Not a meal but an entertainingly tasty snack on the light side of the genre.
With well-earned cynicism, high school junior Jillian is trying to carry on Umbra Investigations, her absent father’s business and area of “expertise”: he’s a paranormal researcher, or, in Jillian’s words, a trafficker “in bullshit.”
She doesn’t believe a scrap of it, but she needs to pay the bills—particularly the electricity, as they have cut her power off. Though the book opens with a hokey and cynical interaction with a client, the stakes rise quickly with the arrival of gorgeous and flirty Sky Ramsey, who horns his way into her investigation into a missing person, possibly abducted by a succubus. Adventures, sometimes violent, and romance ensue. Jillian’s angry at her dad’s abandonment of her (to gather paranormal artifacts from around the world) after the death of her mother, and she hates the babble that has surrounded her most of her life. This combination of feisty and hurt provides Jillian with a somewhat stock appeal. The increasingly weird case tests her assumptions about more than the paranormal, taking readers straight into a world of unexplained phenomena and leading Jillian to understand both her history and herself a little bit better. Some revelations are telegraphed, while others sneak in. Klein builds her underworld with both logic and farce, paralleling Jillian’s own skepticism and quick wit.
Not a meal but an entertainingly tasty snack on the light side of the genre. (Paranormal romance. 12-15)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61695-434-5
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Soho Teen
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Readers looking for a guilty-pleasure 1-percent read can do better than this Gossip Girl retread.
A wealthy blended family of white siblings purposely misses their connecting flight as a way of protesting their parents’ divorce in this debut by screenwriters Andelson and Meyer.
After 10-year-old Poppy lets slip to her older half brother and half sister, Amos and Flynn, that she overheard their parents are planning to divorce, the angry trio decides to ditch meeting their parents in Bora Bora and get off the plane in LA. Luckily, Flynn’s rich, Indian-American summer-camp crush, Neel Khan, lives nearby and can rescue them. So they dump their cellphones and embark on a three-day adventure that includes both a visit to Disneyland and the loss of Flynn’s virginity. The sibs’ complicated past is relayed in flashbacks: Flynn’s dad and Amos’ mom had an affair, divorced their spouses, married each other, and had Poppy. Stepsiblings Flynn and Amos, only a year apart, dote on Poppy and are beginning to have romantic feelings for each other. But unfortunately, their voices are so indistinguishable that it’s often difficult to decipher whose parent did what and who is crushing on whom. And the relentlessly clichéd dialogue (“ ‘What’s your problem, Amos?’ I fire back, trying not to let my voice crack. / ‘I don’t have a problem’ / ‘Right.’ / ‘You know what? I take it back. I do have a problem,’ he says. And then, outrageously: 'You. You’re my problem, Flynn’ ”) doesn’t help much in individuating them.
Readers looking for a guilty-pleasure 1-percent read can do better than this Gossip Girl retread. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6487-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
A surplus of angst-ridden back stories told in deeply regrettable prose.
The story of Anastasia, lost princess of Imperial Russia, retold as space opera.
In 1918, the 17-year-old daughter of Russia’s last czar was murdered with her family, but rumors persisted for decades that she might have survived in secret. In this version, the family of the Emperor of the Iron Kingdom, including his daughter Ananke Armorov, is known to have been murdered seven years ago in the android rebellion. Meanwhile, a ragtag crew of space pirates is community to brown-skinned and burn-scarred Ana. Ana’s best friend—about whom she has secret, more-than-friend feelings—is Di, a Metal: an android. Metals aren’t popular since the rebellion; most have been infected with the mind-controlling HIVE program that removes their free will. Complicating matters are Robb, a blue-eyed, olive-skinned noble on his own quest, and Jax, a violet-eyed, silver-haired Solani boy who pilots the pirate ship. Jax and Robb keep making eyes at each other, which is troublesome, since Robb’s mother wants Ana’s whole crew dead. Melodramatic back stories abound: there’s a prophesied savior, a prince in hiding with a secret power, and a noble young man with no memory. Malapropisms abound in the florid, awkward narrative (“Her voice warbled with the weight of those words”). There’s the kernel of a dramatic space yarn here, but it never comes to fruition.
A surplus of angst-ridden back stories told in deeply regrettable prose. (Science fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-265285-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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