The unwritten rule is that you don’t like your best friend’s boyfriend—in a romantic sense, anyway. Sarah and Brianna have been best friends since kindergarten. Sarah, sensitive and mousy, has always played sidekick to outgoing, beautiful Brianna. Sarah has also liked Ryan since eighth grade, but she can’t break the news now because Brianna and Ryan are dating. Then Sarah and Ryan kiss, and he confesses he likes her, too. Sarah knows that revealing the truth to Brianna will devastate their friendship, but she believes that what she has with Ryan is true love. The love triangle is complex by itself, but Scott gives it extra dimension by adding a painful look at Sarah and Brianna’s toxic friendship. Readers need to read between the lines of Sarah’s first-person narration to see that even as Sarah provides Brianna a refuge from her verbally abusive parents, Brianna visits that same abuse upon her. They will cheer her growing self-awareness as Sarah sees that she is as deserving of love as Brianna, even if she isn’t as bold. (Fiction. 14 & up)
Pub Date: March 16, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7891-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
Regardless, readers will likely be so swept up in the romance they can read past any flaws.
An ultimately compelling exploration of teenage growth and young love.
With her idolized sister Margot leaving for college, Lara Jean doesn’t feel ready for the coming changes: becoming more responsible for their younger sister, Kitty, helping their widowed father, or seeing Margot break up with Josh, the boy next door—whom Lara Jean secretly liked first. But there’s even greater upheaval to come, when Lara Jean’s five secret letters to the boys she’s loved are mailed to them by accident. Lara Jean runs when sweet, dependable Josh tries to talk to her about her letter. And when Peter Kavinsky gets his letter, it brings him back into Lara Jean’s life, all handsome, charming, layered and complicated. They start a fake relationship to help Lara Jean deal with Josh and Peter to get over his ex. But maybe Lara Jean and Peter will discover there’s something more between them as they learn about themselves and each other. It’s difficult to see this book as a love triangle—Josh is bland as oatmeal, and Peter is utterly charismatic. Meanwhile, readers may find that Lara Jean sometimes seems too naïve and rather young for 16—though in many ways, this makes her feel more realistic than many of the world-weary teens that populate the shelves.
Regardless, readers will likely be so swept up in the romance they can read past any flaws. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: April 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2670-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Seductive if somewhat overdone.
There’s something in the ocean, and it wants blood.
Briar Winters has been haunted all her life—by the drowning death of her twin brother when they were six and by a voice in her head that says she’ll one day join him. It’s almost the end of summer, and soon Briar’s three closest friends—Kai Baisho, Astrid Hoffman, and Finn Adler—will disperse to various colleges, leaving her behind in their hometown of Loch Creek, Massachusetts, where tragedies seem to strike repeatedly. Finn is logical and math-oriented, but he’s nevertheless been researching occult matters that just happen to involve both quantum physics and Loch Creek’s strange happenings. He and Briar are friends, found family, and maybe more? But the day after the summer carnival, Finn vanishes—and only Briar, Kai, and Astrid remember that he ever existed. As Briar’s 19th birthday party approaches, odd events in town, rumors of witches, and her own seemingly pending demise won’t stop her from finding Finn and bringing him back home. Debut author Elizabeth’s narrative is littered with moody purple prose that establishes the melodramatic atmosphere, perhaps inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe poem “The City in the Sea” that’s quoted at the beginning of each of the book’s six sections. The lead-up to the climax will enthrall readers who are willing to wade through a few confusing detours along the way. The leads present white, and both are bisexual.
Seductive if somewhat overdone. (Horror. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780823459384
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
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