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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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