Like a good roller-coaster ride: adrenaline-fueled and terrifying with an underlying feeling that everything will end as it...
Anna Boyd finally has her name—and her life—back, and she won’t give either up without a fight.
In this follow-up to The Rules for Disappearing (2013), Anna, so thankful to have left the world of witness protection behind, is shocked to learn that she is still being hunted by Thomas, the villain who masqueraded as a federal agent and who inexplicably allowed her and her boyfriend, Ethan, to escape when he might easily have killed them. Before she knows what hit her, Anna, her family and Ethan’s are sent off to hide in a remote wilderness area from which she, Ethan, and her little sister, Teeny, are ultimately kidnapped. The trio is whisked away to a secret location where they learn that they have become pawns in a deadly game of chess being played by assassins, organized crime lords and rogue agents. The implausible but still engaging storyline is jam-packed with impulsive decisions that carry foreseeable disastrous consequences, unexpected betrayals and alliances, and a series of skin-of-the-teeth escapes. Amid the chaos, Anna’s head-over-heels infatuation with Ethan and sweet devotion to Teeny will give readers something familiar they can hold on to.
Like a good roller-coaster ride: adrenaline-fueled and terrifying with an underlying feeling that everything will end as it should. (Suspense. 12-18)Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-6898-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Strikes a delicate, and ultimately optimistic, balance between action, suspense, and philosophy.
Teenage contestants. Unfamiliar wilderness. A reality show pushing the boundaries of viewership. What could go wrong?
Cut Off is a new survival show with a revolutionary three-dimensional component. Contestants, injected with virtual reality ions that transmit their biological data to viewers’ devices, are trailed 24/7 by drone cameras as they attempt to outlast one another to claim a $10 million prize. Trip Johnson—a clinically anxious gay boy—is a contestant as well as the millionaire inventor of the show’s 3-D immersive tech. Other contestants include defensive, jaded California girl Cam Jaimes; solitary, outdoorsy orphan River Adan; and practical, mysterious Liza Rojas. After the competition is wiped out, these four survivors team up when they discover that their emergency GPS trackers don’t work and they are isolated from the showrunners. As they navigate a remote British Columbia island, hoping to rejoin civilization, they begin to suspect the wilderness has a mind of its own…and that it’s manifesting their worst nightmares, from spiders to earthquakes to abandonment. The stakes rise ever higher as Cam and River’s mutual attraction heats up while Trip considers the broader implications of his 3-D streaming app. The narrative begins a day after the first earthquake and is told from several contestants’ third-person perspectives, interspersed with interview transcripts and official documents. Whiteness is situated as the default for most characters; Liza is cued as Latinx.
Strikes a delicate, and ultimately optimistic, balance between action, suspense, and philosophy. (Thriller. 12-18)Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-00645-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A worthy conclusion to a story that is, at its core, about love and letting go.
Tea prepares to make the greatest sacrifice in this impassioned finale to the Bone Witch series.
In the present, Fox angrily searches for his bone witch sister, Tea, who will stop at nothing to save him from the half-life he has been living since she raised him from the dead. In the past, Tea is on a quest for First Harvest, the magical plant she needs to revive her brother, which she can only use after acquiring shadowglass. Conjuring shadowglass requires a black heart, and Tea’s darkens as she continues to wield dark magic to achieve her goals. More and more lose faith in her when she becomes plagued with haunting visions and, in her sleep, kills an innocent with her own hands. But someone is using a blight rune to transform people into terrifying daevalike monsters, and it may very well be the same traitor in Tea’s inner circle who has been poisoning her. Though the storylines never truly converge, readers gain insight into Tea’s destructive choices and their aftereffects. Exhaustive explanations of asha history are important to the plot but weighty. Transgender Likh’s exploration of her identity honestly complements Tea’s own journey toward self-discovery, and readers will root for both their romances. Characters have a variety of skin tones, but race is not significant in this world.
A worthy conclusion to a story that is, at its core, about love and letting go. (maps, kingdom guide) (Fantasy. 13-adult)Pub Date: March 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-6060-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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