There are plenty of other (and far better) fish in the sea.
It’s a race against the clock for 16-year-old Gemma in the third installment of the Watersong series.
Still desperate to stave off her thirst for a beating heart (preferably one belonging to a hot teenage boy) and to protect the ones she loves from the wrath of her evil siren sisters, Gemma must figure out how to break the siren curse before Penn finds a more suitable and willing replacement and kills Gemma herself. If only it were as exciting as that all sounds. The aptly titled novel ebbs and flows between present and a mythical past in a failed attempt to anchor the story and the characters in a history that may or may not be destined to repeat itself. While Penn is still deliciously evil, and her love-hate relationship with Daniel remains one of the best parts of the series, most of the characters feel two-dimensional at best. Others, including Lexi and Alex, who are absent for the bulk of the novel, feel like afterthoughts. As for the plotlines, far too little time is spent on Penn’s search for a replacement siren and too much time spent digging around in the sirens’ past. The result is that the urgency of Gemma’s situation is given good lip service, but readers will be hard-pressed to actually feel it.
There are plenty of other (and far better) fish in the sea. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-00811-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
PROFILES
More about costume than character or story.
Mysterious deaths plague an island dukedom in a loose retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”
Annaleigh Thaumas has spent the last few years mourning her mother and several sisters, who died in succession under increasingly eerie circumstances. Her remaining sisters chafe under the lifestyle restrictions of formal mourning on their small, isolated island home, especially their inability to wear pretty clothes and flirt with boys. When their young stepmother persuades their duke father to let them wear bright colors and start dancing again, Annaleigh and her sisters are relieved, especially when a mystical door in the family crypt conveniently transports them to glamorous ballrooms that provide venues to show off their new wardrobes. Annaleigh and her sisters read like interchangeable paper dolls, their painstakingly described gowns, jewels, and shoes the most distinguishing features about them; they spend their time screaming, swooning, and alternately competing for and cowering behind the men in their lives. The island setting is extremely one-note, as if an ocean-themed children’s party became an entire culture, and there is no consistent interior logic to the rules of magic and gods that seem to shift, like the tides and the weather, according to narrative convenience. The writing is self-consciously stiff, and the story reads like a mood board, full of repetitively atmospheric images and scenes but never creating a substantive whole. All characters are white.
More about costume than character or story. (Fairy tale retelling. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-3192-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Energetic but at times heavy-handed, this dystopian tale seems destined for a screen adaptation.
Trial and punishment are carried out via a social media process called the Hive in this futuristic thriller created by a team that includes an actress, a film producer, and two writers.
The daughter of a famous hacker, high school senior Cassie is still grieving her dad’s recent death. Her mother, a classics professor named Rachel, is struggling both to make ends meet and with the ongoing presence of National Security Agency agents who keep nosing around her late husband’s doings. Alternating between Cassie’s and her mother’s third-person narration, the difficult relationship between the pair provides a believable emotional backbone for this high-concept, fast-paced, sometimes overly detailed cautionary tale of the morally fraught territory that results when technology and mob mentality mix. After Cassie makes a tasteless joke online about the new grandchild of the president (a figure who is so obviously Trump that the pretense of his name being fictionalized seems pointless), she must flee the ensuing violent wrath of the Hive, discovering its secrets along the way. Readers may be frustrated by the intelligent and sarcastic Cassie’s apparent inability to identify people who are clearly likely to betray her. Cassie is biracial—her mother is white, and her dad was black—and the secondary characters are realistically diverse.
Energetic but at times heavy-handed, this dystopian tale seems destined for a screen adaptation. (Science fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0060-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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