A florid rumination on identity, utterly incurious about science, disability, or what makes life worth living
A disabled young woman gets her brain transplanted into the body of an attractive comatose donor.
Rosa, an 18-year-old from London, has been disabled since childhood with an unnamed and vaguely defined terminal nerve disorder. When she gets the opportunity for a groundbreaking, secretive transplant surgery, her family rushes to America. Rosa knows almost nothing about her donor, Sylvia, except that she was a white 18-year-old like Rosa who’s been in a coma since an accident. As Rosa recovers in rehab and builds a secretive romance with Joe, a tattooed white boy, she ponders the nature of her soul. With no rumination about the disability she’s lived with for most of her life, her introspection lacks believability. Even while Rosa worries if Joe loves her or loves Sylvia’s body, she never questions her conviction that in her prior body she’d been nonsexual, ineligible for romance. Rosa relies on her accent and her own mannerisms as identity-building evidence without exploring what it means that she retained them post-surgery. In a shocking and unexamined scene, Rosa and a fellow patient make a friendly date for hospital movie night to see Me Before You, a 2016 romance about a paralyzed man who chooses euthanasia over living disabled—a thoroughly inappropriate rehab-hospital film.
A florid rumination on identity, utterly incurious about science, disability, or what makes life worth living . (Science fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2570-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes.
The Plague has left a population divided between Elites and Ordinaries—those who have powers and those who don’t; now, an Ordinary teen fights for her life.
Paedyn Gray witnessed the king kill her father five years ago, and she’s been thieving and sleeping rough ever since, all while faking Psychic abilities. When she inadvertently saves the life of Prince Kai, she becomes embroiled in the Purging Trials, a competition to commemorate the sickness that killed most of the kingdom’s Ordinaries. Kai’s duties as the future Enforcer include eradicating any remaining Ordinaries, and these Trials are his chance to prove that he’s internalized his brutal training. But Kai can’t help but find Pae’s blue eyes, silver hair, and unabashed attitude enchanting. She likewise struggles to resist his stormy gray eyes, dark hair, and rakish behavior, even as they’re pitted against each other in the Trials and by the king himself. Scenes and concepts that are strongly reminiscent of the Hunger Games fall flat: They aren’t bolstered by the original’s heart or worldbuilding logic that would have justified a few extreme story elements. Illogical leaps and inconsistent characterizations abound, with lighthearted romantic interludes juxtaposed against genocide, child abuse, and sadism. These elements, which are not sufficiently addressed, combined with the use of ableist language, cannot be erased by any amount of romantic banter. Main characters are cued white; the supporting cast has some brown-skinned characters.
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798987380406
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Readers will be captivated by this twisty thriller and its uncompromising protagonist.
The mother Annabel Price thought was dead returns with a story about where she’s been—but 18-year-old Bel knows she’s lying.
Ever since Rachel Price’s unexplained disappearance 16 years ago, true-crime fans have come up with plentiful theories about what happened. Bel and her family members, who are white, cobbled together lives for themselves after a jury found Bel’s father, Charlie, not guilty of murdering his wife. Beset with medical bills for his elderly father, Charlie recently agreed to participate in a documentary about the unsolved mystery. Black British filmmaker Ramsey Lee is well into the process of interviewing the Prices when his project gets an unanticipated boost after an exhausted, disheveled Rachel staggers back into town. Rachel is eager to resume her role in the family, but the inconsistencies in her accounts raise alarms for Bel. With the help of the youngest member of the filmmaking team, Bel sets out to learn what really happened. Along the way, someone else disappears, and Bel uncovers a tangle of lies that make it impossible for her to trust people she thought she knew. When things come to a head the night of her grandfather’s 85th birthday party, Bel ends up in a race for her life. The last quarter of the novel tears along at a breakneck pace before arriving at a satisfying and unexpected conclusion.
Readers will be captivated by this twisty thriller and its uncompromising protagonist. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593374207
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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