A sublime SF tale equally invested in character development and checking the genre’s boxes.
In Walters’ YA debut, a teen travels 40 years into the past, where she learns life back then was just as tumultuous as it is in the present.
In New Mexico, Andrea “Rae” Aragon suffers a frayed relationship with her mother, a recovering alcoholic. Her mom’s struggles have tanked her restaurant business and her marriage, forcing Rae to leave her friends for a new school. Unexpectedly, Rae’s beloved grandmother, Lydia, radically complicates her life by telling her that she, like others in her family, is a time traveler. To prove she’s legit, Lydia, after giving Rae an itinerary case (which fits on a belt like a buckle) and a personal travel card, sends her to Taos, New Mexico, in the year 1984. There, Rae meets spiky-haired, Sony Walkman–carrying Iggy, an affable 16-year-old whose excessive drinking reminds Rae of her family’s misery. The young time traveler has a mission to replace her grandmother’s lost personal travel card; she’s to track down her great-grandfather, who can make another one. Walters smoothly fuses SF with teen melodrama, benefiting from the narrative’s simplicity. Rae’s grandmother, for example, clarifies certain concepts and rules, but not everything; “I can’t explain that,” she eventually tells her granddaughter. “I can’t even explain how electricity works.” It’s fun to watch Rae adjust to 1984, not just to the old tech but also to a pre-“woke” era; she’s horrified that a favorite song of Iggy’s teems with what Rae deems objectifying and racist lyrics. The author taps into serious social issues, like the racial and gender discrimination pervasive in both eras, and delivers razor-sharp dialogue that makes Rae’s 21st-century slang and references entertainingly clash with those of the 1980s. While the true focus is on Rae’s 2024 troubles at home and at school (as Iggy grapples with comparable demons), the story also touches on more complex time-traveling notions: Rae wonders if she can somehow change the future (a universal no-no among time travelers) and may inadvertently create a time paradox.
A sublime SF tale equally invested in character development and checking the genre’s boxes.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9798990043510
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Next Level Rebel Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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