An entertaining tale aggrandized by an unshakable protagonist and the family she’s thankfully stuck with.
Adjusting to a new town becomes especially hard for a teen once she suspects a service club is up to something sinister in this YA mystery.
Quinn Bard, even after two-plus months in West Williston, New Hampshire, is ready to return to Boston. Her family, however, is content, including her older sister, Arista, smitten with next-door neighbor/boyfriend, Danny Di Caramo, and her perpetually giggly 4-year-old brother, Bub. The kids’ mother takes it upon herself to sign Quinn up for Eco Troop, an “ecology-minded” club of peers. Surprisingly, Quinn is warned off almost immediately via a note: “Leave and don’t come back.” She later learns the note writers are Danny and his younger sister, Julie, but a second warning, this one vocal, merely succeeds in piquing Quinn’s interest in Eco Troop. Seems the adult club leader, Nadine Stent, is allegedly using family secrets to coerce school kids into helping with and keeping quiet about bizarre projects. These entail a mysterious goop; Quinn steals a test tube’s worth of the stuff from the club’s warehouse and inadvertently spills it on herself. She and fellow Eco Troopers try to identify the substance while Stent only gets creepier. The club leader is somehow linked to Allsaints Pharmaceuticals, where Quinn’s dad works. Russell’s (The Films of Joel and Ethan Coen, 2001) novella boasts a comical tone, primarily due to Quinn’s narration. She, for example, gleefully notes Danny and Julie’s obvious discomfort at the Bards’ vegetarian dinner and unabashedly uses words like “concrete-y” and “stagefrightful.” While Stent is a memorable villain and the danger indisputable, a few of the mysteries (for example, an Eco Trooper who disappears) are resolved too easily and expediently. Nevertheless, Russell wisely concentrates on characters, particularly the Bards. Their mutual devotion is refreshing, a family in which its youngest member, persistently covered in everything from compost to maple syrup, is not exasperating but rather a reflection of the clan’s unwavering happiness. As Quinn sincerely asserts, “We Bards are pretty mushy people.”
An entertaining tale aggrandized by an unshakable protagonist and the family she’s thankfully stuck with.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9783988320100
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression.
After surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.
Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself; her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out; her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply; and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her—who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves—Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she "like-likes" but who had pined for Ellis instead. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a "semifamous" local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way "girls who write their pain on their bodies" scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Like most issue books, this is not an easy read, but it's poignant and transcendent as Charlie breaks more and more before piecing herself back together.
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93471-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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