A sweet story about thinking of other’s needs before your own.
In this gently fantastical YA novel, an angel visits a girl on Christmas Eve and bestows a unique gift.
Jamie Mayer is a well-meaning 8-year-old girl who desperately wants a laptop for Christmas. Instead, she’s disappointed to receive a wooden angel from her father. After Jamie says she’ll only believe in Christmas if she can witness the Nativity for herself, the angel comes to life in all his cigar-smoking glory. He introduces himself as Gabriel (Gabe to his friends) and offers to grant her wish. The story of a slightly selfish child learning a lesson on Christmas Eve is familiar, as is the character of a gruff but loving angel. Similarly, the numerous pop-culture references become a bit tiring, especially because Morgan seems intent on featuring as many dead celebrities as he can—biblical figures, former U.S. presidents and a certain legendary rock ’n’ roll singer—until a funny idea is stretched too thin to support the gentle humor. However, the story has some impressive touches, including Gabriel’s insistence that Jamie has to really want to go on the journey; her autonomy then lends the story more weight than it would have otherwise had. Also, Jamie’s interactions with shepherds and wise men are emotionally resonant, and the relationship between Jamie and her sister is believable. While terms of derision like “dorkmeister” are used too often, the underlying mix of love and irritation between the two girls feels true while adding a realistic foundation that helps ground the mild fantasy. The family structure as a whole is refreshing: Jamie’s mother is a night nurse whose work demands long hours away from home, while her father’s job (computing in a home office) places him in more of a domestic role. The father’s obsession with celebrating Christmas sets the stage for the yuletide journey, while the mother’s dedication to her work underscores the author’s overall theme of self-sacrifice, which connects the whole family to the story of Jamie’s growing maturity.
A sweet story about thinking of other’s needs before your own.Pub Date: May 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477205143
Page Count: 150
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tale that’s at once familiar and full of odd and unexpected twists—vintage King, in other words.
Narnia on the Penobscot: a grand, and naturally strange, entertainment from the ever prolific King.
What’s a person to do when sheltering from Covid? In King’s case, write something to entertain himself while reflecting on what was going on in the world outside—ravaged cities, contentious politics, uncertainty. King’s yarn begins in a world that’s recognizably ours, and with a familiar trope: A young woman, out to buy fried chicken, is mashed by a runaway plumber’s van, sending her husband into an alcoholic tailspin and her son into a preadolescent funk, driven “bugfuck” by a father who “was always trying to apologize.” The son makes good by rescuing an elderly neighbor who’s fallen off a ladder, though he protests that the man’s equally elderly German shepherd, Radar, was the true hero. Whatever the case, Mr. Bowditch has an improbable trove of gold in his Bates Motel of a home, and its origin seems to lie in a shed behind the house, one that Mr. Bowditch warns the boy away from: “ ‘Don’t go in there,’ he said. ‘You may in time, but for now don’t even think of it.’ ” It’s not Pennywise who awaits in the underworld behind the shed door, but there’s plenty that’s weird and unexpected, including a woman, Dora, whose “skin was slate gray and her face was cruelly deformed,” and a whole bunch of people—well, sort of people, anyway—who’d like nothing better than to bring their special brand of evil up to our world’s surface. King’s young protagonist, Charlie Reade, is resourceful beyond his years, but it helps that the old dog gains some of its youthful vigor in the depths below. King delivers a more or less traditional fable that includes a knowing nod: “I think I know what you want,” Charlie tells the reader, "and now you have it”—namely, a happy ending but with a suitably sardonic wink.
A tale that’s at once familiar and full of odd and unexpected twists—vintage King, in other words.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66800-217-9
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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