A resonant look at coming-of-age in a socially networked world.
A Hawaii teen charts life before and after the catastrophe that’s reshaped her world.
Three years ago, Taylor’s family (presumed white) left Oregon for Oahu, where her mom’s clinical depression and the friction between her dad and brother, Eli, a high school senior, have worsened. Eli skips school to hang with his surfing brahs and girlfriend, Stacy, partying, drinking, and driving to the North Shore to surf. Eighth grader Taylor escapes into social networking, fantasizing about a career in fashion. Thrillingly befriended by wealthy, stylish Brielle, whose manipulative ways are patterned on reality TV, Taylor allows Brielle to coax her into abandoning one friend and betraying another. Taylor’s responses to classroom writing prompts—dating both before and after the catastrophe—comprise the text. Like Brielle, Taylor’s turned winner-take-all competition into her life template. Triumphant outcomes are transmitted and amplified through social media, but so are humiliation and tragedy. Publicly scrutinized by indifferent strangers, they prove deeply isolating. If the shape of the plot’s defining events at first seems withheld capriciously, the technique pays off in a powerful story charting the evolution of a life-shattering night and its aftermath. Oahu’s dizzying contradictions, from shabby to glorious, and cultural events such as Bon dances are carefully rendered and, like the Hawaiian orthography, largely accurate. Though character names and actions convey Hawaii’s uniquely mixed, multiethnic population, physical descriptions are disappointingly few.
A resonant look at coming-of-age in a socially networked world. (Fiction. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-17187-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Imprint
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss.
It’s 1983, and 13-year-old Indian American Reha feels caught between two worlds.
Monday through Friday, she goes to a school where she stands out for not being White but where she has a weekday best friend, Rachel, and does English projects with potential crush Pete. On the weekends, she’s with her other best friend, Sunita (Sunny for short), at gatherings hosted by her Indian community. Reha feels frustrated that her parents refuse to acknowledge her Americanness and insist on raising her with Indian values and habits. Then, on the night of the middle school dance, her mother is admitted to the hospital, and Reha’s world is split in two again: this time, between hospital and home. Suddenly she must learn not just how to be both Indian and American, but also how to live with her mother’s leukemia diagnosis. The sections dealing with Reha’s immigrant identity rely on oft-told themes about the overprotectiveness of immigrant parents and lack the nuance found in later pages. Reha’s story of her evolving relationships with her parents, however, feels layered and real, and the scenes in which Reha must grapple with the possible loss of a parent are beautifully and sensitively rendered. The sophistication of the text makes it a valuable and thought-provoking read even for those older than the protagonist.
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss. (Verse novel. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304742-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and...
Good has won every fairy-tale contest with Evil for centuries, but a dark sorcerer’s scheme to turn the tables comes to fruition in this ponderous closer.
Broadening conflict swirls around frenemies Agatha and Sophie as the latter joins rejuvenated School Master Rafal, who has dispatched an army of villains from Capt. Hook to various evil stepmothers to take stabs (literally) at changing the ends of their stories. Meanwhile, amid a general slaughter of dwarves and billy goats, Agatha and her rigid but educable true love, Tedros, flee for protection to the League of Thirteen. This turns out to be a company of geriatric versions of characters, from Hansel and Gretel (in wheelchairs) to fat and shrewish Cinderella, led by an enigmatic Merlin. As the tale moves slowly toward climactic battles and choices, Chainani further lightens the load by stuffing it with memes ranging from a magic ring that must be destroyed and a “maleficent” gown for Sophie to this oddly familiar line: “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine.” Rafal’s plan turns out to be an attempt to prove that love can be twisted into an instrument of Evil. Though the proposition eventually founders on the twin rocks of true friendship and family ties, talk of “balance” in the aftermath at least promises to give Evil a fighting chance in future fairy tales. Bruno’s polished vignettes at each chapter’s head and elsewhere add sophisticated visual notes.
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and flashes of hilarity. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-210495-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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