Intense.
A sheltered New England teen exploited for her gift decides she wants to live a normal life—and in the process discovers the consequences.
Eighteen-year-old Portuguese-American Marlena is known as Marlena the Saint because of her unique ability to heal people through her touch. Her controlling mother determines what behaviors and clothing will maintain her holy reputation, but Marlena’s desire to know the world grows stronger than her fear of disappointing her mother, especially once she finds out that she is charging money for the healings. With help from a few allies, including her gay friend Helen, Marlena sets out to experience the forbidden: partying, wearing a bikini, having a cellphone. She falls in love and, through physical intimacy, learns comfort with the body she was taught to associate with shame. But her joy comes to a halt when she discovers that someone she loves is sick. Marlena tries to do penance so that the angry, punishing God she was taught to believe in will restore her gift. Marlena’s straightforward present-tense narration is disorienting at first but becomes hypnotic after a few chapters. Some readers will enjoy exploring large questions about God, faith, and the meaning of life alongside the confused, questioning protagonist. Some may bristle at the mixture of the profane and the sacred. Whether empathizing with her or annoyed with her overdone rebellion, readers will be left reflecting.
Intense. (Fiction. 16-18)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-266211-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Exciting concept; underwhelming execution.
Once a year in the city-island of Caldella, the powerful Witch Queen leaves her Water Palace to find her true love, whom she must drown to appease the dark tide of the ever hungry ocean.
Thomas Lin is the only boy who’s ever escaped—by convincing the last Witch Queen to drown herself instead. Ever since then, her sister, Eva, who is the new Witch Queen, has been unable to appease the dark tide—she’s felt nothing for the boys she’s sacrificed. When Thomas is chosen a second time, Lina, a town girl with a crush, decides to rescue Thomas from the Water Palace and volunteer as sacrifice to make sure both Thomas and her own brother stay safe. As Lina and Eva spend more time together, they realize that they have a surprising amount in common: their love for their siblings, their desperation to change the sacrificial system, and their desire for one another. The close third-person narration is focalized alternately through Lina and Eva, and although Lina’s perspective provides greater depth, the narrative voice for each is removed, with more telling than showing. Characters are racially ambiguous but often implied through skin tone to be nonwhite. Diverse sexualities and gender expressions are also implied, but heteroromanticism is disappointingly the default.
Exciting concept; underwhelming execution. (Fantasy. 16-18)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0998-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Few chills and even less logic.
Can Liv put the pieces of her life back together after her father’s mental breakdown?
In rural Bloughton, Iowa, Liv takes solace in the cross country team and the idea that she will be off to college before too long. Three years ago, her father, the high school’s former English and drama teacher, vanished only to return naked and talking about alien abduction. He disappeared for good eight months later. Liv and her friend Doug check the elaborate traps her father built in the woods during those eight months every Sunday. The teacher who replaced him decides to stage the same musical that was her father’s swan song, and after getting in trouble for an outburst over her insensitivity, Liv decides to destroy the traps…but discovers that one has caught an alien. After hiding the horrifying creature in her father’s shed, they discover it has her father’s compass. In anger, Liv attacks the beast and then she and Doug torture it repeatedly as revenge for her missing father…but the alien is not what they perceive him to be, and as the truth is revealed, the horror mounts. Kraus’ (Blood Sugar, 2019, etc.) newest horror fantasy (there is no science here) might inspire more anger than horror as the protagonists respond to otherness with violence. Outrage will likely be followed by laughter at the stagy, manipulative, over-the-top conclusion. Most characters seem to be white.
Few chills and even less logic. (Horror. 16-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-15167-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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