A satisfying supernatural YA tale that effectively mixes high school, magic and mystery.
Teenagers in love battle a supernatural villain in this debut young-adult novel.
Joy Sumner is an unassuming music student at Ash Grove, a prestigious performing-arts boarding school in North Carolina. Her father is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, so Joy spends her time in the company of her loyal, plucky friends. When they overhear someone teasing a new student about the school’s haunted graveyard, Joy bravely offers to put the myth to the test. She enters the graveyard at midnight and is surprised to find she’s not alone: Tanner Lindsey, a handsome Ash Grove dropout, is brooding there—and he and Joy soon share a dramatic kiss. Joy’s daring graveyard jaunt is overshadowed the next day by news of Melisande, a popular supermodel, arriving in Ash Grove with plans to recruit students as models. Joy is startled to find Tanner among Melisande’s entourage, scantily clad and apparently drowsy with lust for his mentor. He’s known now as Tristan, and he dismisses Joy, causing Joy’s friends to grow suspicious. Tristan appears on Ash Grove’s campus the next day, whisking Joy away and revealing how he went from being Tanner, a neglected musician, to Tristan, Melisande’s most promising protégé. Although Joy is concerned about Melisande’s mysterious power over Tristan, she continues their romance in secret until Melisande and her followers, including Tristan, disappear. While slogging through the emotional fallout, Joy discovers she’s pregnant. Not long after, she experiences a strange “time slip” on campus, and the school’s adults inform her that Ash Grove’s many myths may not be myths after all. Joined by her friends, Joy sets out to rescue Tanner from Melisande’s dangerous spell. The author portrays Joy and her friends smart and easy to love—especially Maddie, her sarcastic and protective best friend (she describes Melisande’s mansion as “the Ikea version” of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water home.) Readers may wish for a more daring future for Joy, but her and Tanner’s love is consistently believable. Their independence makes Ash Grove a realistic and engaging world, and its seclusion, fierce loyalties among friends, and compassionate adults are Hogwarts-like at times.
A satisfying supernatural YA tale that effectively mixes high school, magic and mystery.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-1480099500
Page Count: 274
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Haphazard and undemanding.
A sports agent’s first official client is the man she dumped years ago in college.
After two years of hard work as an underling, Nora Mackenzie is finally being promoted to full-time sports agent. She’s worked hard, kept quiet, and allowed men in the office to call her Mac—a nickname she hates—all to show she’s a team player and “one of the guys.” Unfortunately, her boss instructs her to sign Derek Pender, a football player coming off an injury, who happens to be the man she heartlessly dumped in their senior year of college. Derek signs with her for revenge, seeing it as his opportunity to pay Nora back for callously breaking his heart eight years earlier. He insists she be at his beck and call: answering his emails, running his errands, cooking dinner for his dates. He also refuses to let her explain why she broke up with him without warning or explanation. Nora feels she has no choice but to acquiesce to Derek’s humiliating demands, since she’s worked too hard to let him ruin her dream job. She hopes he’ll thaw and they might become friends, but Derek’s bad behavior is designed to hide the fact that he’s still in love with her. Nora’s characterization is uneven, veering between anger at how she’s treated in the male-dominated field to immature bickering and bantering with Derek. Although Adams likely meant for Derek and Nora’s interactions to have an enemies-to-lovers vibe, the characters instead seem juvenile and stuck in the past. The novel is fueled by a string of tropes—second chance romance! married in Vegas! only one bed!—each randomly deployed to keep the book going despite thin characterization and wan plotting.
Haphazard and undemanding.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593723678
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
