An exemplary tale that boasts a plucky heroine, paranormal dangers, and adolescent hardships.
A teenager, still honing her recently discovered magical abilities, must help 11 witches in this third installment of a YA mystery series.
It hasn’t been long since Josie Jameson learned her dead mother was a powerful stone witch. Inside Josie’s heart is the Agatha Stone that her mom once carried and that contains pieces of 11 other stones. In various parts of the world reside 11 witches, like Josie, who carry stones that may have, over time, become corrupted. Josie has the unfortunate assignment of cleansing these stones, as she’s evidently the only one with the ability to do so. It turns out there’s a link between the witches, so she may be able to help the women without traversing the globe. But the downside is that some are dark witches who, via magic, threaten Josie or her friends and family, such as her little brother, Owen. As she can barely control her magic, Josie doesn’t think she can handle the stone cleansings alone. But her sometimes-frightening encounters with stone witches scare off a few of her pals. And as someone Josie knows winds up dead from an apparent murder, locating all 11 witches is a potentially fatal undertaking. Hotes’ (Stone Heart, 2015, etc.) latest installment is a laudable fusion of teenage melodrama and the supernatural. Josie hasn’t fully grasped her powers, which also include a healing capability. But she likewise faces more familiar teen tribulations. Her childhood friend Casey has seemingly abandoned her for the popular crowd. In addition to confronting menaces (evil witches and possibly more), the dauntless protagonist unravels a bit of mystery: something from her mother’s past. Crisp prose throughout Josie’s first-person narrative aids in creating believable characters: “I’m flooded with salted caramel feelings, not mad exactly and not entirely happy. Very sticky.” Despite a definitive conclusion, the book’s open ending teases further adventures with Josie.
An exemplary tale that boasts a plucky heroine, paranormal dangers, and adolescent hardships.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72870-601-6
Page Count: 325
Publisher: Storm Mystery Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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