A beach read with depth that will keep readers engaged.
Beautiful and gifted with a lovely voice, Elyse was on the verge of launching a successful singing career in Tobago with her twin sister, Natalie, until an accident ended her dreams and career forever.
Body healed, heart and soul still battered and torn, Elyse has fled to a tiny town on the Oregon coast, accepting an invitation to stay with Lemon, an old family friend, and her daughter, Kirby. Raw pain prevents Elyse from accepting Kirby’s overtures of friendship or socializing; then hot, charismatic Christian Kane arrives home from Stanford and offers Elyse a job: help him restore and race his battered sailboat in the annual regatta. The stakes rise when Christian’s dad and the mayor manipulate their sons, close friends, into competing against each other. If Christian wins, his father won’t sell his property—the Kane house and the adjacent house Lemon rents from him—to a developer as a looming voter initiative on development threatens to turn Atargatis Cove into another cookie-cutter resort town. Falling in love with Christian and their steamy romance awaken Elyse’s desire to find a way forward for herself, yet with each step, she’s flooded anew with regret for all she’s lost. While the plot follows category romance norms and occasionally dips into melodrama, Elyse’s journey and struggles to assimilate her disability—portrayed with compassion and insight—are compelling and original.
A beach read with depth that will keep readers engaged. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-0127-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes.
The Plague has left a population divided between Elites and Ordinaries—those who have powers and those who don’t; now, an Ordinary teen fights for her life.
Paedyn Gray witnessed the king kill her father five years ago, and she’s been thieving and sleeping rough ever since, all while faking Psychic abilities. When she inadvertently saves the life of Prince Kai, she becomes embroiled in the Purging Trials, a competition to commemorate the sickness that killed most of the kingdom’s Ordinaries. Kai’s duties as the future Enforcer include eradicating any remaining Ordinaries, and these Trials are his chance to prove that he’s internalized his brutal training. But Kai can’t help but find Pae’s blue eyes, silver hair, and unabashed attitude enchanting. She likewise struggles to resist his stormy gray eyes, dark hair, and rakish behavior, even as they’re pitted against each other in the Trials and by the king himself. Scenes and concepts that are strongly reminiscent of the Hunger Games fall flat: They aren’t bolstered by the original’s heart or worldbuilding logic that would have justified a few extreme story elements. Illogical leaps and inconsistent characterizations abound, with lighthearted romantic interludes juxtaposed against genocide, child abuse, and sadism. These elements, which are not sufficiently addressed, combined with the use of ableist language, cannot be erased by any amount of romantic banter. Main characters are cued white; the supporting cast has some brown-skinned characters.
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798987380406
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Truly fantastic.
This dark fantasy duology opener has a magic school, a death, and five students who find themselves stranded in the wilderness.
Ren Monroe is a promising student wizard at Balmerick, a private school in the city of Kathor. Along with her best friend, Timmons, Ren is one of the few welfare students attending on a scholarship, and despite being one of the most accomplished people at the school, finding a placement in one of the top houses is proving difficult and is a hurdle in the way of the secret mission Ren has set out to accomplish. When a portal spell goes awry and Ren, Timmons, and four other students from different walks of life are thrown together into the Dires, an uncharted land where the last dragons lived, one of them ends up dead and the rest need to learn to work together to make their way back home before they succumb to the harsh environment or the terrifying revenant following them. This may well be the chance Ren was looking for to prove her worth. Placing elements of a locked-room mystery and an original magic system within the familiar trappings of a school for magic, this is a no-holds-barred tale of revenge, atonement, and the pursuit of justice set in a world diverse in skin color and social classes. Ren is a protagonist for the ages: equal parts smart, calculating, and ruthless, forming a lethal package as an avenging angel.
Truly fantastic. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-66591-868-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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