A complex teen adventure, but one that doesn’t work well as a stand-alone novel.
In this second book of a YA series, a group of teenagers wonders whom to trust while searching for a missing scroll.
In The Caves of Qumran (2017), Wilson introduced Maylee Tayten and her brother, Smith, two teenagers from Bozeman, Montana. While visiting their Uncle Arnold in Israel, the siblings became involved in the hunt for a priceless, previously unknown Dead Sea Scroll dubbed “the Queen”; their uncle’s 16-year-old neighbor, Rafi, helped them. After some dangerous adventures, the scroll was found but lost again, and the three teens were glad to escape unscathed. As this book begins, it’s Christmas break, and Smith is unhappily back in Bozeman, staying with his father. Poking around the internet’s dark corners, the young man hopes to rediscover the Queen—but he only succeeds in bringing unwelcome attention to himself. Maylee, meanwhile, has returned to the Middle East for a camel-back trip through the Sinai Desert to Cairo with Uncle Arnold and Rafi. Keeping watch over them are the many members of the mysterious, powerful Order of the Peacock, whose intentions are hard to determine. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, cousins Amjad and Jerome investigate clues left by their grandfather, Kareem Hassan, who’d given the Queen to Amjad before it was stolen and lost. Later, a startling family secret is unveiled. As in the first installment, Wilson evokes atmosphere skillfully in a tricky plot with plenty of red herrings and ambivalent motives. Her character sketches are vivid; a worried Smith, for example, is described as “corroding in his own adrenaline.” Maylee can be a thoughtful observer, although her teen angst gets melodramatic at times, and her view of Bedouins is overly romanticized: “How can they be so happy?…They lived under the stars and sat on the ground for every meal. But they had family. Joy. Love.” Wilson could also have better oriented readers with a recap of the first book’s events (and a translation of the term “jehdi”). This entry does, at least, finally give the siblings’ ages (13 and 16), hometown, and last name.
A complex teen adventure, but one that doesn’t work well as a stand-alone novel.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9898594-1-7
Page Count: 276
Publisher: LonnaDee Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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