As rich as quality chocolate.
Anya Balanchine comes into her own in business and in matters of the heart while circumventing the chocolate prohibition with her medicinal cacao nightclub in the multiple-year–spanning conclusion to the Birthright trilogy.
While her professional life is coming together as she and former enemy Charles Delacroix prepare for the grand opening of their cacao nightclub, the Dark Room, Anya’s personal relationships suffer. Win Delacroix can’t forgive her for working with his father, and he leaves New York to attend college away from Anya. Anya tries to do right by her sister, Natty, who’s going through a rough patch. Her cousin Mickey returns, looking for his missing wife, treacherous Sophia Bitter. And Anya’s mafiya Family actively disapproves of her attempts at legitimacy. A near-disaster on the eve of opening brings Anya’s cacao-supplying friend Theo from Mexico to the city, where he decides to stay on to help. There is less mob intrigue than in previous installments, as the primary focus is Anya’s coming-of-age. Her self-aware narrative, full of asides, foreshadows heavily, neutering some of the tension. Multiple suitors court Anya, and her responses demonstrate how she grapples with discovering what and who she wants in this most romance-focused book in the series. The sweet ending is tempered by Anya’s prickly personality, which stays true through all of her growth.
As rich as quality chocolate. (Thriller. 12 & up)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-374-38075-5
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Enticing and original.
Abandoned by her sisters, Io Ora must trust Bianca—former mob queen, now dying wraith—to help her find the hidden gods and end them forever in this duology closer that follows Threads That Bind (2023).
Io and Bianca cross mudflats that harbor deadly chimerini and dodge the violent, unpredictable tides that flood the Wastelands, where humans have struggled to survive ever since the Collapse shattered the moon into three pieces. The youngest of the Moirae-born (sisters with Fates-like powers), Io is able to see the threads governing every human fate in the Quilt. She can end a life simply by cutting another’s life-thread, but the cost is high: Each time, she must sever one of her own 35 threads. As Bianca traverses anarchic wastes and dangerous urban slums ruled by powerful gangs on the way to their destination, the teeming city-nation of Nanzy, she weakens but pushes on. Despite setbacks and betrayals, the two discover unexpected allies willing to risk their lives to confront the gods. Io’s personal evolution, like the Moirae’s silver threads, is woven seamlessly into the complicated plot. While her romance with Edei is satisfying, the story’s emotional driver is the sisters’ difficult history of loss, longing, pain, and betrayal; each bears scars from their old, set-in-stone rivalries. Io’s world has an epic thematic scope and an intricately imagined setting. The characters are diverse in appearance, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
Enticing and original. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780593528747
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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