A cautionary tale from Britain about love on the Internet demonstrates the influence of online chat on teenage girls on both sides of the Atlantic. When Amy, 15, finds herself on the outs with her best friends since primary school, she retreats to a chat room to find companionship. There she meets the sympathetic and exciting Zed, whose teasing and sophisticated banter provides an exotic refuge from the dreariness of school and home. When Amy meets him in person despite the concerns of both her mother and her new friend and fellow loser Beaky, she finds that he is not as he had represented himself, and moreover has a disturbing lapse of consciousness during a day together on the beach. Could this be related to the mysterious reversal of her shirt and subsequent flashbacks of an unclothed Zed? The narration takes the form of a taped report given by Amy to the police after the event, and the occasional chapter heading indicating the recording time and inclusion of chat transcripts jar with the colloquial and conversational tone of the narrative itself, calling attention to the artifice rather than aiding any real suspension of disbelief. These jolts are few, however, and do not fatally impede the flow of the narrative. There are no surprises in this tale; teens who have had the rules of Internet safety drummed into them will be a step ahead of naïve little Amy all the way. But the near-universal obsession with chat will nevertheless make this an easy sell, and readers will enjoy this vicarious brush with danger. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-58234-793-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
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An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss.
It’s 1983, and 13-year-old Indian American Reha feels caught between two worlds.
Monday through Friday, she goes to a school where she stands out for not being White but where she has a weekday best friend, Rachel, and does English projects with potential crush Pete. On the weekends, she’s with her other best friend, Sunita (Sunny for short), at gatherings hosted by her Indian community. Reha feels frustrated that her parents refuse to acknowledge her Americanness and insist on raising her with Indian values and habits. Then, on the night of the middle school dance, her mother is admitted to the hospital, and Reha’s world is split in two again: this time, between hospital and home. Suddenly she must learn not just how to be both Indian and American, but also how to live with her mother’s leukemia diagnosis. The sections dealing with Reha’s immigrant identity rely on oft-told themes about the overprotectiveness of immigrant parents and lack the nuance found in later pages. Reha’s story of her evolving relationships with her parents, however, feels layered and real, and the scenes in which Reha must grapple with the possible loss of a parent are beautifully and sensitively rendered. The sophistication of the text makes it a valuable and thought-provoking read even for those older than the protagonist.
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss. (Verse novel. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304742-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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