Drenched in emotion and profound grief for a lost first love.
An anxious teen experiences love, loss, and healing.
Margaret Vittorio is finishing up her junior year in Seattle’s Green Lake neighborhood, delivering pizzas for her family’s popular restaurant, Papa Angelo’s, which was named after her domineering and occasionally rage-filled father. She experiences a charming, memorable meet-cute with Mars Zevon Rivers in the waiting room of their therapists’ office—“It wasn’t exactly love at first sight; it was more future at first sight”—only to coincidentally deliver a pizza to his family’s houseboat a few weeks later. Then, purely by happenstance, she joins Mars’ stargazing group with her brother Maurice on the night of her prom. Mars’ passion for astronomy, and especially the first interstellar spacecraft, Voyager 1, is endearing, and they fall deeply in love. They have sex for the first time, attend regular concert gigs, and stargaze atop Tiger Mountain. It all comes to an abrupt end when tragedy strikes. The dense, poetic, second-person prose in the form of an extended letter to Mars describes in depth every aspect of Margaret’s feelings throughout a year of mourning as she tries to make sense of his impact on her life through a project inspired by his space obsession. Nuanced descriptions of Margaret’s complicated family life with three older brothers, her battle with anxiety, and her mother’s disordered eating further intensify her grief journey, a relentlessly sad and visceral experience patient readers will appreciate. Main characters present white.
Drenched in emotion and profound grief for a lost first love. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9780593708651
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Labyrinth Road
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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