Self-contained, responsible Plum, long eclipsed by her brilliant, exhausting older sister, Ginny, breaks free when domestic disasters reshape the family landscape.
The sisters’ beloved Victorian home needs costly maintenance. That’s not happening on their artist mother’s teaching income and book royalties, even with a paying tenant. Their deceased father’s life-insurance payout covers tuition at the girls’ Philadelphia private school. Financial stress aside, the all-white, all-female trio, plus pets, is close-knit, though Ginny, a senior whose Ivy League hopes rest on winning a hefty scholarship, feels overwhelmed. Plum, 15—shy at school, assertive at home—soothes her, shouldering household tasks Ginny’s too agitated or busy for and their distracted mother overlooks. As they’re coping with a financial blow that coincides with a plumbing emergency, Ginny ditches her family for Thanksgiving. Feeling abandoned, Plum keeps her hesitant, fledging friendship with outgoing, popular Tate Kurokawa (implied biracial white Jewish/Japanese), her social opposite, secret. When she’s hired to tutor Tate, their awkward, confusing affinity grows. The sisters’ relationship—what pulls them apart, what draws them together when their connection is strained—is the story’s beating heart. While there’s romance, this is no pink-coded, Austen retread but a well-told, universally human—regardless of gender—tale about teens discovering who they are, where they want to go, and how to get there.
This wise, funny, thoroughly contemporary coming-of-age tale earns bonus points for acing the Bechdel test. (Fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-244781-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Did you like this book?
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
17
GET IT
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
Did you like this book?
PROFILES
This story is necessary. This story is important.
45
GET IT
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter is a black girl and an expert at navigating the two worlds she exists in: one at Garden Heights, her black neighborhood, and the other at Williamson Prep, her suburban, mostly white high school.
Walking the line between the two becomes immensely harder when Starr is present at the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, by a white police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Khalil’s death becomes national news, where he’s called a thug and possible drug dealer and gangbanger. His death becomes justified in the eyes of many, including one of Starr’s best friends at school. The police’s lackadaisical attitude sparks anger and then protests in the community, turning it into a war zone. Questions remain about what happened in the moments leading to Khalil’s death, and the only witness is Starr, who must now decide what to say or do, if anything. Thomas cuts to the heart of the matter for Starr and for so many like her, laying bare the systemic racism that undergirds her world, and she does so honestly and inescapably, balancing heartbreak and humor. With smooth but powerful prose delivered in Starr’s natural, emphatic voice, finely nuanced characters, and intricate and realistic relationship dynamics, this novel will have readers rooting for Starr and opening their hearts to her friends and family.
This story is necessary. This story is important. (Fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-249853-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
Did you like this book?
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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.
