Raw, funny, grotesque, unsettling, and very sad.
Teens earn a living as test subjects in medical trials in a novel that may feel dystopian but is very much set in the present day.
Technically these contemporary teens are “professional volunteers,” but that’s just doublespeak for the way Audie, her roommates, and a whole underclass of people support themselves. Audie narrates in sardonic first-person as she and other human guinea pigs spend their days applying to be paid test subjects and then being poked, prodded, medicated, and invasively evaluated by cold, dismissive medical staff. The myriad pills, injections, experimental procedures, and tissue samplings cause side effects, and does it really matter which overlapping treatments—or booze or recreational drugs—are causing what? Audie knows her boyfriend, Dylan, loves her (he stayed when she “sprayed, puked, shat, dribbled”), but when fellow guinea pig Charlotte dies, Audie’s life unravels. Memory lapses past and present become more noticeable, and details don’t line up. The picture that Audie’s painted—her clean apartment, her relationship with Dylan, the nature of her past trauma, and even her level of consent in the medical treatment—dissolves on her and on readers. Audie’s world and reality tip sideways, and there may be no way for her to be more than “me to the power of fucked.” The overall message is murky and the narrative so unreliable and tricky that readers will be hard-pressed to make sense of everything even in hindsight, but there’s no denying the story’s power.
Raw, funny, grotesque, unsettling, and very sad. (author’s note) (Fiction. 15-18)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-49724-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues...
He’s in remission from the osteosarcoma that took one of his legs. She’s fighting the brown fluid in her lungs caused by tumors. Both know that their time is limited.
Sparks fly when Hazel Grace Lancaster spies Augustus “Gus” Waters checking her out across the room in a group-therapy session for teens living with cancer. He’s a gorgeous, confident, intelligent amputee who always loses video games because he tries to save everyone. She’s smart, snarky and 16; she goes to community college and jokingly calls Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, her only friend besides her parents. He asks her over, and they swap novels. He agrees to read the Van Houten and she agrees to read his—based on his favorite bloodbath-filled video game. The two become connected at the hip, and what follows is a smartly crafted intellectual explosion of a romance. From their trip to Amsterdam to meet the reclusive Van Houten to their hilariously flirty repartee, readers will swoon on nearly every page. Green’s signature style shines: His carefully structured dialogue and razor-sharp characters brim with genuine intellect, humor and desire. He takes on Big Questions that might feel heavy-handed in the words of any other author: What do oblivion and living mean? Then he deftly parries them with humor: “My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actually touched.” Dog-earing of pages will no doubt ensue.
Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues to make it through Hazel and Gus’ poignant journey. (Fiction. 15 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-47881-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gruesomely violent with a disheartening take on the future.
A troubled teen in a zombie-infested landscape finds energy and purpose in killing.
Sixteen-year-old Quinn Wallace, surrendered by her adoptive parents at age 6 after just four years with them, is marking the time until she turns 18 and can leave the Pegasus Center, a residential treatment facility in Peoria, Illinois. She cynically chases the compliance points given for good behavior. Manipulative and in love with control, Quinn, who has ADHD (and, possibly, antisocial personality disorder), experiences “emotions differently than most people” and has had to learn to interpret others’ emotions; she gleans information about her fellow residents by secretly reading their charts. Reports of riots in Chicago feel remote until one day the chaos reaches their locked ward: A custodian reanimates following a violent death—she’s a carrier, someone infected with a “new and terrifying virus.” Quinn, 17-year-old Keisha, and a ragtag band from Pegasus flee the facility and head south. People underestimate petite, blond, pale-skinned, and sweet-faced Quinn, who’s protective of her Black-presenting crush, Keisha, who taught her how to turn on the charm and play people. First-person narrator Quinn feels “the warmth of excitement” when she kills. Many of her victims are one-note secondary characters whom she views as disposable. Salazar’s series opener, which was originally self-published in 2024 as The Dead Weight, explores mental health issues and neurodivergence in ways that unfortunately feel one-dimensional and offers little redemption for its protagonist.
Gruesomely violent with a disheartening take on the future. (Horror. 15-18)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464299292
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
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