Excellent characterization and a touching friendship mark this appealing Australian thriller. Thirteen-year-old Jackson and his widowed mother, Valerie, have moved to the suburbs to escape Valerie’s scary former boss. Ever since Valerie spotted drugs at the casino where she sang, she’s lived in fear. Jackson copes with the anxiety by obsessing about numbers. His narrative chapters alternate with those of Esmeralda, his new neighbor and romantic interest, an aspiring singer. Another neighbor and classmate, Asim, a Kurdish refugee, shares a moving friendship with Jackson of a kind rarely portrayed between boys in teen books. Both kind-hearted, they empathize with each other’s troubles and delight in similar interests. They also share a dangerous adventure when the casino boss sends a thug to intimidate Valerie. Music plays a major role throughout, from Esmeralda’s considerable talent to Valerie’s sometimes tedious riffs on rock history. The local bully and Asim, too coincidentally, are also talented musicians. Although Jackson and Esmeralda’s voices are often indistinguishable, they effectively pull the reader into their lives. The suspense builds toward a gripping climax, followed by a gratifying rock-and-roll wrap-up. (Fiction. 13-16)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8027-9660-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
All is not well between demon-magnet Bella and Edward Cullen, her vampire Romeo. An innocent papercut at Edward’s house puts Bella in grave danger when various members of the Cullen family can barely resist their hunger at the smell of blood. The Cullens promptly leave town, afraid of endangering Edward’s beloved, and Bella sinks into an overwhelming depression. Months later, she finally emerges from her funk to rebuild her life, focusing on her friendship with besotted teen Jacob from the reservation. Bella’s unhealthy enthrallment to Edward leads her into dangerous and self-destructive behavior despite her new friends, and supernatural complications are bound to reappear. Bella’s being hunted by an evil vampire, and Jacob’s adolescent male rage turns out to be incipient lycanthropy: It seems many Quileute Indians become werewolves in the presence of vampires, their natural enemies. Psychic miscommunications and angst-ridden dramatic gestures lead to an exciting page-turner of a conclusion drenched in the best of Gothic romantic excess. Despite Bella’s flat and obsessive personality, this tale of tortured demon lovers entices. (Fantasy. 13-16)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-316-16019-9
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Megan Tingley/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
BOOK TO SCREEN
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