A predictable novel about two young people raised as Shakers and their inner struggles in breaking away from that strict, celibate life. Sarah is first seen sneaking off to welcome spring on a hilltop, thus establishing her relatively unfettered nature. Later Abel finds the shoes and stockings she has left behind and returns them indirectly, careful not to touch the female garments but attracted to this flushed young girl with her unruly red curls. There are whispered exchanges plus one secret night-time conversation—very proper by most standards but not by the Shakers'—before the two are exposed and sentenced to exile in a melodramatic climax that begins with an unlikely confession from Sarah's rejecting mother, Sister Agatha, and ends with Sister Agatha's suicide. Yolen conveys the community's repressive atmosphere and extensive thought-control in a stiff, prim style that's as leaden as their imposed serenity. For balance, she shows us some Shaker dances and ecstatic celebrations (but without much change in her sober style); and her community includes joyful singers and a compassionate woman leader as well as petty conformists, the unforgiving, self-righteous prig who's the male leader, and the self-punishing Sister Agatha—but the range is as stereotypical as the individual responses.
Pub Date: May 11, 1981
ISBN: 0140360271
Page Count: 155
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1981
A winning game of feelingsball.
A former football star, who never thought she’d play again after she came out as transgender, steps back onto the field for one last season to help her team win state.
Grace Woodhouse used to know where she belonged. She had Division I schools lined up to recruit her, but that was before what happened during playoffs last year, before she came out as trans, and before she quit the team. Although her single father and new friend group support her, Grace feels lost as her senior year begins. When one of her old teammates asks her to help him with his technique, she quickly realizes that he and the other captains are hoping for more than her expertise from the sidelines—they want her to rejoin the team. Grace can’t resist the opportunity to play again, but her return draws unwanted national attention that makes her question her future and who she wants to be. Flashback chapters written in the second-person present tense bring Grace’s past to life, which helps maintain momentum and makes her emotional journey feel more immersive. A heartfelt, goofy, and diverse cast of secondary characters surround Grace, who’s white, as she navigates self-doubt, friendship, complicated feelings for her ex-girlfriend, and what she wants to do after graduation. Overall, this coming-of-age sports narrative is honest, gentle, and hopeful.
A winning game of feelingsball. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781646145027
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Levine Querido
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
Whether you came for the lore or the love, perfection.
Broken people, complicated families, magic, and Faerie politics: Black’s back.
After the tumultuous ending to the last volume (marriage, exile, and the seeming collapse of all her plots), Jude finds herself in the human world, which lacks appeal despite a childhood spent longing to go back. The price of her upbringing becomes clear: A human raised in the multihued, multiformed, always capricious Faerie High Court by the man who killed her parents, trained for intrigue and combat, recruited to a spy organization, and ultimately the power behind the coup and the latest High King, Jude no longer understands how to exist happily in a world that isn’t full of magic and danger. A plea from her estranged twin sends her secretly back to Faerie, where things immediately come to a boil with Cardan (king, nemesis, love interest) and all the many political strands Jude has tugged on for the past two volumes. New readers will need to go back to The Cruel Prince (2018) to follow the complexities—political and personal side plots abound—but the legions of established fans will love every minute of this lushly described, tightly plotted trilogy closer. Jude might be traumatized and emotionally unhealthy, but she’s an antihero worth cheering on. There are few physical descriptions of humans and some queer representation.
Whether you came for the lore or the love, perfection. (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-31042-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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