Heartfelt but inconsistent.
Eliza Marino’s family, lifelong residents of New Jersey’s Long Beach Island, lost nearly everything in a devastating hurricane.
Five years later, she and her friends are on a mission to preserve their coastal marshland as a habitat for turtles and other wildlife. A lifeguard and talented surfer, Eliza, 17, remains traumatized by the storm that nearly killed her little brother. She and her friends resent the seasonal residents whose oceanfront mansions replaced the modest homes that were destroyed. Ensuring the marshland is preserved is challenging, however. Spontaneously venting their frustration, the teens vandalize a giant home under construction. For Eliza, teaching Milo Harris, a handsome, wealthy, vacationing New Yorker, to surf proves a happy distraction. However, each keeps secrets that threaten their fledgling romance. Despite one character’s referencing Indigenous activists, the text does not consider the Indigenous people displaced by the islanders’ ancestors. Eliza’s dad works in construction, and the cafe her mom co-owns depends on tourists. Such conflicts, though depicted, aren’t explored in depth and are primarily framed in an interpersonal context. The novel’s strengths are Eliza’s compelling voice—her hurricane flashbacks are mesmerizing—and the conveying of emotion; it only lightly explores the theme of youth climate change activism and issues connected to it. Most characters read as White; several secondary characters are Latinx, and one is nonbinary.
Heartfelt but inconsistent. (author’s note, resources) (Verse novel. 12-18)Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0916-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
A quick and engaging read that may end up leaving readers just short of satisfied.
A teenage girl reflects on the months and moments that led up to a drunken night.
Jorie is a high schooler who loves science and has a penchant for the study of mushrooms. We meet her the morning after she got drunk at a party and passed out in the bed of a stranger. Jorie then spends the novel trying to understand where she is, with whom, how she came to be in this situation, and how to get out of it. We learn of Jorie’s mixed feelings toward her parents and her complicated relationship with them, her friends, and her recent ex-boyfriend as well as her budding relationship with her art, which springs from her love of mushrooms. Heppermann uses verse to deconstruct and build up plot points in a skilled manner and keeps the pacing interesting and unpredictable—albeit sometimes jarring—throughout. The format and use of metaphors serves the story well. However, elements of Jorie’s present-day state of being could have been delved into more deeply but instead were left unexplored. The novel presents seemingly high-stakes conflicts that are wrapped up with quick resolutions that therefore ultimately read as anticlimactic. An absence of physical descriptions makes characters’ races difficult to determine.
A quick and engaging read that may end up leaving readers just short of satisfied. (Verse novel. 12-18)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-238798-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Written in verse, this slim, rhythmic novel for reluctant readers vividly evokes a teen boy’s struggle with...
Drumming is the only thing that relieves 16-year-old Joshua from his counting rituals.
Joshua’s secret is that he feels trapped by his mind. The pattern and percussion of drumming help pause the relentless notion that if he doesn’t do what his thoughts compel him to do, the people he cares about will come to harm. Joshua, who is white, is entering a new high school as a 10th-grader, and no one knows that he’s late for classes because he has to do his locker combination while simultaneously counting to 100 or that he can’t concentrate on schoolwork because he must count every crack in the ceiling. Then he meets Mage, a stellar student with “deep brown skin,” hair in braids, and a penchant for the word “magic.” Together with Joshua’s sister, Julia, they form a band for the upcoming talent show. Things brighten even further after his therapist explains that Joshua’s condition is called obsessive-compulsive disorder and then prescribes medication and talk therapy. Even still, his father is skeptical, “Now that you know, / can’t you just…stop?” It’s this miscomprehension that leads Joshua’s father to take some potentially damaging action. This is a captivating story that will capture teens’ imaginations.
Written in verse, this slim, rhythmic novel for reluctant readers vividly evokes a teen boy’s struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder. (Verse novel. 12-17)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5383-8258-5
Page Count: 200
Publisher: West 44 Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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