A tale where the heroine’s experiences as a grieving daughter and sister seem far more meaningful than any family secrets.
A teenager must unravel the mysteries behind her family’s many tragedies in this first installment of a YA trilogy.
Anastasia Phoenix has had more than her fair share of uncertainty and misfortune. Her parents were biochemical engineers who created the Dresden Chemical Corporation with their best friend. But their work meant they often dragged Anastasia and her older sister, Keira, from country to country, never settling in one place for long. After Anastasia finds out that they plan to uproot the family again mere months after settling in Boston, she refuses to move. She gets her wish in the worst way possible: her parents die, leaving her Keira’s ward and ensuring she won’t be relocating soon. Now, three years later, Anastasia is 17, and Keira has disappeared after a party. Though the crime scene contains enough blood that it seems doubtful that Keira survived, Anastasia is sure she is alive. Anastasia finds evidence pointing her toward an Italian family that knows her parents—and suggests that there is more to their deaths than she realizes. Along with Marcus Rey, an attractive new student and son of Dresden Chemical employees, she travels to Italy to try to discover information about her family. While there, she learns about her parents’ clandestine past. But the more she unearths, the more she apprehends that few people in her life are who she thinks they are. Though Rodriguez Wallach (Mirror, Mirror, 2013, etc.) spices up her novel with exotic locales and intriguing love interests, the tale is ultimately more predictable than exciting. In trying to give her audience hints, the author overemphasizes certain clues and characters until readers have almost certainly guessed plot twists many chapters before they are meant to be revealed. Anastasia also emerges as an uneven character, teetering between believable—as a grieving, bullheaded teenager trying to navigate the guilt of enjoying a new crush while also investigating her sister and parents—and too good to be true. She’s fluent in four languages, a karate black belt, able to identify someone’s city of origin by hearing the person speak a single word, and lucky to have a twentysomething roommate who can hack police databases in under an hour.
A tale where the heroine’s experiences as a grieving daughter and sister seem far more meaningful than any family secrets.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63375-608-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
A familiar but heartfelt romance for easygoing readers.
In O’Gorman’s YA debut, two best friends try to fool people into thinking that they’re in love—and then discover a new facet of their relationship.
Sally Spitz is a frizzy-haired 17-year-old girl with a charming zeal for three things: Harry Potter (she’s a Gryffindor), Star Wars, and getting into Duke University. During her senior year of high school, she goes on a slew of miserable dates, set up by her mother and her own second-best–friend–turned-matchmaker, Lillian Hooker. Sally refuses to admit to anyone that she’s actually head over Converses in love with her longtime best friend, a boy named Baldwin Eugene Charles Kent, aka “Becks.” After a particularly awkward date, Sally devises a plan to end Lillian’s matchmaking attempts; specifically, she plans to hire someone to act as her fake boyfriend, or “F.B.F.” But before Sally can put her plan into action, a rumor circulates that Sally and Becks are already dating. Becks agrees to act as Sally’s F.B.F. in exchange for a box of Goobers and Sally’s doing his calculus homework for a month. Later, as they hold hands in the hall and “practice” make-out sessions in Becks’ bedroom, their friendship heads into unfamiliar territory. Over the course of this novel, O’Gorman presents an inviting and enjoyable account of lifelong friendship transforming into young love. Though the author’s reliance on familiar tropes may be comforting to a casual reader, it may frustrate those who may be looking for a more substantial and less predictable plot. A number of ancillary characters lack very much complexity, and the story, overall, would have benefited from an added twist or two. Even so, however, this remains a largely engaging and often endearing debut.
A familiar but heartfelt romance for easygoing readers.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-759-7
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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