Born in England to immigrant parents, Khalid, 15, is an avid soccer fan and fair-to-middling student. He enjoys online...
This debut, published in 2009 in the UK, chronicles in devastating detail the kidnapping, incarceration and torture of an ordinary teenager six months after 9/11.
Born in England to immigrant parents, Khalid, 15, is an avid soccer fan and fair-to-middling student. He enjoys online gaming with a Pakistani cousin, but he has no desire to visit Pakistan himself and resents having to join a family trip to Karachi, There, through a convoluted but plausible chain of events, he’s mistaken for a terrorist, abducted and sent to Kandahar, Afghanistan, then to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During Khalid’s two-year ordeal under U.S. control, he encounters other innocent victims of the War on Terror who’ve been subjected to torture, including waterboarding. Their jailors range from sadistic to indifferent, though a few manifest detached compassion. Khalid’s experience in “enemy combatant” limbo is equally harrowing, demonstrating that helplessness and boredom can be torture, too. However, in showing readers only innocent victims, Perera effectively narrows the argument against torture to its inefficiency and unreliability. The case for a total ban requires showing why torture is wrong even when victims aren’t “pure.”Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8075-3077-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
A twisty thriller that asks: How much do you really know about your parents?
Four teens try to piece together a 35-year-old mystery.
In Canterstown in the present day, four close friends—Liam, Elayah, Marcie, and Jorja—dig up a time capsule that their parents buried decades ago and find, among a few harmless keepsakes, a bloodied knife and a note that reads, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill anyone.” Not long after, Elayah is attacked in her own home and almost dies. Though Liam’s dad is the sheriff and he says he’s on the case, the four friends begin harboring suspicions against their own parents when their excuses and backstories just don’t add up. Meanwhile, in 1986, the stories of Dean, Jay, and twins Marcus and Antoine unfurl, chronicling the lead-up to the burial of the capsule (and its murder weapon). As the contemporary amateur sleuths try to find answers, they risk endangering themselves further for a truth they might not want to hear. Though the novel is a bit bloated with its long list of characters and hefty page count, the central mystery and various twists will keep readers turning pages. Lyga does an excellent job of portraying a racially and sexually diverse cast, not shying away from the realities of having a marginalized identity but rather braiding those elements into the plot itself.
A twisty thriller that asks: How much do you really know about your parents? (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-53778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
A dynamic, suspenseful tale of friendship and betrayal.
In this thriller, two best friends find their relationship pushed to the breaking point.
After Brianna’s father became wealthy, Rain and Sydney felt abandoned by her as she warmed to her newfound acceptance by their more popular peers. Later, Rain also experiences a dramatic change in social class when her mother wins the lottery. This dark drama opens with a chapter from the perspective of Syd, whose sense of decency seems reliable even if her recollection of events, clouded by drug and alcohol use at a party the night before, does not. Alternating between Syd’s, Rain’s, and Brie’s points of view, and moving back and forth in time between the present and the periods before and after the house fire that claimed the life of one of the girls, the narrative structure sets the stage for a psychological mystery that explores loyalty and jealousy. There is a fair amount of coincidence packed into this story, but the intense emotions and yearnings each of the young women feel to be accepted and worthy ground this ever shifting novel in very real ways. Some readers will spot twists before they are revealed, but there is enough left up in the air until the very end to keep them hooked. The three main characters read as White; names signal some diversity in secondary characters.
A dynamic, suspenseful tale of friendship and betrayal. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-31270-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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