Appealingly imperfect Victoria makes this an enjoyable and humorous music-fueled coming-of-age story.
Sick of playing it safe, straight-A sophomore Victoria Cruz auditions for a high school rock band and ends up falling for both the perfectionist bassist and the gorgeous guitarist.
Fifteen-year-old Victoria, a middle-class scholarship kid at Evanston Academy, a posh Manhattan prep school, is tired of her routine life and her “overprotective Cuban parents,” who desperately want her to get into Harvard. So she auditions to be the lead singer for Debaser, a school rock band made up of three diverse juniors: by-the-book bassist Levi (who’s Jewish), “sex god” guitarist Strand (who’s biracial), and rebellious, mohawked drummer Krina (who’s Indian). With help from her Chinese-American bestie Annie, Victoria loosens up enough to earn the spot. Despite her obvious attraction to Strand and his “midwinter sky” eyes, inexperienced Victoria deems him too much of a player and accepts the advances of reliable Levi even though their sparks are tepid by comparison. The first-person narration thoughtfully explores the tension between Victoria’s desire to please her well-meaning, hardworking immigrant parents and her need to be more adventurous. Although the love triangle is predictable (there’s little debate about which guy is the better fit for Vi), the debut offers an endearing, fast-paced read with a realistically sweet, if sheltered, first-generation-American protagonist.
Appealingly imperfect Victoria makes this an enjoyable and humorous music-fueled coming-of-age story. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8089-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
A smart, timely outing.
Two teens connect through a mysterious podcast in this sophomore effort by British author Oseman (Solitaire, 2015).
Frances Janvier is a 17-year-old British-Ethiopian head girl who is so driven to get into Cambridge that she mostly forgoes friendships for schoolwork. Her only self-indulgence is listening to and creating fan art for the podcast Universe City, “a…show about a suit-wearing student detective looking for a way to escape a sci-fi, monster-infested university.” Aled Last is a quiet white boy who identifies as “partly asexual.” When Frances discovers that Aled is the secret creator of Universe City, the two embark on a passionate, platonic relationship based on their joint love of pop culture. Their bond is complicated by Aled’s controlling mother and by Frances’ previous crush on Aled’s twin sister, Carys, who ran away last year and disappeared. When Aled’s identity is accidently leaked to the Universe City fandom, he severs his relationship with Frances, leaving her questioning her Cambridge goals and determined to win back his affection, no matter what the cost. Frances’ narration is keenly intelligent; she takes mordant pleasure in using an Indian friend’s ID to get into a club despite the fact they look nothing alike: “Gotta love white people.” Though the social-media–suffused plot occasionally lags, the main characters’ realistic relationship accurately depicts current issues of gender, race, and class.
A smart, timely outing. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-233571-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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