A thrilling war tale well-suited to a YA audience.
In 1940, a tightknit group of British orphans embarks on a mission to infiltrate Hitler Youth squads.
In this debut novel, six orphans—ranging in age from 11 to 16—grow up together in southeast England at the St. Michael’s Church and Home for Boys. They pine to become British Boy Scouts—especially Reggie, the eldest—but the local chapter haughtily rejects their applications. Sister Noreen, who has a background in “Scout craft,” encourages them to start their own chapter—they call themselves the “Scouts of St. Michael”—and they contribute to the war effort, helping the church prepare for the inevitable wave of bombings. When German fighter planes arrive, the boys realize the newly installed anti-aircraft gun is left unmanned, and Reggie and Freddie (the second oldest at 15) boldly take the initiative, shoot one down, and capture a notorious Nazi pilot. The Scouts win national recognition for their heroics, but that attention also spawns an extraordinary assignment, code-named Operation Archangel—they’re asked to disguise themselves as Hitler Youth and capture its sadistic leader, Thomas Peter Heydrich. Morales artfully presents the decidedly implausible—the Scouts don’t speak any German when the mission is first conceived—as tantalizingly possible. The plot crackles with high adventure and briskly paced action, and the Scouts are as resourceful as they are brave—the work reads like a Hardy Boys novel combined with historical fiction. The author’s writing is both accessible and buoyant, and sometimes achingly touching. When one of the nuns discovers that the boys are being sent to war along with the new curate (a former intelligence operative), she’s overcome with emotion: “On that she gasped and began to sob. He went to her and lifted her from the chair. Hugging her was all he could think to do. She was trembling with each sob. ‘Oh, Jim. Please tell me this isn’t true.’ ” But the story’s ending is so abrupt and inconclusive, readers can only assume (and hope) it was composed with a sequel in mind.
A thrilling war tale well-suited to a YA audience.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-943492-36-7
Page Count: 356
Publisher: ELM Grove Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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