A profound, perceptive story of a sexual abuse survivor.
In Morrison’s debut novel, a teen who suffered sexual abuse as a child finally goes after the perpetrator when she fears he hasn’t stopped targeting young girls.
Missouri high school senior Maggie Bryant generally keeps to herself. Nearly a decade ago, when she was 8, she admitted to a friend that her mom’s boyfriend, Warren, had been sexually abusing her. But after Children’s Services got involved, Maggie’s mother, Tina, convinced her daughter to recant. Though Warren never touched her again, Maggie has struggled ever since with the emotional aftershocks, including periodic night terrors. Now she just wants to be “normal,” and charming, chivalrous football player Matt McGuire gives her that chance. The two start dating, but Maggie, though she’s fond of Matt, finds it hard to open up about her past. That seems impossible given her abuser’s reputation: Warren is the assistant county prosecutor and a former high school football star whom even Matt admires. But when Maggie has an encounter with Warren’s young daughter, she suspects he’s still a predator. Despite Tina’s warning that Warren is a powerful man with connections, Maggie decides to turn him in for what he’d done years earlier. She anticipates—and faces—a backlash, but she’s determined to ensure that he never preys on another girl. Morrison aptly handles this story’s sensitive subject matter without graphically depicting Warren’s atrocities. Maggie is a complex, engrossing protagonist whose attempts to pass for a typical, carefree teenager involve a never-ending battle, and her first-person narrative makes it easy to understand why she’s been quiet for so long. Matt is a likable romantic lead with a few flaws (perhaps a bit overprotective), and even Tina is sympathetic, as there’s an implication Warren had been physically abusive with her as well. Morrison’s straightforward but stirring narrative stays predominantly in Maggie’s head, as the teen perpetually debates how to respond to particular situations and people while suppressing a constant anger.
A profound, perceptive story of a sexual abuse survivor.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73412-691-4
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Stories Matter Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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