Slow-witted, 12-year-old Davey lived with his neglectful and sometimes abusive mother, Lois, and his older sister, Joanne, until Joanne moved out at 17 to get married. She was pregnant at the time, and now Davey baby-sits for her son, Dennis, as Joanne follows in her mother's footsteps. Davey narrates the present, while alternating chapters fill in events from the past about Davey's and Joanne's childhood; how Joanne became Davey's surrogate mother (she was seven, he was two); how she eventually gave up trying to raise him and keep house and joined a gang; how she finally became what she most hated—her mother. Gypsy Davey—as he is nicknamed by his only friend, a drug dealer who is later killed by a rival—finds solace in riding his bike, caring for his nephew, and the occasional visits of his absentee father. But Lynch's (Iceman, p. 146, etc.) story is less about Davey than about the two women in his life and their struggle against each other and themselves. Ultimately, they both lose, and it is Davey who suffers. A grim and penetrating look at the cycle of abuse. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-023586-1
Page Count: 180
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY
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Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
25
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A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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PROFILES
Can teenage love ever be forever?
Isabel (Belly) from The Summer I Turned Pretty (2009) and It’s Not Summer Without You (2010) finishes up her freshman year at college somewhat unconvincingly committed to Jeremiah Fisher, one of the two brothers with whom she has spent summers since she was small. Isabel becomes furious to learn that Jeremiah had sex with another girl from their college in Cabo on spring break, but he wins back her affections with a grand gesture: a proposal of marriage. Caught up in the idea—she will plan a summer wedding! they will attend college as a married couple!—Isabel tries ignores her misgivings about Jeremiah, the appalled silence of her mother and her own still-strong feelings for Jeremiah’s older brother, Conrad. It’s both funny and believable when Jeremiah insists he wants to dance the wedding dance to “You Never Can Tell” from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Han gives a satisfying nod to wedding-planning fantasies even while revealing their flimsy basis for an actual marriage. A final chapter in 23-year-old Isabel’s voice reveals the not-so-surprising happy ending.
Han’s impressive ear for and pitch-perfect reproduction of the interactions between not-quite-adult older teens make this an appealing conclusion to this trilogy romance among bright middle-class young people. (Fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: May 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-9558-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE
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