A satisfying story—right up until readers are left wanting more.
A high school senior tries middle school again.
Seventh graders Mason Rolle and Tyrus Ehrlich are more than best friends, they’re platonic soul mates. That is, until cool New Yorker Ava Petrakis shows up at Pasco Middle School, befriends them both, and starts flirting with Mason. The boys attempt to create a bros-before-girls pact, promising that they won’t ruin their friendship by trying to date her, but when Mason kisses Ava during a freak storm at the Harvest Festival, he sets in motion a chain of events that destroys their friendship and ends with his getting expelled from school in his senior year after accidentally assaulting his favorite teacher. A near-death experience mysteriously thrusts Mason back to that fateful middle school moment, and he tries to figure out both how he traveled through time and how he can fix his future. Watching Mason learn from mistakes and explore new aspects of himself (especially with a 17-year-old consciousness trapped in a preteen body) is vicariously satisfying, and the sheer fascination of his predicament will keep readers turning pages, anxious to find out if he succeeds. The story ends well but with no conclusive answers to the questions Korman tantalizingly dangles throughout. Main characters read as White.
A satisfying story—right up until readers are left wanting more. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-303274-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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BOOK TO SCREEN
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure.
In a world based on Greek mythology, a 12-year-old aspires to be a Ferryer of the dead but gets off track when she meets a Living girl who’s found her way into the Underworld.
All Senka knows is her existence on an island in the middle of the Acheron River, “smack between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead,” where she’s the ward of Charon, the Ferryer of souls. Her teacher is an enormous raven named Mortimer. After Senka, who presents white, learns the Rules for Ferryers, Charon agrees to her repeated requests and starts training her to become a Ferryer. But when an emergency leads to Senka’s being left alone, she disobeys Charon’s explicit orders, takes the boat out on her own—and quickly learns that ferrying souls is far more complicated than she realized. She encounters dark-haired, brown-skinned Poppy, whose “edges are crisp”—she’s a Living girl who will sacrifice anything to find Joey, her younger brother who died. As Senka tries to convince Poppy to return to the Shore of the Living, the two get stuck in the Underwild, a “lawless place where chaos reigns” that’s filled with innumerable dangers and shrouded in secrets. Senka’s lively first-person narration relates the unexpected friendship that forms through her shared adventures with Poppy as they face mortality and the unknown. Debut author Targosz offers readers a meaningful exploration of grief and its impact on those left behind.
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781665957632
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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