More straight-to-the-gut fiction from the author of the "Blue Eyed Son" trilogy, written in second-person singular, present tense, and featuring a profoundly wounded teenager haunted by questions. Maybe Will's father killed himself and his new wife deliberately. Maybe not—who can ever know what's in another's mind? Maybe you wouldn't go into a mental tailspin afterward, like Will, and end up in the wood shop of an institution dubbed Hopeless High, along with other emotionally disturbed teenagers, churning out carved gnomes and whirligigs in such a distracted state that you don't even remember making them. Maybe you wouldn't be drawn to Angela, a tough-talking classmate whose helping hand usually feels more like a cold shoulder. Maybe you wouldn't carve memorials for a pair of teen suicides, or leave one on a beach just where two more teenagers drown themselves—and then get a call from someone asking you who'll be next. Maybe that wouldn't lead you out into the ocean, just a few strokes away from bringing the numb hurt to an end. Or, maybe, like Will you would realize just in time that being lonely is not the same as being alone. Intense, nightmarish storytelling: sometimes wildly funny, sometimes heartbreaking, entirely memorable. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: March 31, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-028176-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A satisfying continuation of a moody, stylish series.
Robertson (Strangers, 2018, etc.) returns to the adventures of First Nations teenager Cole Harper in this supernatural YA sequel.
Cole is still in Wounded Sky First Nation after helping to end a murder spree and cure a local epidemic in the previous series installment. He’s grieving the death of some friends, and he continues to struggle with anxiety. Luckily, he still has some pals to lean on: his classmates Eva and Brady, as well as Pam, a girl he’s just starting to get to know at his new school. Other acquaintances include Jayne, a teenage ghost who’s mysteriously gone missing; and Choch, a coyote spirit who appears to be Cole’s gym teacher. Cole doesn’t have much time to settle in at school before things start to get crazy again. A new terror is stalking Wounded Sky: a creature wandering Blackwood Forest at night, which locals are identifying as “Upayokwitigo.” “It means He Who Lives Alone in Cree,” explains Eva, although even getting people to say the name is difficult—it’s regarded as a curse. As Cole investigates the creature, he also tries to figure out why so many strangers are showing up at the local health clinic; he also wants to get to the bottom of what caused the accident that killed his father 10 years ago. Can Cole stare down the monsters that haunt him—from within and from without? Robertson’s prose effectively captures the magical balance of humor and spookiness that brings good supernatural fantasy novels to life. As a result, his lively characters are easy for readers to latch onto. At one point, for example, Brady amusingly grouses to Cole: “Every single person who’s seen that thing has seen it in the woods, at night. At night, which it is right now, and in the woods, which is where you’re talking about going.” The plot of this installment builds directly on that of the previous volume; this setup makes the beginning a little slow and sluggish, as old characters and animosities get reintroduced and rehashed. The ending, however, is so unexpected that readers will eagerly anticipate a third volume.
A satisfying continuation of a moody, stylish series.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-748-7
Page Count: 260
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tightly constructed YA mystery.
In Scott’s (Hear the Wolves, 2017, etc.) YA thriller, a teenager investigates the disappearance of his girlfriend.
When 17-year-old Molly Bates goes missing, the police immediately identify her 18-year-old boyfriend, Cobain, as the primary suspect. He’s a quick-tempered, weight lifting loner who dresses all in black and has a tattoo of a crow on his arm—and he genuinely has no idea what happened to her: “Molly is gone,” he thinks, panicked, “and they’re in here talking to me when they should be combing the streets, the woods, the mountains.” Molly and Cobain had been planning on running away together, but she never showed up to their planned rendezvous. Now he needs to figure out what happened to the love of his life—not only to reunite with her, but also in order to clear his name. The problem is that Molly is still very mysterious to him; she knows how to read and manipulate other people, but she keeps her secrets to herself. As Cobain questions the other people in Molly’s life—her parents, her friends—he can’t help but wonder whether he’s being manipulated himself. The story effectively leaps between Cobain’s past and present, although after a certain point, Molly also becomes a third-person point-of-view character, adding further complexities to the plot. Scott’s controlled prose perfectly summons the dramatic pitch of teenage thought; for example, in this passage, Cobain remembers his thoughts on the day of his and Molly’s first meeting: “I may have hated you for smiling at me because it opened this horrendous hope inside of me, and it was impossible to push it back into place. It was a hernia, that hope. A rabid animal that needed trapping.” Indeed, at times such emotional excesses may make it difficult for adult readers to take the novel seriously. Despite this, though, the book is a true page-turner with an enjoyable, serpentine narrative.
A tightly constructed YA mystery.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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