Rileigh, a beautiful reincarnated samurai, is starting a new life in the finale to the Katana trilogy, which tones down the action even as it ramps up the supernatural suspense.
Rileigh, sassy and courageous, has now graduated from high school and is reunited with Kim, with whom she’s been in love for over 500 years. However, before she and Kim can begin a normal life as contemporary older teens, their powerful nemesis, the murderer Sumi, is back to get what she’s always wanted: Kim. Sumi performs a ritual that enables her to switch bodies with Rileigh. Rileigh is horrified to find her psyche and soul trapped within the body of the woman she’s loathed for centuries, and her ki is weakening by the moment. If she can’t find a way back into her own body quickly, she will be stuck forever. With Kim by her side, she begins a fraught journey to regain her identity and convince her fellow samurai that she is Rileigh, though in the wrong body. Adding dimension to the tale, the engrossing flashback chapters to 1400s Japan detail Sumi’s heart-poisoning history in the hands of a cruel kidnapper.
A swift tale of romance for the young teen with a warrior heart. (Paranormal romance. 12-15)Pub Date: March 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7387-3911-3
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Flux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT PARANORMAL & SUPERNATURAL
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For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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Riggs spins a gothic tale of strangely gifted children and the monsters that pursue them from a set of eerie, old trick photographs.
The brutal murder of his grandfather and a glimpse of a man with a mouth full of tentacles prompts months of nightmares and psychotherapy for 15-year-old Jacob, followed by a visit to a remote Welsh island where, his grandfather had always claimed, there lived children who could fly, lift boulders and display like weird abilities. The stories turn out to be true—but Jacob discovers that he has unwittingly exposed the sheltered “peculiar spirits” (of which he turns out to be one) and their werefalcon protector to a murderous hollowgast and its shape-changing servant wight. The interspersed photographs—gathered at flea markets and from collectors—nearly all seem to have been created in the late 19th or early 20th centuries and generally feature stone-faced figures, mostly children, in inscrutable costumes and situations. They are seen floating in the air, posing with a disreputable-looking Santa, covered in bees, dressed in rags and kneeling on a bomb, among other surreal images. Though Jacob’s overdeveloped back story gives the tale a slow start, the pictures add an eldritch element from the early going, and along with creepy bad guys, the author tucks in suspenseful chases and splashes of gore as he goes. He also whirls a major storm, flying bullets and a time loop into a wild climax that leaves Jacob poised for the sequel.
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end. (Horror/fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59474-476-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2014
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