! This is no exaggeration: this might be the best-illustrated book of the year so far! It often blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction, drawing heavily upon the author's own experiences and the 2008 financial crisis. It also blurs the lines between a children's or middle-grade book and a book for adults.

Believe it or not, this is a book targeted toward young people about ethics in business and real-estate! When we say business, we're not talking about starting a lemonade stand or selling girl scout cookies. No, far from that. And when we say real-estate, we're not talking about building a tree house or wanting to reserve space in town for a park. This is a SERIOUS book about subjects like audits, foreclosures, deeds, mortgages, taxes, scams, Ponzi schemes, insurance, the threat of destitution or homelessness, lending banks, corporate corruption, and government corruption. Yes, really! You could even make the argument that this book touches a bit on gerrymandering, the manipulation of a district's borders to give one party a political advantage (in voting power).

Yeah, so this isn't your typical middle-grade book. On one hand, we greatly admired the heart, soul, thought, and effort that must've gone into crafting such an ambitious book. On the other hand, we're a bit confused as to who this book is supposed to appeal to or be read by. Even our MBA had to reread this book several times to understand the intricacies and complexities of all this business, legal, and ethics talk. It's a lot! This book is dense. It's full of knowledge, wisdom, and information—which is great—but it can also be overwhelming when it's so much all at once, packed into only about 80 pages. There's enough information in this to fill a small textbook.

Again, that can be a great thing or a non-so-great thing depending on the kind of reader you are, your age, knowledge, and experience.

Furthermore, although it does have a brief reference to religion and Christianity (about all hidden secrets being revealed), this really doesn't come across as a religious or Christian book, despite the title of the book implying that it is. You could possibly make the argument that it's a book about doing the right thing even when it's a difficult or uncomfortable thing, which Jesus would almost certainly approve of. However, you don't necessarily have to be a Christian to champion, agree with, or follow that message. An atheist could try to do the right thing with good intentions, for example.

Also, although it is a middle-grade book starring a 12-year-old main character, there are a lot of aspects of this book—mainly its subject matter, wordiness, and complexity—that indicate to us that this is more for adults. It just happens to feature a young woman as a central character, be shorter in length, and feature colorful, inviting illustrations like a middle-grade book.

The other small complaint and annoyance we had with this book is that it's written in present-tense. Everyone is free to write in whatever tense they want, however, it is preferable that a third-person fiction book be written in past-tense. The reason why is simply that it is easier and smoother to read a third-person fiction novel in past-tense because it sounds as though someone is describing events that have happened, which is how most of us are used to hearing stories. Present-tense makes it sound like a research paper. It makes it sound like a stage director setting the scene for the rest of the story. It doesn't sound or read very well with a full-length novel, especially when that novel is being told from a third-person, semi-omniscient perspective. It might make sense from a first-person perspective because a person talking from that perspective would be describing things as they are experiencing or seeing them. That's how the human brain processes things. We see, we interpret, when react/respond. However, what narrator is just sitting off-stage or looking down from the clouds telling us what they're seeing as they are seeing it? It's like trying to tow a heavy truck with a rope that's too long. It's like there's too much slack, so when the action actually happens, it's jarring. Likewise, when the narrator (the writing, not the narrator for the audiobook) is describing what is happening as it is happening (in present-tense), it sounds unnatural and jarring. It sounds more like the author teaching us something than the characters actually saying or thinking it.

Avoid present-tense when writing a story like this. Use past-tense. It just reads so much better and sounds so much more natural.

Anyway, let's get into more of the content of this book.

This book follows 12-year-old Brenda Sue Bellamy who lives in Northern Gainesville, Florida. Something you might need to keep in mind about Brenda Sue (that we missed on the first reading) is that she aspires to be a journalist: someone who is supposed to tell and report the truth, the impartial truth, and nothing but the impartial truth.

Brenda Sue overhears a suspicious conversation between Gary, her friend's sketchy dad, and an equally-sketchy stranger. The two talk about a scheme to get hopeful home buyers to sign off on fraudulent, phony, unsecured mortgages that will lead to all of them having their homes foreclosed. The rather confusing, complicated plot seems to be to create questions about the actual ownership of properties, leaving no paper trail so that the buyer cannot be accurately identified, then altering the real-estate parcel and tax map identifier to tie up the buyer in court while foreclosing on them.

This would all happen to the financial benefit of the stranger, who works for Landsdowne Real Estate Operators (a homebuilder and residential property development agency), and Gary himself.

This not only sounds unethical and illegal, it sounds downright evil! And it is!
It's also very confusing! But it's a good thing that the author (and characters) go over it about twenty times. Perhaps the best explanation is from Brenda Sue's mother, who compares it to changing the name of a book's main character in the middle of it, deliberately causing confusion and taking advantage of it.

Ultimately, it could lead to 10 million or more people losing their homes!

It just so happens that Brenda Sue's mother, Ida Jean, is an auditor. However, her auditing agency was deliberately left out of the loop by both the corrupt county and the development agency/unscrupulous contractor. It's a good thing that Brenda Sue comes forward with this information and is able to work with her mom to stop these wicked people from leaving over 10 million children homeless while filling their own pockets.

Like we said, this book has some rough things about it, primarily its complexity, writing, title, and general approach. It can be very confusing and convoluted. However, this book also does a lot of things exceptionally well. First and foremost, the illustrations are some of the best we've ever seen! The characters are beautiful, brilliant, expressive, and life-like. The backgrounds are too!

Secondly, the general message of this book is also very important and powerful: do the right thing, even if it isn't the easy thing. Be a whistleblower. When you see evil taking place, don't just stand by and do nothing. Say something!

Evil can only succeed when good people do nothing.

Check it out!