An unvarnished addition to shelves already bulging with more credibly worked out disaster scenarios.
Teenagers embark on a cross-country trip after all of North America’s electrical grids go down at once.
Readers in the mood for a strung-out series of set piece shockers and nods to the Hunger Games are in for a treat as, driven by what looks less like logic than lingering hostage syndrome, Los Angeles teen Zara Ross decides that living through the apocalyptic blackout requires traveling back to the abusive survivalist father in upstate New York who trained her to shoot a crossbow and butcher deer as a child. Seeing leadership qualities in her that may not be evident to readers, several uprooted peers tag along on a state-by-state trek with stops at a Colorado compound (that turns out not to be a safe haven) and a house in Iowa (whose resident makes an extreme request of them). Following these and other team-building adventures, the travelers finally arrive—only to discover that Zara’s dad is even more evil than earlier hints have suggested. Corpses, atrocities, and even basic foraging techniques are more alluded to than described in enough detail to make them seem real. Tellingly, there is a denouement, but minimal speculation about the catastrophe’s causes or culprits render it no more than a MacGuffin. Zara is White; her boyfriend, Gabe Ramirez, and his younger sister, Zara’s best friend Estella, are of Mexican, Honduran, and Italian ancestry.
An unvarnished addition to shelves already bulging with more credibly worked out disaster scenarios. (Post-apocalyptic. 13-16)Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6631-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale.
A reissue of the 2016 novel published as Consider.
Alexandra Lucas and her boyfriend, Dominick, are about to start their senior year of high school when 500 vertexes—each one a doorway-shaped “hole into the fabric of the universe”—appear across the world, accompanied by holographic messages communicating news of Earth’s impending doom. The only escape is a one-way trip through the portals to a parallel future Earth. As people leave through the vertexes and the extinction event draws nearer, the world becomes increasingly unfamiliar. A lot has changed in the past several years, including expectations of mental health depictions in young adult literature; Alex’s struggle with anxiety and reliance on Ativan, which she calls her “little white savior” while initially discounting therapy as an intervention, make for a trite after-school special–level treatment of a complex situation; a short stint of effective therapy does finally occur but is so limited in duration that it contributes to the oversimplification of the topic. Alex also has unresolved issues with her Gulf War veteran father (who possibly grapples with PTSD). The slow pace of the plot as it depicts a crumbling society, along with stilted writing and insubstantial secondary characterization, limits the appeal of such a small-scale, personal story. Characters are minimally described and largely racially ambiguous; Alex has golden skin and curly brown hair.
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale. (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-72826-839-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An overall entertaining read.
In this sequel to The Similars (2018), tensions rise as the villains reveal a ploy to exact revenge on the Ten and their families and ultimately take over the world.
When Emma Chance returns to her elite boarding school, Darkwood Academy, for her senior year, things are different: Her best friend, Ollie Ward, is back while Levi Gravelle, Ollie’s clone and Emma’s love interest, has been imprisoned on Castor Island. More importantly, Emma is coming to terms with the contents of a letter from Gravelle which states that she is Eden, a Similar created to replace the original Emma, who died as a child. To complicate matters further, other clones—who are not Similars—infiltrate Darkwood, and Emma and her friends uncover a plot that threatens not only the lives of everyone they care about, but also the world as they know it. Hanover wastes no time delving right into the action; readers unfamiliar with the first book may get lost. This duology closer is largely predictable and often filled with loopholes, but the fast-paced narrative and one unexpected plot twist make for an engaging ride. As before, most of the primary characters read as white, and supporting characters remain underdeveloped. Despite its flaws and often implausible turns of events, the novel calls attention to larger questions of identity, selfhood, and what it means to be human.
An overall entertaining read. (Dystopia. 13-16)Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-6513-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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