A decent hook ruined by shoddy characters and limp plotting.
When a local teen celebrity goes missing, her ex-boyfriend becomes the prime suspect.
White teens Tony Gardner and Hope Jensen have just broken up, and everyone at school is on Hope’s side. Hope is the rich, beautiful daughter of the local morning show anchors, while Tony is just a poor nobody. Licking his wounds, Tony spends the night signing Hope up for every dating app and free-sample delivery he can find, plastering her picture and address all over the internet. The next day Hope calls, begging him to take it all down, and during the call Tony hears Hope abducted. While the town searches for Hope, Tony does his best to avoid suspicion, to no avail. Fairly early on, Hope is revealed to have Gone Girl–ed Tony, faking her kidnapping to get even. But things go terribly awry. The novel’s hook raises interest, but the characters quickly scuttle it. Hope is a shallow, vindictive person with little going for her, and self-centered Tony continually makes staggeringly bad decisions. The author effectively crafts a town coming together to search for a missing person and the paranoid atmosphere that emerges, but the center doesn’t hold. These two teens are just too inert to engage readers. A last-minute turn lands with a thud.
A decent hook ruined by shoddy characters and limp plotting. (Thriller. 12-16)Pub Date: July 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4736-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
A twisty and entertaining magic-filled mystery that mirrors real-life issues.
A teen’s sense of justice leads her into dark and unexpected places.
Mary Elizabeth lives in the Scar with her Aunt Gia, living life to the fullest with her boyfriend, James; his Neverland boys; and her best friend, Ursula. While Mary balances attending school at Monarch High; partying at Wonderland, a local club for minors; and her internship with the police department that solved her parents’ murders, tensions rise between Legacy, the Scar’s original inhabitants who have a magical lineage, and Narrows, privileged incomers without magic. When the mysterious Mad Hatter strikes, leaving grisly presents for the police, and a wealthy Legacy student disappears, the police chief puts Mary and a young officer on the case in search of answers and justice. The Scar is a complex and realistic setting where Legacy struggle with collective trauma, social unrest, and inequity while rich Narrows families are buying up and building on Legacy land that holds spiritual significance and reshaping the high school to be less inclusive. Themes discussed include politics after the Death of Magic and the co-opting of Legacy culture by Narrows as well as the importance of chosen family. The appearance of familiar characters will draw readers into this story that delves into society’s darkness. Mary is pale-skinned with red hair; ethnic diversity in the cast does not correspond with Legacy versus Narrows status.
A twisty and entertaining magic-filled mystery that mirrors real-life issues. (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-368-04938-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
Hooked readers will be tapping their fingers waiting for the sequel.
Reichs follows up his Virals series (co-written with his mother, Kathy Reichs) with a new series about imminent human extinction.
Min is not your average 16-year-old. Living in a trailer park in an isolated town high in the mountains of Idaho, she’s learned to keep pretty much to herself. She has a mother who loves her and a best friend, Tack, who’d like to be more, but she knows they can’t understand what she’s going through. Every two years on her birthday, she’s murdered. And every two years she comes back, completely unharmed. She’s tried to escape the inevitable but knows it’s only a matter of time before the man in black returns for her. Now things are getting worse, with an asteroid headed toward Earth. Will this be it, the real end of her life? Just when she’s found that classmate Noah is having the same strange experiences she’s tried to keep hidden? Reichs varies his narrative structure, opening with Min’s present-day account, interspersed with italicized flashbacks, and then switching to Noah, whose account is punctuated by transcripts with the doctor he shares with Min, before their stories converge in alternating chapters. It’s a pacing strategy that keeps the pages flipping madly. Min, Tack, and Noah are all evidently white.
Hooked readers will be tapping their fingers waiting for the sequel. (Thriller. 12-16)Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54493-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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