A pleasant dose of alternate-universe excitement.
A teenage girl and her friends cross into a parallel world in this fantasy adventure from Blossman (The Noxhelm Murders, 2017, etc.).
Seventeen-year-old Ella Simmons lives with her strict father in the small town of Branford Falls. Her wealthy best friend Finley Poe’s dad recently bought her an antique mirror for $10,000. When Ella, Finley, and their new friend, Diane Brooke, try to see their future in the looking glass, they find they can pass through it. The world beyond is an alternate version of Branford Falls, full of destitution, violence, and even casual murder. They manage to escape back to their own reality, but Ella finds that being in the “Dark World,” as she calls it, made her feel good. It also made the strange birthmark on her shoulder glow and awakened strange powers within her. It turns out that whenever someone from her own world passes into the Dark World, a doppelgänger from that reality travels in the other direction—and Finley’s double has wreaked havoc in her absence. Also, Finley’s delinquent brother Fallon followed them into the mirror; he’s now trapped in the Dark World, replaced in his own by an even more aggressive sociopath. In the midst of all this, Ella finds out that she was adopted. What is her true connection to the Dark World? Blossman establishes a fast pace from the outset, confronting Ella in every chapter with problems, mysteries, dangers, and doubts. The author has Ella tackle these with a teenager’s resilience and a breezy insouciance—and the latter trait is shared by superficial socialite Finley. Ella consistently grasps the gravity of her situation but doesn’t excessively dwell on her inner turmoil. This is a wise stylistic choice on Blossman’s part, as it keeps the tone of the adventure light. The dialogue, too, has a reassuring staginess that acts as a buffer for particularly unpleasant plot points. Throughout, the protagonist’s appealing narration offers an array of breathless fantasy twists.
A pleasant dose of alternate-universe excitement.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-09-599284-5
Page Count: 217
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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