Compassionate and compelling.
A teen in rural Maine searches for her birth family against the wishes of her adoptive mother and the state’s legal barriers in this novel in verse.
Rynn, 16, knows her birth mother named her Scheherazade, wanted her raised on a farm, and kept her younger sister, born seven years later. Surgery cured Rynn’s cleft palate and mended the holes in her heart and back but not her aching sense of loss. Close to her gentle adoptive dad, a New York City transplant who sells his garlic at the farmers market, Rynn has stopped trying to please her unhappy adoptive mom, Leanne, whose grievances, genuine traumas (her lost pregnancies and own mother’s abandonment), and simmering resentment erupt unpredictably. Lacking Leanne’s consent, Rynn can’t access her birth records until she’s 18, but supported by friends, she finds an uncle in Arizona and Ella, her 9-year-old sister, who is in foster care nearby. Fleeing Leanne’s abusive anger, Rynn finds refuge with family friends. She opposes her parents’ efforts to adopt Ella, who has a loving bond with her foster mother. Variously scarred by past addiction, poverty, bad health, and bad luck, the well-drawn characters, mostly White, largely prove resilient and kind. An adoptee herself, Culley writes with insight and nuance about biological families and those formed in other ways. The direct, straightforward poems effectively flesh out the characterization and are accessible to reluctant readers.
Compassionate and compelling. (Verse novel. 12-18)Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-315783-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A page-turner of a fantasy-horror debut from a promising new voice.
Something’s rotten in the province of Sussex.
Twelve families rule over the Smoke, a U.K.-inspired nation, where the citizens battle to maintain control against an encroaching fog that brings death and destruction in the form of monstrous Phantoms. When Silas Darling, Merrick’s father and Sussex’s Manor Lord, dies unexpectedly, Merrick must abandon her New London social season and return to her ancestral home, Norland House. Surrounded by her older sister, Essie (who’s set to inherit the title Merrick desires for herself), and cousins (who are concerned mostly with propriety), she struggles to find answers. When Sussex and the family’s seat are threatened by mysterious border breaches and attacks, Merrick enters into a tenuous alliance with sentry Killian Brandon to unravel a Gordian knot of family secrets. The measured pacing, combined with Merrick’s emotional arc, together create magnificent tension. The worldbuilding skews gothic, thanks to the creepy manor house and mist-infected landscapes that are befitting of a Brontë sisters novel—albeit with the addition of possessed corpses that consume human flesh. The gender politics of this world allow women to inherit titles and fight Phantoms, yet they have little agency to act on their own behalf without entering into advantageous, heteronormative marriages, an aspect of the fantasy world that readers may find confusing. Primary characters read white.
A page-turner of a fantasy-horror debut from a promising new voice. (guide to manors and ruling families) (Fantasy. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593572375
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Ideal for readers seeking perspectives on war, with a heavy dash of romance and touch of fantasy.
A war between gods plays havoc with mortals and their everyday lives.
In a time of typewriters and steam engines, Iris Winnow awaits word from her older brother, who has enlisted on the side of Enva the Skyward goddess. Alcohol abuse led to her mother’s losing her job, and Iris has dropped out of school and found work utilizing her writing skills at the Oath Gazette. Hiding the stress of her home issues behind a brave face, Iris competes for valuable assignments that may one day earn her the coveted columnist position. Her rival for the job is handsome and wealthy Roman Kitt, whose prose entrances her so much she avoids reading his articles. At home, she writes cathartic letters to her brother, never posting them but instead placing them in her wardrobe, where they vanish overnight. One day Iris receives a reply, which, along with other events, pushes her to make dramatic life decisions. Magic plays a quiet role in this story, and readers may for a time forget there is anything supernatural going on. This is more of a wartime tale of broken families, inspired youths, and higher powers using people as pawns. It flirts with clichéd tropes but also takes some startling turns. Main characters are assumed White; same-sex marriages and gender equality at the warfront appear to be the norm in this world.
Ideal for readers seeking perspectives on war, with a heavy dash of romance and touch of fantasy. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-85743-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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