An absorbing, stellar series introduction with elements of fantasy and horror.
In Alsever’s debut and young adult trilogy launch, a Colorado high school senior realizes the utopia she’s found may in actuality be an inescapable nightmare.
Since her parents’ fatal car accident, Ember Trouvé has become a loner. She avoids social interaction and has even distanced herself from her bestie, Maddie. Ember happens to find a peculiar coin someone has apparently dropped. On the coin is written Trinity Forest, a place swirling with rumors of hauntings and witchcraft. The coin also bears a pyramid akin to the one adorning the cover of her late mother’s “Crazy Woman Notebook.” Ember feels obliged to visit Trinity Forest, populated primarily by teenagers. They welcome, feed, and clothe her in their mansion. When Ember returns home later that day, she learns she’s been missing for a month. But no one in her hometown is especially welcoming, so Ember heads back to the forest. Unfortunately, her second stay is rife with shocking revelations; for example, someone claiming they’ve been in Trinity Forest for decades looks like a teenager. Ember decides she wants to leave for good, but it’s quickly evident that getting out of Trinity Forest may be impossible. Ember is a fascinating protagonist. She, for one, blames herself for her parents’ deaths (details initially remain a mystery) and has synesthesia; she sees music as colors. Though she begins as a sullen teen, the character evolves as she sees the downside of isolating herself from loved ones. Alsever accommodates Ember’s synesthesia with colorful prose that ignites other senses as well. A dehydrated Ember sees images of a “rushing cool stream. Pools of water. Tall clear pitchers of it with floating ice cubes.” Although this book makes it clear what’s happening in Trinity Forest, there are still lingering questions by the end and plenty of reasons for readers to seek out Book 2.
An absorbing, stellar series introduction with elements of fantasy and horror.Pub Date: May 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5212-3945-2
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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