Debut author Urban’s high-pressure revenge thriller puts a sinister twist on the escape room motif.
Amber is a recently popular high school senior who, after years of avoiding social entanglements, is suddenly thrust into the popular circle. Her musical ambitions lead her to team up with queen bee Sasha to compose the score for an upcoming school play. Though Sasha appears outwardly friendly, Amber slowly learns the machinations of the in crowd and the manipulation required to attain and maintain their social hierarchy. The story of Amber’s rise is told in flashbacks as she and a motley crew with tenuous ties try to escape from a terrifying room in which they have been commanded to kill one among them in order to save the rest. Each flashback provides clues to the relationships between and potential motives of each person locked in the death trap. Confusingly, relationships that are alluded to in the present never appear in the flashbacks, and other important plot elements seem thrown in after the fact by way of explanation rather than following logically from the preceding action. Though an unreliable narrator is to be expected, Amber’s character is nothing if not inconsistent, leaving the reader to question who the real bad guy is and if they have just been gaslighted yet again. Amber and Sasha are white; there is some diversity in the cast, but the portrayals lack substantive texture.
A mixed bag. (Mystery/thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-290821-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
29
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A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression.
21
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After surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.
Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself; her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out; her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply; and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her—who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves—Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she "like-likes" but who had pined for Ellis instead. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a "semifamous" local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way "girls who write their pain on their bodies" scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Like most issue books, this is not an easy read, but it's poignant and transcendent as Charlie breaks more and more before piecing herself back together.
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93471-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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