A melodramatic but unique tale of teen angst.
Munch’s debut YA novel depicts squabbles among adolescents at a school for special needs students.
Seventeen-year-old Pearl has a form of autism called pervasive developmental disorder; she also displays obsessive-compulsive traits and self-mutilates. Each day, she takes a state-funded cab to her alternative high school, where she endures the antics of her on-again, off-again friend Luke. He sings about stinky toes and has trouble controlling his violent urges—symptoms of his Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Their conditions make for a difficult friendship, especially when Luke meddles with Pearl’s relationship with her best friend Vicki, another student at their school. Gossip, bickering and back-stabbing are the norm in Pearl’s circle, in scenes that play out during rides to school and at parties, sleepovers and other places. Mostly, however, the drama unfolds on the phone; since the story takes place in 1995, landline phones and answering machines take center stage. Although typical teenage hormones inspire some of the conflicts, the characters’ developmental issues magnify the drama. The novel renders the action from Pearl’s point of view, and she doesn’t edit out many routine details. Readers may find that she seems unrealistically mature for her age, too self-aware and insightful; for instance, she explains that Vicki has “turbulent relationships” and is “overly dependent” on others because of the way she was raised by her “inconsistent” mother. Such observations are unlikely to come from a high schooler, but they do help readers understand how Pearl’s, Luke’s and Vicki’s conditions develop and manifest themselves in day-to-day life. This makes Munch’s novel particularly valuable, as there are few young-adult reads that feature such characters; students with pressured speech, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and epilepsy also make appearances.
A melodramatic but unique tale of teen angst.Pub Date: May 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482738506
Page Count: 200
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Landay is yet another lawyer-turned-writer, and it’s inevitable that he’ll be compared to Scott Turow, but this novel...
Landay does the seemingly impossible by coming up with a new wrinkle in the crowded subgenre of courtroom thrillers.
Assistant District Attorney Andy Barber is called to a gruesome crime scene after Ben Rifkin, a 14-year-old boy, has been brutally stabbed in a city park. One suspect seems likely, a pedophile who lives nearby and is known to frequent the park, but suspicion turns quickly to another, much more unlikely, suspect—Andy’s son Jacob, one of Ben’s classmates. It seems Ben was not the paragon of virtue he was made out to be, for he had a mean streak and had been harassing Jacob...but is this a sufficient motive for a 14-year-old to commit murder? Some of Jacob’s fellow students post messages on Facebook suggesting he’s guilty of the crime, and Jacob also admits to having shown a “cool” knife to his friends. When Andy finds the knife, he quickly disposes of it, but even he’s not sure if he does this because he suspects his son is innocent or because he suspects his son is guilty. Complicating the family dynamic is Laurie, Jacob’s mother, who’s at least half convinced that her son might indeed be capable of such a heinous act—and it turns out Andy has concealed his own past from Laurie because both his father and grandfather have been murderers, and he fears he may have both inherited and passed down to Jacob a gene associated with aggressive behavior in males.
Landay is yet another lawyer-turned-writer, and it’s inevitable that he’ll be compared to Scott Turow, but this novel succeeds on its own merits.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-34422-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
BOOK TO SCREEN
A love story and an homage to the history of the Cuban people, the latter significantly overshadowing the former.
“My grandmother loved a revolutionary,” says Marisol Ferrera, returning to Cuba 60 years after her family fled the island only to find herself falling for another attractive rebel.
Romance readers who enjoy their love stories leavened with a sizable measure of earnest political history will warm to Cleeton’s (On Broken Wings, 2017, etc.) new novel, which offers parallel tales of entwined hearts challenged by oppressive regimes. Elisa Perez, one of the four “sugar queens”—the privileged daughters of a Cuban sugar baron—is the first star-crossed lover. Living in luxury in Havana in the late 1950s, Elisa and her sisters are shielded from the imminent revolution by their father’s money and allegiance to the status quo, but then Elisa falls for Pablo, “Fidel [Castro]’s eyes and ears in the city.” In the 21st century, Florida-based lifestyle journalist Marisol smuggles her grandmother’s ashes back to Cuba, obeying Elisa’s wishes to be reunited in death with the country from which she had been exiled. Once in Havana, Marisol discovers not only her family’s roots and the letters revealing Elisa and Pablo’s secret passion, but also her own emotional fulfillment in the form of Luis, the grandson of Elisa’s best friend. Cleeton delivers the two women’s descents into dangerous romance with persuasive intensity, but her descriptions of Pablo’s and Luis’ commitments to challenging the political establishment and her larger commentary on Cuba’s long, troubled history make for a heavy contrast. “Why is the Cuban convertible peso so important?” asks Marisol, setting the reader up for another solid slab of social/historical/financial exposition. Somber and humor-free, the novel feels uncomfortably strung between its twin missions to entertain and to teach detailed, repetitive factual lessons.
A love story and an homage to the history of the Cuban people, the latter significantly overshadowing the former.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-58668-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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