An absorbing mystery with strong characterization.
A girl is determined to find her missing crush when the town blames the disappearance on Satanists.
When Audre Weaver and her family moved from Brooklyn to a small town in Pennsylvania, she really didn’t fit in—she was sent home from school the first day for violating the dress code with her purple nail polish, and she was taken aback by seeing the Ten Commandments posted in her public high school. Luckily, Audre has befriended David, a fellow outsider who moved there from Puerto Rico, and feels drawn to Elle, the daughter of a local preacher for whom her feelings might be stronger than friendship. Then Elle goes missing, and the dress she was wearing when she disappeared turns up in the woods soaked in blood at what looks like the site of a Satanic ritual. Audre’s father, who is researching the occult for his book, is detained by the police in connection with Elle’s disappearance. Since the police seem satisfied that they have cracked the case, Audre sets out herself to find out what really happened to Elle. Audre is a strong-willed, loyal protagonist who stands up for what she believes. Her friendship with David is warm and natural, as are her relationships with her parents. The gentle queer romance subplot enhances the well-crafted mystery in this novel that explores Satanic panic. Other than brown-skinned David, characters are White.
An absorbing mystery with strong characterization. (Mystery. 12-18)Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780593644102
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Underlined
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A meditation on a timely subject that never forgets to put its characters and their stories first
An Afghani-Australian teen named Mina earns a scholarship to a prestigious private school and meets Michael, whose family opposes allowing Muslim refugees and immigrants into the country.
Dual points of view are presented in this moving and intelligent contemporary novel set in Australia. Eleventh-grader Mina is smart and self-possessed—her mother and stepfather (her biological father was murdered in Afghanistan) have moved their business and home across Sydney in order for her to attend Victoria College. She’s determined to excel there, even though being surrounded by such privilege is a culture shock for her. When she meets white Michael, the two are drawn to each other even though his close-knit, activist family espouses a political viewpoint that, though they insist it is merely pragmatic, is unquestionably Islamophobic. Tackling hard topics head-on, Abdel-Fattah explores them fully and with nuance. True-to-life dialogue and realistic teen social dynamics both deepen the tension and provide levity. While Mina and Michael’s attraction seems at first unlikely, the pair’s warmth wins out, and readers will be swept up in their love story and will come away with a clearer understanding of how bias permeates the lives of those targeted by it.
A meditation on a timely subject that never forgets to put its characters and their stories first . (Fiction. 12-17)Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-11866-7
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Part coming-of-age story and part exposé of Duterte’s problematic policies, this powerful and courageous story offers...
Seventeen-year-old Jay Reguero searches for the truth about his cousin’s death amid President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs while on an epic trip back to his native Philippines.
Shocked out of his senioritis slumber when his beloved cousin Jun is killed by the police in the Philippines for presumably using drugs, Jay makes a radical move to spend his spring break in the Philippines to find out the whole story. Once pen pals, Jay hasn’t corresponded with Jun in years and is wracked by guilt at ghosting his cousin. A mixed heritage (his mother is white) Filipino immigrant who grew up in suburban Michigan, Jay’s connection to current-day Philippines has dulled from assimilation. His internal tensions around culture, identity, and languages—as “a spoiled American”—are realistic. Told through a mix of first-person narration, Jun’s letters to Jay, and believable dialogue among a strong, full cast of characters, the result is a deeply emotional story about family ties, addiction, and the complexity of truth. The tender relationship between Jay and Jun is especially notable—as is the underlying commentary about the challenges and nuances between young men and their uncles, fathers, male friends, and male cousins.
Part coming-of-age story and part exposé of Duterte’s problematic policies, this powerful and courageous story offers readers a refreshingly emotional depiction of a young man of color with an earnest desire for the truth. (author’s note, recommended reading) (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55491-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kokila
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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