Small for her age, bright 14-year-old Sylvie is only just experiencing the first longings of puberty. Sylvie hopes her lifelong friendship with Carl will blossom into something more like what her bold new friend, alpha girl Miranda, means when she says “boyfriend.” But Carl’s object of desire is a boy at his new school, a soccer star on whom he has an intense crush, and he is moody and withdrawn with Sylvie. Wilson competently gets inside the world of younger teens and displays her usual sure hand with details (Miranda’s cheerful theft of her parents’ vodka, the quirks and foibles of parents), but there’s some predictability to the plot. Paul is furious when he discovers Carl’s feelings for him, and Carl takes out his subsequent humiliation on the Glass House sanctuary he and Sylvie have shared for years. Miranda’s audacious response to Carl’s classmates’ homophobia is a bright spot at the end, as is Sylvie’s recognition of the value of simple friendship; Carl’s parents’ bland suggestion that he might be going through a phase seems awkward and unnecessary. Mixed, but diverting. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59643-242-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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