A promising YA debut about a girl’s search for a future in the wreckage of the past.
A teenager attempts to find a cure for a deadly, civilization-threatening virus in debut author Baker’s dystopian YA series starter.
When Ruby Behl and other 17-year-olds in Port Gibson, Mississippi, get together to play the traditional (but forbidden) game of spin the bottle, she gets the chance to kiss her crush, Wesley Fairchild. It’s only when she sees something on his forehead that she realizes that she’s made a terrible mistake: “That small rash means Wesley is Marked, and in under three years, he’s going to die terribly. And now, so am I.” It’s a symptom of the Tercera virus, which has ravaged the world for the past decade. Ruby presents herself to the authorities to be quarantined, even though the Mark has so far failed to appear on her own forehead. While in her cell, she reads the journals of her father, a prominent virologist who died when she was 6. What she learns changes everything: He created both the Tercera virus and its antidote, but he was murdered before he could alert the world to either. She also finds out that her mother didn’t, in fact, die while giving birth to her. Ruby—a science prodigy—may be the only person who can find the cure by following her father’s clues. Going forward, Ruby may not be able to trust anyone—except maybe Wesley, and her new friend, a security officer named Sam Roth. Overall, Baker’s prose is sharp and vivid (“Pain shoots up my arms and I bite down on an involuntary sob”), and she manages to immediately plunge her readers into the world of the novel. The story is swiftly paced and features some surprising twists and intriguing characters; for example, Aunt Anne, Ruby’s guardian, clearly possesses a few secrets, and later, Ruby encounters King Solomon, the leader of a religious cult. The plot doesn’t challenge the strict boundaries of the dystopian genre, but its combination of sci-fi, mystery, and teen romance still makes for a compelling adventure.
A promising YA debut about a girl’s search for a future in the wreckage of the past.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-949655-01-8
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Purple Puppy Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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