A convoluted soap opera.
Three 17-year-olds—an illustrator, a beauty vlogger, and a TikTok star—orbit a queer love triangle in greater Boston.
It’s been six months since Shani, a YouTuber who specializes in Black hair care, hired Jonas to draw her an anime avatar through his Instagram. Jonas wants Shani, who is mixed and identifies as Black, to be his online girlfriend but is anxious she won’t like the real him. He was raised since age 7 by a loving foster mother and doesn’t know his racial background, a mystery soon to be solved by a 23andMe DNA kit. Jonas has lived in a subsidized studio apartment since his foster mom moved into hospice care. After being catfished twice, Shani becomes suspicious when Jonas doesn’t want to meet in person even though they talk every night and live only 6 miles apart. She recruits Ash, her Indian and Cuban trans best friend, to uncover the truth about Jonas. Ash poses as a client commissioning him to make gay Marvel backdrops for his TikTok, and sparks begin to fly between them as well. All three eventually fall for each other, clouding their relationships with doubt and duplicity. The bloated plot is held together by corporate name-dropping and pop-culture references. Told through alternating third-person perspectives, the sexually fluid trio’s story is depicted with an attention to detail that sometimes conveys warmth but too often weighs down the story without adding substance.
A convoluted soap opera. (author’s note) (Fiction. 12-17)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0716-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play.
Garber returns to the world of bestseller Caraval (2017), this time with the focus on younger, more daring sister Donatella.
Valenda, capital of the empire, is host to the second of Legend’s magical games in a single year, and while Scarlett doesn’t want to play again, blonde Tella is eager for a chance to prove herself. She is haunted by the memory of her death in the last game and by the cursed Deck of Destiny she used as a child which foretold her loveless future. Garber has changed many of the rules of her expanding world, which now appears to be infused with magic and evil Fates. Despite a weak plot and ultraviolet prose (“He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.”), this is a tour de force of imagination. Themes of love, betrayal, and the price of magic (and desire) swirl like Caraval’s enchantments, and Dante’s sensuous kisses will thrill readers as much as they do Tella. The convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts (one of the Fates), Legend, and even the empress serve as the impetus for Tella’s story and set up future volumes which promise to go bigger. With descriptions focusing primarily on clothing, characters’ ethnicities are often indeterminate.
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09531-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A meditation on a timely subject that never forgets to put its characters and their stories first
An Afghani-Australian teen named Mina earns a scholarship to a prestigious private school and meets Michael, whose family opposes allowing Muslim refugees and immigrants into the country.
Dual points of view are presented in this moving and intelligent contemporary novel set in Australia. Eleventh-grader Mina is smart and self-possessed—her mother and stepfather (her biological father was murdered in Afghanistan) have moved their business and home across Sydney in order for her to attend Victoria College. She’s determined to excel there, even though being surrounded by such privilege is a culture shock for her. When she meets white Michael, the two are drawn to each other even though his close-knit, activist family espouses a political viewpoint that, though they insist it is merely pragmatic, is unquestionably Islamophobic. Tackling hard topics head-on, Abdel-Fattah explores them fully and with nuance. True-to-life dialogue and realistic teen social dynamics both deepen the tension and provide levity. While Mina and Michael’s attraction seems at first unlikely, the pair’s warmth wins out, and readers will be swept up in their love story and will come away with a clearer understanding of how bias permeates the lives of those targeted by it.
A meditation on a timely subject that never forgets to put its characters and their stories first . (Fiction. 12-17)Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-11866-7
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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