A quietly satisfying read.
Following her father’s imprisonment and her maternal grandmother’s death, Lucy and her mother, Ana, leave Wyoming and move into her mother’s childhood home in Salem, Oregon.
Named after her mother’s favorite author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Lucy picks up Ana’s old copy of Anne of Green Gables and finds a list of summer plans from her mother’s teen years; it sparks her curiosity and inspires a list of her own. There is considerable tension between Lucy and her mother as they work on fixing up the house and settling into the community. Lucy misses her old friends and dreads being the new girl at school, but after meeting cousins Mira and Jack, it looks like the summer won’t be too boring. However, Lucy’s despair and frustration over her father’s past behavior cause her to lie about him to her new friends, nearly derailing their budding friendship and her growing connection with Jack. Lucy is a sympathetic protagonist even when she makes the wrong choices. As she learns more about her mother’s teen years, she gains a deeper understanding of her, which is revealed in a realistic way. The immediate secondary characters are also intriguing. Most characters are assumed white, although Ana's father was Puerto Rican and Mira is described as having dark brown skin. Each chapter begins with a pithy quote from a classic novel, in keeping with Lucy’s love of reading.
A quietly satisfying read. (Fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5107-4381-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play.
Garber returns to the world of bestseller Caraval (2017), this time with the focus on younger, more daring sister Donatella.
Valenda, capital of the empire, is host to the second of Legend’s magical games in a single year, and while Scarlett doesn’t want to play again, blonde Tella is eager for a chance to prove herself. She is haunted by the memory of her death in the last game and by the cursed Deck of Destiny she used as a child which foretold her loveless future. Garber has changed many of the rules of her expanding world, which now appears to be infused with magic and evil Fates. Despite a weak plot and ultraviolet prose (“He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.”), this is a tour de force of imagination. Themes of love, betrayal, and the price of magic (and desire) swirl like Caraval’s enchantments, and Dante’s sensuous kisses will thrill readers as much as they do Tella. The convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts (one of the Fates), Legend, and even the empress serve as the impetus for Tella’s story and set up future volumes which promise to go bigger. With descriptions focusing primarily on clothing, characters’ ethnicities are often indeterminate.
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09531-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution.
A teenage girl finds herself alone after everyone else in her town mysteriously disappears, leaving her scrambling to figure out how to find them all.
One late summer day, everybody in July Fielding’s town disappears. She is left to piece together what happened, following a series of cryptic signs she finds around town urging her to “GET THEM BACK.” The narrative moves back and forth between July’s present and the events of the summer before, when her relationship with her best friend, cross-country team co-captain Sydney, starts to fracture due to a combination of jealousy over July’s new relationship with a cute boy called Sam and sweet up-and-coming freshman Ella’s threatening to overtake Syd’s status as star of the track team. The team members participate in a ritual in which they jump off a cliff into the rocky waters below at the end of their Friday practice runs. Though Ella is reluctant, Syd pressures her to jump. Short, frenetically paced sections move the story along quickly, and there is much foreshadowing pointing to something terrible that occurred at the end of that summer, which may be the key to July’s current predicament, but there is much misdirection too. Ultimately this is a story without enough setup to make the turn the book takes in the end feel fully developed or earned. All characters read white.
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593327173
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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