A take on a classic that doesn’t quite gel.
Georgiana Darcy from Pride and Prejudice is here reimagined as a contemporary American heiress looking for her own source of pride.
Sixteen-year-old Georgie starts her junior year at swanky boarding school Pemberley Academy isolated and ostracized after last year’s scandal in which her brother, Fitzwilliam, caught her bad-boy boyfriend, Wickham, dealing Adderall from her dorm room. Now Fitz, 19, has transferred from Caltech back to New York to attend the local state university campus and keep an eye on her. Their father is dead, and their mother took off, handing over legal guardianship of Georgie to emancipated minor Fitz three years ago. Embarrassed, lonely, and struggling to believe herself a suitable representative of the Darcy name, Georgie embarks on an ill-conceived plan to use her family’s considerable funds to attract a girlfriend for Fitz and make herself some friends. Her schemes backfire—and Wickham is still lurking. Quain’s debut follows in the footsteps of many Austen remixes but adheres only loosely to the original’s plot in which Georgiana is a minor character. Unfortunately, the pieces don’t all mesh, especially the emotional notes: Though now overprotective, Fitz supposedly ignored Georgie the previous year, and that element plus their mother’s abandonment are treated a touch too lightly. Wickham also gets dealt with too easily. Georgie’s cluelessness about the depths of her financial privilege grates despite a mitigating lecture from Fitz. Main characters are White.
A take on a classic that doesn’t quite gel. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81781-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play.
Garber returns to the world of bestseller Caraval (2017), this time with the focus on younger, more daring sister Donatella.
Valenda, capital of the empire, is host to the second of Legend’s magical games in a single year, and while Scarlett doesn’t want to play again, blonde Tella is eager for a chance to prove herself. She is haunted by the memory of her death in the last game and by the cursed Deck of Destiny she used as a child which foretold her loveless future. Garber has changed many of the rules of her expanding world, which now appears to be infused with magic and evil Fates. Despite a weak plot and ultraviolet prose (“He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.”), this is a tour de force of imagination. Themes of love, betrayal, and the price of magic (and desire) swirl like Caraval’s enchantments, and Dante’s sensuous kisses will thrill readers as much as they do Tella. The convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts (one of the Fates), Legend, and even the empress serve as the impetus for Tella’s story and set up future volumes which promise to go bigger. With descriptions focusing primarily on clothing, characters’ ethnicities are often indeterminate.
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09531-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful.
January 1945: as Russians advance through East Prussia, four teens’ lives converge in hopes of escape.
Returning to the successful formula of her highly lauded debut, Between Shades of Gray (2011), Sepetys combines research (described in extensive backmatter) with well-crafted fiction to bring to life another little-known story: the sinking (from Soviet torpedoes) of the German ship Wilhelm Gustloff. Told in four alternating voices—Lithuanian nurse Joana, Polish Emilia, Prussian forger Florian, and German soldier Alfred—with often contemporary cadences, this stints on neither history nor fiction. The three sympathetic refugees and their motley companions (especially an orphaned boy and an elderly shoemaker) make it clear that while the Gustloff was a German ship full of German civilians and soldiers during World War II, its sinking was still a tragedy. Only Alfred, stationed on the Gustloff, lacks sympathy; almost a caricature, he is self-delusional, unlikable, a Hitler worshiper. As a vehicle for exposition, however, and a reminder of Germany’s role in the war, he serves an invaluable purpose that almost makes up for the mustache-twirling quality of his petty villainy. The inevitability of the ending (including the loss of several characters) doesn’t change its poignancy, and the short chapters and slowly revealed back stories for each character guarantee the pages keep turning.
Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful. (author’s note, research and sources, maps) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-16030-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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