A solid but unexceptional coming-of-age story for reluctant teen readers.
In this novel in verse, a teen girl finds herself at journalism camp in the city.
The summer before senior year, Teegan is devastated when she discovers her best friend, Maria, is going on a road trip to look at colleges without her. Used to following in Maria’s shadow, shy Teegan realizes she needs to pursue her own dreams, and her parents plan for her to spend two months at journalism camp in New York City. At camp, she’s partnered up with Marcy: They’ll be assigned a new beat each week to cover, writing stories that culminate in a newspaper final project at the end of the summer. Teegan is wowed by bold recent high school graduate Marcy, who introduces herself as bisexual and explains that she plans to go backpacking through Europe when camp is over instead of to college. As the summer passes, Teegan comes out of her shell and realizes she’s attracted to Marcy—but what will happen to their relationship when the summer’s over? Even though the sparse verse stays close to Teegan’s emotional first-person perspective, the character growth and romance feel sudden since, unfortunately, the adventures in New York City happen mostly off the page. The sweet discovery of sexuality redeems this otherwise ordinary story. Despite the diverse urban setting, characters default to White.
A solid but unexceptional coming-of-age story for reluctant teen readers. (Verse novel. 12-18)Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-9785-9562-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: West 44 Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
An auspicious ending may seem a bit unlikely to some, but this novel has many appealing aspects that will draw readers in.
Fifteen-year-old Zeke gets a job and becomes involved with community organizers who aim to unionize local food-service workers in this novel in verse for reluctant readers.
Zeke hates their lives in the city with Paul, his alcoholic mom’s abusive boyfriend, a hypocritical Christian, and he misses his old home in small-town Wisconsin. Spurred to action by the idea of making enough money for them to move back, he takes a job at Casa de Pizza, where he comes to understand the desperate circumstances many of his minimum-wage–earning co-workers face. Zeke keeps the job secret, fearing Paul will try to steal his earnings. Pagelong free-verse poems evocatively describe Zeke’s experiences and quickly propel the story forward. The dynamics between the employees at Casa de Pizza (Zeke and several others are white, Timothy is black, Hannah is originally from Oaxaca) will be recognizable to teens who’ve worked in food service. Readers will easily sympathize with the all-too-true-to-life situations with which the characters are coping—racism and sexual harassment, Zeke’s awful home life, and a co-worker’s eviction with her children among them. Though short, this story develops the characters’ personalities, sketches in the history of the labor movement, and includes a subdued romantic subplot, effectively balancing these various elements.
An auspicious ending may seem a bit unlikely to some, but this novel has many appealing aspects that will draw readers in. (Fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5383-8260-8
Page Count: 202
Publisher: West 44 Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
