This apocalyptic teen drama’s character interactions may draw readers in, but its vigorous story will keep them hooked.
In Holewinski’s debut YA dystopian thriller and series opener, teenage survivors of a catastrophic viral outbreak find a desolate United States where a fiendish few have taken power.
After 13-year-old Andy Christensen loses her mother in a car accident, she and her father opt to spend the summer of 2017 in Bermuda. Then a lethal virus, which started in the United States, kills 6 billion people—all adults, because children, including Andy and her pals Morgan and Charlie Pemberton, are apparently immune. The orphaned kids survive on their own for five years, but after some other boys brutally rape Morgan, the trio decide to leave the island. They set sail for Andy’s home country and soon discover a United States in disarray. After they narrowly elude gun-toting strangers, they meet Ben and Jim Kelly, two cousins who team up with them to look for a new place to live. They endure the heat of New Mexico and later join an Aspen, Colorado, community ruled by a totalitarian, narcissist Russian named Nataliya Ivanova. But in New York City, there’s someone much worse: Sean Taylor, who rules the state and surrounding areas by force. He’s also a misogynist who coaxes women into prostitution and controls people with drugs. When the group gets word that Taylor may have stockpiled some of the virus for his own use, Andy makes it everyone’s mission to put a stop to whatever he may be planning. Holewinski injects realism into her apocalyptic tale: although the survivalists are mere children, Andy has skills that she picked up from her surgeon father, and Charlie’s IQ is off the charts. What they can’t already do, they practice, such as by working on car engines. Melodrama occasionally seeps into the plot, giving readers a reminder of the characters’ immaturity; Andy, for example, takes an instant dislike to Nataliya because the Russian blatantly flirts with Ben and Jim. The novel’s second half is decidedly intense as the group faces danger from Taylor and his unpleasant batch of cronies. Holewinski also drops in surprises throughout her book, including a pregnancy, a kidnapping, and a shock when it’s finally revealed what Taylor’s doing with the virus.
This apocalyptic teen drama’s character interactions may draw readers in, but its vigorous story will keep them hooked.Pub Date: March 14, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Delirious Pixie
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
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