A deftly written examination of familial relationships, trauma, and post-adolescence.
A teen girl’s life is turned upside down when her missing twin reappears after 12 years.
Ava Rivers, the blonde fraternal twin of auburn-haired Vera, went missing one Halloween night, fracturing her otherwise harmonious family. After Ava’s disappearance, the girls’ brother, Elliott, spends his days living a drug-fueled and rather aimless life; their father quits his job and moves into the family basement, chain-smoking and scouring the Internet for leads about Ava; and their perfectly polished mother crams her days full of high-profile philanthropic events. Wonderfully snarky-voiced Vera is counting the days until she can move from her stifling home in laid-back Berkeley to attend college in Portland, Oregon. However, when Ava suddenly comes back, the Rivers’ lives are seemingly put on hold. Ava’s return brings about many changes for Vera—she defers college; rekindles a relationship with Max, Ava’s African-American childhood best friend; and eventually pulls her family back together—but she struggles to familiarize herself with a person who is both a stranger and an intrinsic part of herself. An unconventional take on the well-trod subject of kidnapping, Gardner’s (Perdita, 2015, etc.) clever offering features a surprising twist and should leave readers ruminating over what truly defines family. Vera is bisexual (as is her male love interest), and she and her sister are multiracial (white father, half Iranian/half Mexican mother).
A deftly written examination of familial relationships, trauma, and post-adolescence. (Fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47830-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Whether you came for the lore or the love, perfection.
Broken people, complicated families, magic, and Faerie politics: Black’s back.
After the tumultuous ending to the last volume (marriage, exile, and the seeming collapse of all her plots), Jude finds herself in the human world, which lacks appeal despite a childhood spent longing to go back. The price of her upbringing becomes clear: A human raised in the multihued, multiformed, always capricious Faerie High Court by the man who killed her parents, trained for intrigue and combat, recruited to a spy organization, and ultimately the power behind the coup and the latest High King, Jude no longer understands how to exist happily in a world that isn’t full of magic and danger. A plea from her estranged twin sends her secretly back to Faerie, where things immediately come to a boil with Cardan (king, nemesis, love interest) and all the many political strands Jude has tugged on for the past two volumes. New readers will need to go back to The Cruel Prince (2018) to follow the complexities—political and personal side plots abound—but the legions of established fans will love every minute of this lushly described, tightly plotted trilogy closer. Jude might be traumatized and emotionally unhealthy, but she’s an antihero worth cheering on. There are few physical descriptions of humans and some queer representation.
Whether you came for the lore or the love, perfection. (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-31042-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution.
A teenage girl finds herself alone after everyone else in her town mysteriously disappears, leaving her scrambling to figure out how to find them all.
One late summer day, everybody in July Fielding’s town disappears. She is left to piece together what happened, following a series of cryptic signs she finds around town urging her to “GET THEM BACK.” The narrative moves back and forth between July’s present and the events of the summer before, when her relationship with her best friend, cross-country team co-captain Sydney, starts to fracture due to a combination of jealousy over July’s new relationship with a cute boy called Sam and sweet up-and-coming freshman Ella’s threatening to overtake Syd’s status as star of the track team. The team members participate in a ritual in which they jump off a cliff into the rocky waters below at the end of their Friday practice runs. Though Ella is reluctant, Syd pressures her to jump. Short, frenetically paced sections move the story along quickly, and there is much foreshadowing pointing to something terrible that occurred at the end of that summer, which may be the key to July’s current predicament, but there is much misdirection too. Ultimately this is a story without enough setup to make the turn the book takes in the end feel fully developed or earned. All characters read white.
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593327173
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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