Boarding school students learn the consequences of poor decision-making.
Last year at the Irving School—motto: “Enter Here to Be and Find a Friend”—something terrible happened. Readers will have to push through nearly 300 pages, narrated alternately by Tim Macbeth, a recently graduated senior who transferred to Irving for his final semester, and Duncan Meade, the current senior who inherited Tim’s dorm room and with it, a stack of CDs containing Tim’s reminiscences of that fateful school term, to find out what it was. Tim, a deeply self-conscious albino, spends an idyllic 18 hours stranded in Chicago with lovely fellow senior Vanessa en route to Irving and is totally smitten. Tim’s hopes are dashed by Vanessa’s commitment to her popularity and her current boyfriend, the loathsome and jealous yet handsome Patrick. Predictably, however, Tim goes along with Vanessa’s furtive occasional advances, all the while whipsawing between his conviction that she cares for him and his crippling self-loathing. Duncan, meanwhile, is alternately transfixed and horrified by Tim’s story, as he feels partly responsible for the terrible outcome of Tim, Vanessa and Patrick’s love triangle and eventually hopes to mine it for his Tragedy Paper, Irving’s multidisciplinary approach to a senior thesis. With his overreliance on obvious foreshadowing, debut author LaBan creates a mystery without thrills and parallel romances that lack any frisson. Readers will wonder, what was the point?
Completely, sadly skippable. (Fiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87040-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A standing ovation.
Tackles family secrets, toxic masculinity, and socio-economic differences with incisive clarity and candor.
Camino Rios lives in the Dominican Republic and yearns to go to Columbia University in New York City, where her father works most of the year. Yahaira Rios, who lives in Morningside Heights, hasn’t spoken to her dad since the previous summer, when she found out he has another wife in the Dominican Republic. Their lives collide when this man, their dad, dies in an airplane crash with hundreds of other passengers heading to the island. Each protagonist grieves the tragic death of their larger-than-life father and tries to unravel the tangled web of lies he kept secret for almost 20 years. The author pays reverent tribute to the lives lost in a similar crash in 2001. The half sisters are vastly different—Yahaira is dark skinned, a chess champion who has a girlfriend; Camino is lighter skinned, a talented swimmer who helps her curandera aunt deliver neighborhood babies. Despite their differences, they slowly forge a tenuous bond. The book is told in alternating chapters with headings counting how many days have passed since the fateful event. Acevedo balances the two perspectives with ease, contrasting the girls’ environments and upbringings. Camino’s verses read like poetic prose, flowing and straightforward. Yahaira’s sections have more breaks and urgent, staccato beats. Every line is laced with betrayal and longing as the teens struggle with loving someone despite his imperfections.
A standing ovation. (Verse novel. 14-18)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-288276-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Exactly what the title promises.
A grieving teen’s devotion to romance films might ruin her chances at actual romance.
Liz Buxbaum has always adored rom-coms, not least for helping her still feel close to her screenwriter mother, who died when she was little. Liz hopes that her senior year might turn into a real-life romantic fantasy, as an old crush has moved back to town, cuter and nicer than ever. Surely she can get Michael to ask her to prom. If only Wes, the annoying boy next door, would help her with her scheming! This charming, fluffy concoction manages to pack into one goofy plot every conceivable trope, from fake dating to the makeover to the big misunderstanding. Creative, quirky, daydreaming Liz is just shy of an annoying stereotype, saved by a dry wit and unresolved grief and anger. Wes makes for a delightful bad boy with a good heart, and supporting characters—including a sassy best friend, a perfect popular rival, even a (not really) evil stepmother—all get the opportunity to transcend their roles. The only villain here is Liz’s lovelorn imagination, provoking her into foolish lies that cause actual hurt feelings; but she is sufficiently self-aware to make amends just in time for the most important trope of all: a blissfully happy ending. All characters seem to be White by default.
Exactly what the title promises. (Romance. 12-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6762-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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