Engaging, if not essential.
Eight teens’ fates intertwine and recombine in the aftermath of a prank gone very wrong.
The constellation of characters is best imagined as a nucleus of two—the beautiful, domineering and troubled athletic couple Brendan and Emma—surrounded by an outer ring of friends, then two farther-off characters. The outer ring comprises sad stoner Felix and camera-toting Maxie, back in Illinois after four years in Colorado, along with golden girl Chloe and her earnest boyfriend, Anil. It is then connected more loosely to Emma’s thoughtful younger sister, Faith, and Walter, whose isolation and tenuous grasp on reality plays a pivotal role. After an unsatisfying, awkward stop at an alcohol-soaked end-of-summer bash, Chloe suggests a visit to the local “ghost house,” a seemingly abandoned property on the edge of the local cemetery. Chloe and Emma creep up on the porch, knocking over rose bushes as they go. The girls’ act of trespassing combines with Brendan’s drunkenness and bravado to set off a chain reaction that leads to multiple shootings and other serious injuries, which in turn lead to varying degrees of recovery and, ultimately, reflection. A novel in verse with a large cast of rather two-dimensional characters facing the consequences of their actions is nothing new, but Pattou keeps the pacing brisk enough to make this a decent page-turner.
Engaging, if not essential. (Verse/fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4778-4774-9
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Skyscape
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Brynna’s guilt-induced psychosis makes for a page-turner in the spirit of Lois Duncan’s classic I Know What You Did Last...
After the death of her best friend, a high school girl is haunted by something: Whether it’s conscience, ghost or merely human demons is unclear.
When Brynna’s best friend, Erica, drowns, Brynna—who dared Erica into the night swim that led to her death—becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol, culminating in a drunken driving arrest. Now in a new city and at a new school and seeing a court-appointed therapist, Brynna simply wants to skate through school unnoticed. Through no effort of her own, she’s immediately sucked into a clique of gregarious classmates, finding herself with friends and a boyfriend, hopeful despite herself, à la Bella Swan. But Brynna keeps seeing Erica on street corners, reliving the drowning in dreams and receiving text messages from her dead friend. Is she losing her mind? Is someone from her old town tormenting her? Or worse, is one of her new friends the source of this torture? So tightly wound is Brynna’s spiral into degenerating paranoia that the frankly ridiculous, scarcely foreshadowed reveal is barely a blip—her increasing terrors are believable and tension-racked. Her happy aftermath is less so, but nobody reads Cooney-style thrillers for the realistic resolution.
Brynna’s guilt-induced psychosis makes for a page-turner in the spirit of Lois Duncan’s classic I Know What You Did Last Summer; it will undoubtedly please the thriller-loving crowd . (Thriller. 13-15)Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-9457-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lucky U.K. readers get cliffhangers and toothsome prose, but at least Americans still get the thrills of the shooting...
In a very near future, two teenagers in a scarcely functional London are caught up in terrorist plots.
Nat and Charlie live in an England with an economy just a touch worse than the real thing: Austerity cuts are closing hospitals, shrinking police departments, and leaving countless people unemployed and hungry. As the novel opens, Charlie, fighting with her mum in the free food line, barely survives the terrorist bomb that claims her mother's life. Nat knows about the bomb but—convinced his brother, Lucas, is the bomber—tries and fails to stop the attack in time. Now Charlie lives with relatives, and Nat (who hasn't reported his suspicions about Lucas) needs to understand his now-comatose brother's motivations. How had cheerful, peaceful Lucas fallen in with the racist terrorists of the League of Iron? In a series of brief first-person chapters, Nat and Charlie cope with the bombing's aftermath. Nat's attempts to infiltrate the League of Iron lead both teenagers into dangerous plots against the people and government of England (and into conversations with thugs who make violent, despicable, racist threats). Despite their attempts to defeat the villains, everything goes to hell just in time for the heavily foreshadowed reveals to set up the sequel. Though the action-packed suspense is up to snuff, heavy-handed Americanization leaves both characters and setting bland and flavorless.
Lucky U.K. readers get cliffhangers and toothsome prose, but at least Americans still get the thrills of the shooting practice and bombing plots . (Thriller. 13-15)Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-1394-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
