A disappointing futuristic retelling of Romeo and Juliet.
Cole, a Geneserian, and Davis, a Prior, battle segregation, disease and meddling families to cling to the strongest love they’ve ever known.
Davis has never been anything but beautiful and accomplished. But life is still hard for this 16-year-old. Just because she’s genetically programmed to overcome certain biological events, such as illness, doesn’t mean she can avoid complicated relationships with her friends and family. She also has to practice hard to achieve her dream of becoming a ballerina like her mother. Cole has it much worse. He lives in the slums and resorts to cage fighting for cash. When they meet and fall in love, it’s complicated, and not just because there’s a deadly disease striking down Priors. Debut novelist Hastings relies too heavily on stereotypes to offer anything new to readers hungry for tales of love in the time of dystopia. Instead, this book feels like a novel they’ve all read before. The action sometimes leaps over explanatory moments so it’s hard to catch up to characters, who flit from one emotionally overloaded scene to another. Secondary characters like Davis’ friend Oscar and a creepy boatman are more intriguing that the main characters, who suffer from dialogue made of clichés: “I’ll never give up if you’re beside me.”
A disappointing futuristic retelling of Romeo and Juliet. (Dystopian romance. 15-18)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-05771-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
This riveting whodunit delivers a bouquet of teen romance, paranormal and thriller.
In a small backwater town where social standing is everything, 17-year-old Eva discovers being the favorite can be terrifying.
Eva’s family is wealthy and influential, so it’s big news when she’s the victim of a hit-and-run that leaves her severely injured and deeply scarred. While recovering in the hospital, sweet-tempered Eva discovers her new and horrifying ability: When people touch her, she can foresee their deaths. When one of her friends is murdered and left with a message carved in her flesh, it’s clear the killer wants Eva. The book is broken up by chapters in voices other than Eva’s, the most absorbing of which is Judge, a sexually twisted religious zealot obsessed with Eva, who believes he’s communicating with her through the flowers he leaves on his victims. Readers know he’s the killer but not who he is among Eva’s acquaintances. Lifelong friend Nate makes Eva’s heart flutter. He stays handsomely by her side throughout the mounting terror. As the death toll increases, Eva, meek no more, uses her visions in an attempt to stop the murderer’s elaborate plan to possess her. Marr, who generally explores supernatural themes, here pens a tightly choreographed spine-chiller with an intriguing view into the mind of a psychopath.
This riveting whodunit delivers a bouquet of teen romance, paranormal and thriller. (Paranormal thriller/romance. 15-20)Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-201119-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Sankalp, a wish: that readers let the poetry and music transport them; it’s a journey worth making.
Long awaited, anticipated, likely to be debated: Dimple Lala is back.
Hidier quietly revolutionized YA literature with Born Confused (2002), and this sequel indicates she’s intent on a repeat. Dimple, now in college and still with beat-dropping Karsh, heads to Bombay ostensibly for a wedding but really for so much more; still, perhaps, born confused, she is in search of home. Dense, lyrical, full of neologic portmanteaus and wordplay (“magnifishence”; “candlecadabra”): This is a prose-poem meditation on love, family and homecoming (or not) posing as a novel. Under the poetry lurks a simple story: a failing relationship and a dreamy but steamy affair; the pain of returning to a place where a loved one no longer lives. Dimple’s narration transforms mundane details into something more meaningful if less comprehensible—laced with the languages and cadences of India and set in the maze of Bombay (never Mumbai), there is a lot to decode and no glossary or map to help (a lack perfectly in keeping with the novel but frustrating nevertheless). Many readers may not persevere; those that do may stall out with the multiple false endings as Dimple stutter-stops her way to an ending—but, tragically, they’ll be missing out.
Sankalp, a wish: that readers let the poetry and music transport them; it’s a journey worth making. (Fiction. 15 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-38478-0
Page Count: 560
Publisher: PUSH/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
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