A dreamlike tale of bullying and coping that owes slightly too much to nostalgia to work
Does this failed prequel to the Phoenix Award–winning Weetzie Bat (1989) at least succeed as a standalone novel?
It's 1975, and 13-year-old Louise Bat is mourning the death of her parents' marriage. In a first-person voice that breaks any possibility of the magical realism that made the original Dangerous Angels series so powerful, Weetzie explores the scariness of her apartment complex. At school, she forms an outcasts club with anorexic Lily and (requisite for Block) gay best friend Bobby, having friends can protect her only so much from bathroom graffiti and gum in her hair. Worse, the mean girls of junior high have nothing on the scary witchlike inhabitants of unit 13: purple-eyed Hypatia Wiggins and her nasty, Jayne Mansfield–loving daughter Annabelle (any possible connection to Weetzie Bat's purple-eyed, Jayne Mansfield–wannabe witch, Vixanne Wigg, is left undeveloped). But perhaps Weetzie has a guardian angel at both home and school: Winter, Annabelle's brother. Is it Winter who's leaving her the notes that show her L.A. at its most sparkly, mysterious and flavorful? Inexplicably, Weetzie's story concludes by cutting off any possibility of magic in this realism.
A dreamlike tale of bullying and coping that owes slightly too much to nostalgia to work . (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-156598-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-meaning but ultimately unsuccessful.
A high school sophomore discovers that her dreamy new artist boyfriend is suffering from mental illness.
Shy April is devastated when her outgoing and popular best friend abandons her for private school. Enter Jonah, an attractive and charismatic new student. He wins April’s heart by throwing over the resident queen bee in favor of her and inviting her to view his gallery of intense oil paintings. Soon they are inseparable, and April feels even closer to Jonah after he confesses his grief over the recent death of his best friend and his troubled relationship with his distant father. But then April starts noticing that Jonah sometimes seems to see and hear things that aren’t there, which culminates in a terrifying episode where Jonah destroys his own paintings in an attempt to silence the negative voices in his head. When Jonah is given a diagnosis, April is determined to see him through his illness, even at the expense of her own happiness. But for how long? This paint-by-numbers problem novel follows a predictable path that may initially intrigue readers curious about mental illness but will ultimately disappoint with its bromidic dialogue and sluggish pace. Better choices are Inside Out, by Terry Truman (2003), Challenger Deep, by Neal and Brendan Shusterman (2015), or the classic I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, by Joanne Greenburg (1964).
Well-meaning but ultimately unsuccessful. (author’s note) (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4926-1441-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
A world ruled by Hitler ought to evoke at least a smidgen of horror, but this overstuffed slog overwhelms the horrifyingly...
Dark secrets abound in the last human enclave two generations after the Nazis created vampirism and took over the world.
Sophie lives in Haven, the Pacific island nation where humanity retreated after the truce with the undead Third Reich (if there were prior residents, they're invisible in mostly occidental Haven). Sophie adores her secret vampire boyfriend, Val, to whom she smells "intoxicating." Val hides secrets of his own: as a human, he was engaged to Sophie's grandmother; later, he had a fling with Sophie's mother. More important than Val's incestuous affections is his knowledge of who is murdering everyone Sophie loves. He won't tell her, so Sophie's willing to investigate even into the Third Reich, if she must. Bramble’s New York—Gestapo-controlled, vampire-overrun—shows no sign of the evils to be expected of even a human Führer, aside from one appallingly unconcerned mention that nearly all Jews have been murdered. This book’s moral compass is seriously skewed. As Sophie adventures with cinematic intensity, she knows she's unlike the prejudiced Havenites, for she comprehends morality in shades of gray. Why, this sophisticated miss understands that human misdeeds in the fight for survival against total annihilation are comparable to the horrors of Auschwitz, an equation drawn with a straight narrative face.
A world ruled by Hitler ought to evoke at least a smidgen of horror, but this overstuffed slog overwhelms the horrifyingly real vileness of Nazism with vampiric banalities. (Science fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63079-017-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Switch/Capstone
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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