A propulsive thriller with teen protagonists in peril.
A YA novel features two teenagers on the run after they’re assaulted by a masked man.
In Credence, Alabama, 17-year-old Angel Lockhart and her boyfriend, 18-year-old Skip Greene, have just left their high school dance. As they walk to Skip’s truck, a masked man holds up a “laser-looking gun,” threatens them, and removes his mask. Then another masked man—Pade Sanders, one of Skip’s best friends—intervenes. He tells them they’re in danger after seeing the face of the first masked man, and instructs them to leave, giving them a case with $100,000. They drive to Angel’s home so she can pack clothes, and after sneaking through her window, she overhears her parents talking to someone named agent Payne. Angel eventually speaks with her father, Jon, and he tells her to get to Detroit. Once at the address, she must say she’s “with the church.” He plans to meet the teens there in 72 hours. Shocked and upset, they agree to hit the road. But after they change cars, Angel sees glowing violet eyes in the nearby woods. In her head, she hears, “You’ll never escape who you are.” Beginning a new series spun off from her Leftover Girl books, Bolick (Fate of War, 2017, etc.) blends paranormal and sci-fi elements within a quick-moving thriller framework. Early on, there’s a mention of Pade’s sister, Bailey, whose disappearance might have involved aliens. Later at a hotel, the plot takes shape when a detective is murdered on a stakeout, his body drained of blood. The author keeps pulses pounding with Skip’s willingness to ditch the cops who have asked the teens to make a statement. While alone on the road, the couple abstain from premarital sex, spend lots of cash, and switch vehicles often. Readers may grow frustrated as important narrative details drop like gifts into the protagonists’ laps; the author tends to tell rather than show audiences. But by the end, everything is connected, with an agency called Earth Under Fire at the center. Angel and Skip are bonded through a twist that should give fresh dimension to the sequel.
A propulsive thriller with teen protagonists in peril.Pub Date: April 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-946089-12-0
Page Count: 261
Publisher: Dirt Road Books
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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