A Stranger Things–Twister mash-up for fans of (super)natural thrills.
A teen must face her own trauma even as she helps her dead friends find peace in Barzak’s (Wonders of the Invisible World, 2015, etc.) latest.
A fight with her boyfriend, Noah, about his friendship with a lonely girl ruins Ellie Frame’s day but, to her horror, also saves her life. After she drives away to nurse her anger, a series of tornadoes devastates her Midwestern town, hurtling a gas tanker into the high school and killing Ellie’s closest friends—and Noah. Survivor guilt plagues Ellie as she tries desperately to move forward as if all is well, a task made infinitely more difficult as the ghosts of her friends begin to appear and speak to her. Alternating between Ellie’s perspective and those of others in her community—survivors and ghosts alike—this narrative of testimony and bearing witness has an immediacy that draws readers in despite sometimes descending into oration with more telling than showing. It explores the functions of storytelling in helping the living cope and the dead reflect on events from the afterlife. The mystery of what is keeping the spirits from their final rest and the looming threat of ghosts with scores to settle create an absorbing read. All characters are white other than Ellie’s Latina therapist and Japanese-American friend.
A Stranger Things–Twister mash-up for fans of (super)natural thrills. (Thriller. 14-17)Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55609-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dry mystery, an interracial relationship, and a quiet struggle against provincial tyranny make for a choppy-but-promising...
Three teenagers in a New Jersey resort town bond over death and petty corruption.
Both Rachel and Ethan, seen through interwoven chapters, have recently lost brothers. Ethan's dead brother, Jason, gets to narrate his story through year-old journal fragments interspersed throughout the novel. Rachel's own dead brother, Curtis, is a silent cipher, a lost child with Down syndrome viewed only through Rachel's memories of caregiving, never treated as an individual with thoughts or hopes of his own. The deaths of both boys are somehow connected to Happy World, a boardwalk amusement park that dominates their hometown. Curtis died in an accident seemingly of his own fault, half a year before ocean-hating Jason drowned off the edge of the jetty. Now, six months later, slacker Rachel just wants to make sense of her life. Her quest introduces her not just to Ethan, but to Leonard, the former park employee who's taken the fall for Curtis' accident. A seemingly standard coming-of-age arc is touched by unsolved mysteries, for Happy World's owner is disturbingly interested in Rachel's friendship with the two boys. Spare storytelling focuses on the tiny details of Rachel and Ethan's world rather than emotional resonance, leaving enough unspoken that it's sometimes difficult to follow the timeline of events.
A dry mystery, an interracial relationship, and a quiet struggle against provincial tyranny make for a choppy-but-promising debut . (Fiction. 14-16)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-050-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Featuring short, punchy chapters, engagingly flawed characters, and a plot that churns ever forward, this frothy confection...
The stakes of a game of dares grow uncomfortably high for four teens.
The Waterside Café is as good a workplace as it is a fine dining experience. The clientele is classy, and the post-work game of Tips run by sleazy (but initially tolerable) manager Rico provides the young staff with biweekly opportunities to make extra cash on the side by fulfilling outrageous dares. The four protagonists of Kennedy’s debut—Isa, Xavi, Peter, and Finn—each have something to hide, and all four try to use Tips’ promises of financial independence and social capital to achieve their goals. Isa wants to leave her beauty-queen past behind, Xavi wants to attend fashion-design school in New York, Peter wants to become a chef (and win his stepsister Xavi’s heart), and Finn just wants to have fun. As the intensity of the summer’s dares increases, the four teens face ever steeper consequences for their choices, including a pregnancy scare, potential arrest for teen prostitution, and being framed as a burglar. An impressively efficient series of coincidences and schemes must be assembled in order to keep the stakes for these likable kids from becoming depressingly real.
Featuring short, punchy chapters, engagingly flawed characters, and a plot that churns ever forward, this frothy confection may not nourish, but it will certainly delight. (Fiction. 15-17)Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3016-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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