The romance ultimately rises above occasional false-sounding slang to tell a story of friendship, love and determination...
Osterlund offers a believable and touching relationship between two protagonists readers will come to believe belong together.
Despite the hardship of immigrating to the United States from Mexico in elementary school, Salvador “Salva” Resendez, now a senior, is a straight-A student and the star quarterback of his football team. Having taken freshman English in middle school, he’s not happy when he’s saddled with the additional responsibility of AP English with a teacher known as “the Mercenary” instead of phys ed. Beth Courant, aka the “walking disaster area,” is also an A student—though a hopelessly disorganized one—and a gifted writer. Her pitch-perfect, third-person internal dialogue, which fluidly alternates with Salva’s, reveals grief over the loss of her grandmother and her mother’s neglect. When Salva receives a D from the Mercenary, he turns to Beth. Predictably, Salva begins to return Beth’s hitherto-unrequited crush, but what is unpredictably refreshing is the manner in which their romance unfolds. Salva and Beth both want a brighter future, but when tragedy strikes, it will take their combined strength—not just Beth’s, as the marketing copy unfortunately implies—to pull them through.
The romance ultimately rises above occasional false-sounding slang to tell a story of friendship, love and determination that will satisfy readers. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-14-241770-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Speak/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
At its core, this is a touching father-daughter story made even stronger by realistic family complications and Jude’s need...
A poignant coming-of-age story intertwines loyalty, disease and summer love.
At age 10, Jude Hernandez pledged to her three older sisters that she would never get involved with the Vargas family, which has a long history of breaking Hernandez girls’ hearts. However, fast-forward to the summer before college, when Jude finds it hard to keep her promise as she and Emilio Vargas, a mechanic, connect over rehabbing her father’s vintage Harley. Although not really a biker—theater is more her thing—Jude spearheads the renovation project with hopes of bonding with her father and recharging his memory before it can be stripped away by El Demonio—early-onset Alzheimer’s. Despite her promise to her sisters and her frequent review of their scrapbook of broken hearts detailing the Vargas’ transgressions, as the summer progresses and her father’s health fails, Jude is drawn closer to Emilio. Narrator Jude’s voice is steady, honest and clear as she faces head-on her responsibility for her father’s care, her desire to step from her sisters’ shadows, her own genetic connection with her father’s disease and forbidden love.
At its core, this is a touching father-daughter story made even stronger by realistic family complications and Jude’s need to find her own voice. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-3038-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Lyrical and inspirational, though Lala’s inexplicably outsider view of her own culture, complete with sneers at harmless...
A white boy afraid to leave his family meets a Romani girl who wants a brief romantic encounter in the Nevada desert.
Lala’s family sells used cars in Portland, Ore., but is spending a week in the blistering heat of Nevada in order to fleece the gazhè who come to Burning Man; surely the hippies will pay generously to have their fortunes told. Ben lives in a company town that’s dying along with its shuttering gypsum mine. In alternating chapters, Lala and Ben tell of their coming-of-age crises: Lala fears the stifling sameness of her coming arranged marriage, while Ben is ashamed of the track scholarship that will provide his escape to college while his family and neighbors leave their soon-to-be ghost town for unemployment. Lala, for Ben, is his brief summer dalliance, the manic pixie dream girl who distracts him from his fears. Ben, for Lala, is the trigger she uses to take control of and redirect her life. Lala’s a powerful and independent young woman, though she also exhibits too many romantic gypsy tropes, with her “mess of dark curls...wild” and cascading over an hourglass figure, speaking in contraction-free sentences that entice Ben with their foreignness.
Lyrical and inspirational, though Lala’s inexplicably outsider view of her own culture, complete with sneers at harmless cultural practices, is a deeply jarring note . (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-74334-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
