An affecting portrayal of living with amnesia and discovering one’s own agency.
A white British girl with anterograde amnesia travels to the Arctic to chase after a boy whose kiss has stayed in her memory when nothing else has.
Seventeen-year-old Flora Banks cannot remember anything that happened before she was 10 years old, when doctors removed a tumor from her brain. Her memory resets itself every few hours, and ever present written reminders help orient her to her reality. Until one evening, when her best friend’s boyfriend, Drake (also white), kisses her, and she finds that she can remember every detail of their brief time together. The next day Drake leaves to study abroad in Norway, leaving Flora clinging to her singular new memory and the desperate hope that Drake holds the key to her recovery. When her parents inadvertently leave her home alone, she takes matters into her own hands: she travels to Norway to look for Drake. Despite difficulties and delusions, she meets charming strangers who help her along the way and ends up discovering hidden parts of herself amid the icy, beautiful Arctic. Slowly, memories of her past begin to filter through and puzzle pieces fall into place, revealing that there is more to Flora’s story than she realizes. Flora’s voice is frank and childlike, yet her verve and determination help to drive forward a necessarily cyclical plot.
An affecting portrayal of living with amnesia and discovering one’s own agency. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54701-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Another engaging entry in this world of spies and international intrigue.
Pop superstar Winter Young is again drawn into the world of secret agent Sydney Cossette in this follow-up to Stars and Smoke (2023).
Though constantly on one another’s minds, Winter and Sydney have resisted making any contact with each other since narrowly surviving a mission in which Panacea, the secret organization Sydney works for, tapped Winter to use his megastar status to infiltrate a wealthy and powerful criminal underworld. Ratcheting up the tension in this enemies-to-lovers romantic thriller is the fact that Sydney is being sent to Singapore to extract Tems, a fellow agent who also happens to be her ex. Winter, who needs a plus-one for a Warcross Championship gala in order to better maintain his cover, invites his former girlfriend. Witty insults and crossed signals abound in the pair’s smoldering relationship, but this second installment is a bit darker than the first. If some of the betrayals and losses involved are easy enough to spot coming, they still pack an emotional punch due to the strong development of Winter’s and Sydney’s respective backstories, told in alternating third-person narratives, both involving abuse and psychological pain. Winter is Chinese American; Sydney is white, and there’s a diverse cast of supporting characters whom readers will likely see again—Lu has left the ending tantalizingly open for another installment.
Another engaging entry in this world of spies and international intrigue. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781250852915
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
For fans, a finale that satisfies.
Picking up just after the end of Legendary (2018), Garber continues to build the world of Caraval with a final installment, this time focusing equally on both Dragna sisters’ perspectives.
After they released their long-missing mother from the Deck of Destiny, Scarlett and Donatella hoped to rebuild their relationship and gain a new sense of family. However, Legend also released the rest of the Fates, and, much to their dismay, the Fallen Star—essentially the ur-Fate—is only gaining in power. As the Fates begin to throw Valenda into chaos and disarray, the sisters must decide whom him to trust, whom to love, and how to set themselves free. Scar’s and Tella’s passionate will-they-or-won’t-they relationships with love interests are still (at times, inexplicably) compelling, taking up a good half of the plot and balancing out the large-scale power games with more domestic ones. Much like the previous two, this third book in the series is overwritten, with overly convenient worldbuilding that struggles nearly as much as the overwrought prose and convoluted plot. While those who aren’t Garber’s fans are unlikely to pick up this volume, new (or forgetful) readers will find the text repetitious enough to be able to follow along.
For fans, a finale that satisfies. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-15766-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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