A book about young people dealing with cancer that never moves beyond illness as a mechanism for self-discovery.
A love triangle made more complex because one of the geometric points is sick with leukemia.
Leo loves Beatrice. He loves her even though he’s never actually spoken to her, even though she never answers his text messages. When he learns from his friend Silvia that Beatrice has leukemia, his life erupts in a chaos of emotion. One good thing to come out of his grief is that he donates blood. He also writes her a letter expressing his emotions, but on his way to deliver it he gets into an accident on his scooter and winds up in the hospital. Will he ever make his feelings for her known? Or will he see the stoic girl standing by his side supporting him as a friend in a more romantic light? Translated from the Italian, this book tends toward the repetitive and esoteric. Dialogue feels stilted and off-key, often marred by an overabundance of exclamation points and lines that don’t reflect how teenagers naturally speak: “ ‘We’ve got to put those losers to shame!’ I beam with delight. What would school be like without the soccer tournament?” The sluggish plot relies on the dry discourse of characters who spend a lot of time pondering their unlucky situations.
A book about young people dealing with cancer that never moves beyond illness as a mechanism for self-discovery. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7852-1706-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Nasty Prince Henry of the Seelie Court has come to Avalon, the city caught between the human realm and Faerie, to invite...
At last, Dana meets a Fae boy who doesn't want to sleep with her in this third in the Faeriewalker series, which began with Glimmerglass (2010).
Nasty Prince Henry of the Seelie Court has come to Avalon, the city caught between the human realm and Faerie, to invite half-human Dana to be formally presented at Court. Dana and her father are sure there's a deeper game at play—don't both Fae queens want Dana dead because of her dangerous Faeriewalker powers?—but she has no choice but to obey the summons. The journey from the incongruously modern Avalon (why do Faeries celebrate Christmas?) to the Seelie Court is chock-full of all the necessary adventures, from monster attacks to opportunities for heroic self-sacrifice. Dana finally exercises both her magical powers and her intelligence in order to help herself and her friends. And of course, there's plenty of opportunity for chest thumping among her various suitors. Dana's youthful narrative style can be disconcertingly at odds with the steaminess she describes ("I was smushed up against him… [and] painfully aware that he, uh, enjoyed having me there"); this realistic teen heroine has an occasionally bumpy meeting with romance conventions. But Dana's grim-but-hopeful interactions with her alcoholic mother ground this urban fantasy in a welcome verisimilitude.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-57595-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
In this Celtic-flavored crossover brick, four modern teenagers are summoned to another world to save it.
Borrowing freely from Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Irish legend in general, Ryan assembles orphaned Alan Duval (or “Duuuvaaalll,” as he is often dubbed by assailants), Kate, Mark, and Mark’s stammering, half-aboriginal sister, Mo, for a quest. He sends them to the magical world of Monisle, formerly known as Tír, where, 2,000 years after the last invasion attempt, the Tyrant of the Wastelands is sending out his Death Legions for a third time. Along with a prophecy, riddles, magical crystals, a giant eye and like standard-issue elements, the author folds in various nonhuman races. These range from the shape-changing Shee—being, as the author puts it with typical hyperbole, “Great cats turning into women, armed with swords!”—to the dwarven Fir Bolg, whose warriors are all long dead but not, climactically, gone. Amid many vague references to their “fate” and “destiny,” the four sail up the mighty titular river on a ship that turns out to be both sentient and a shape-changer itself to do battle with an army led one of the Tyrant’s Septemvile, or inner circle. The end is just as busy as the rest, leaving its heroes poised for sequels. The author doesn’t make much effort to look beyond the canonical bandwagon for inspiration. (Fantasy. 12-15)
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62365-048-3
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
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