A sincere, endearing coming-of-age tale about a daughter and her single mom.
A teen discovers her mother’s old diary in this debut YA novel.
Now that she’s almost 16, Velvet Underwood is old enough to ask her mother for the truth about her father. He left them both when Velvet was just 6 months old. “My mama has a past, one she’s proud of (so she says), and in Sack City everyone knows everyone’s business (so she also says),” narrates Velvet. “And maybe she’s right, because it’s no secret Mama was involved with Diamond Jim, my daddy.” Velvet knows little about Diamond Jim other than that he was handsome, good at bowling, and drove a Cadillac. (Her mother is happy to tell Velvet that she was named for the material of the car’s back seat, on which she was conceived.) She also knows her mother, the wine-slugging Lynette, is much whispered about around Sack City, a straight-laced town where people “act like Jesus is the mayor.” Then one night, Velvet finds Lynette’s diary and can’t help herself from taking a look inside, figuring—correctly—it might contain a few more facts about the mysterious Diamond Jim. It does, but they are not at all the tidbits that Velvet was hoping to discover. For one thing, she learns that there was a baby conceived in the back of Diamond Jim’s Cadillac early in her parents’ courtship—but it wasn’t Velvet. The miscarriage is just one of a number of very adult facts that color the image Velvet has long held in her mind about her parents, and the revelations arrive just as she’s beginning to take her own first steps into romance. Velvet decides she needs to meet Diamond Jim and maybe convince him to come back to Lynette. But will Velvet’s meddling in Lynette’s private life help provide her with a better sense of her origins or simply confuse things even further?
Strommen’s prose, as narrated by Velvet, is buoyant and earnest, as here when her first date asks if it’s OK to kiss her: “Bobby Johnson is going to kiss me. Oh Lord Jesus, he’s going to kiss me! I want to ask Mercy what she thinks, but I can’t. I have to act fast. I decide it has to happen sometime—most girls my age have already had their first kiss.” The novel is set in the South some indeterminate number of decades in the past, and the whole book is infused with a heavy dose of nostalgia. The tone may prove a bit treacly for some, but beneath it, the characters, particularly Lynette and her own mother, Ditty, brim with pathos. Sack City manages to come off as cruel and homey at the same time, and Velvet’s circle—which includes her best friend, Mercy, and eventually Bobby—provides a safe place from which she can consider the struggles of the previous generations. It’s a sentimental tale for sure, but one that many readers will enjoy quite a bit.
A sincere, endearing coming-of-age tale about a daughter and her single mom.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2022
ISBN: 9798985024296
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning.
Two teens train to be society-sanctioned killers in an otherwise immortal world.
On post-mortal Earth, humans live long (if not particularly passionate) lives without fear of disease, aging, or accidents. Operating independently of the governing AI (called the Thunderhead since it evolved from the cloud), scythes rely on 10 commandments, quotas, and their own moral codes to glean the population. After challenging Hon. Scythe Faraday, 16-year-olds Rowan Damisch and Citra Terranova reluctantly become his apprentices. Subjected to killcraft training, exposed to numerous executions, and discouraged from becoming allies or lovers, the two find themselves engaged in a fatal competition but equally determined to fight corruption and cruelty. The vivid and often violent action unfolds slowly, anchored in complex worldbuilding and propelled by political machinations and existential musings. Scythes’ journal entries accompany Rowan’s and Citra’s dual and dueling narratives, revealing both personal struggles and societal problems. The futuristic post–2042 MidMerican world is both dystopia and utopia, free of fear, unexpected death, and blatant racism—multiracial main characters discuss their diverse ethnic percentages rather than purity—but also lacking creativity, emotion, and purpose. Elegant and elegiac, brooding but imbued with gallows humor, Shusterman’s dark tale thrusts realistic, likable teens into a surreal situation and raises deep philosophic questions.
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning. (Science fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4424-7242-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution.
A teenage girl finds herself alone after everyone else in her town mysteriously disappears, leaving her scrambling to figure out how to find them all.
One late summer day, everybody in July Fielding’s town disappears. She is left to piece together what happened, following a series of cryptic signs she finds around town urging her to “GET THEM BACK.” The narrative moves back and forth between July’s present and the events of the summer before, when her relationship with her best friend, cross-country team co-captain Sydney, starts to fracture due to a combination of jealousy over July’s new relationship with a cute boy called Sam and sweet up-and-coming freshman Ella’s threatening to overtake Syd’s status as star of the track team. The team members participate in a ritual in which they jump off a cliff into the rocky waters below at the end of their Friday practice runs. Though Ella is reluctant, Syd pressures her to jump. Short, frenetically paced sections move the story along quickly, and there is much foreshadowing pointing to something terrible that occurred at the end of that summer, which may be the key to July’s current predicament, but there is much misdirection too. Ultimately this is a story without enough setup to make the turn the book takes in the end feel fully developed or earned. All characters read white.
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593327173
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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