Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT

Next book

HIDDEN GEMS

QUEST FOR THE GREAT DIAMOND

This engaging tale conveys a message of unity through vivid characters, plenty of action, and an unusual fantasy setting.

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT

In this debut children’s novel, a misfit rock girl embarks on an eventful journey to find out why she’s different.

In the village of Gemstone, mineral people and rock folks lead separate lives. Gem, a young girl whose parents are minerals, is born a rock. Tormented at her mineral school, she transfers to Granite Elementary, where she’s happy until the secret of her parentage comes out. Ostracized by the other rock kids, Gem yearns to solve the mystery of her birth and teams up with a trio of other outcasts (Opal, Pyrite, and Obsidian) for a trek through the Jeweled Forest, facing the dangers that lie beyond. They hope to find answers from the long-lost, near-legendary scientist Great Diamond. During their action-packed escapades, the four brave an attack by toothy toxic minerals, encounter a meditating Moonstone and a Tiger’s Eye and her cubs, and cross the poisonous Mercury Lake. They’re kidnapped by rock warriors and attacked by a spike-covered giant made of stibnite. There’s a dragon, too. In the end, what the friends finally learn about themselves and the people of Gemstone will change their lives. Boughazian, a veteran 3D computer animator, has woven many types of minerals and rocks into this appealing fantasy series opener—people made of gray shale, limestone, marble, or topaz; lapis lazuli butterflies; sulfur monkeys; jadeite frogs; malachite moss; and a labradorite dog. (The book includes a glossary, beginning with amethyst and ending with zincite, that features colorful images by debut illustrator Lockwood.) The fantastical worldbuilding, deftly rooted in the familiar (school, soccer, student bonding, and peer conflicts), works surprisingly well. (In the expert, fine-lined drawings that begin each chapter, debut illustrator Sigua renders the characters as typical preteens, albeit with subtle touches suggesting their rock and mineral properties.) Yes, the story’s moral—that similarities are more important than the differences that can divide people—is predictable, but it is well-integrated into the adventure-filled plot.

This engaging tale conveys a message of unity through vivid characters, plenty of action, and an unusual fantasy setting.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 141

Publisher: Great Diamond Press, LLC

Review Posted Online: June 28, 2019

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 383


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller

Next book

IT ENDS WITH US

Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 383


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller

Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.

At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.

Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.

Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016

Next book

THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Close Quickview