An unflinching, superbly written story about family, friendship, and integrity, set during one of America’s deadliest race...
The discovery of a skeleton connects the lives of two teens, a century apart, with the brutality and terror of the 1921 Tulsa race riots.
After 17-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton in an outbuilding on her family’s property in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she sets out to investigate. Almost 100 years earlier, in Jim Crow–era Tulsa, 17-year-old Will Tillman finds himself at the center of violence and lawlessness on the night whites looted and burned Greenwood, a thriving African-American community within the city. In all, 35 blocks and nearly 1,300 homes and businesses were destroyed; 8,000 black Tulsans lost everything they owned; and at least 300 people died. Will is white and Osage. Like Will, Rowan is biracial (African-American and white). She comes from a wealthy family and must face her own class privilege as well as uncomfortable parallels between the century-old murder mystery she’s trying to solve and present-day race relations in her community and the nation as a whole. Alternating narration chapter by chapter between Rowan and Will, Latham presents a fast-paced historical novel brimming with unsparing detail and unshakable truths about a shameful chapter in American history. For more than 50 years, Tulsa’s schoolchildren didn’t learn about the race riot, and many outside of Tulsa remain unaware today. This masterfully told story fills this void.
An unflinching, superbly written story about family, friendship, and integrity, set during one of America’s deadliest race riots. (author’s note) (Mystery/historical fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-38493-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Another engaging entry in this world of spies and international intrigue.
Pop superstar Winter Young is again drawn into the world of secret agent Sydney Cossette in this follow-up to Stars and Smoke (2023).
Though constantly on one another’s minds, Winter and Sydney have resisted making any contact with each other since narrowly surviving a mission in which Panacea, the secret organization Sydney works for, tapped Winter to use his megastar status to infiltrate a wealthy and powerful criminal underworld. Ratcheting up the tension in this enemies-to-lovers romantic thriller is the fact that Sydney is being sent to Singapore to extract Tems, a fellow agent who also happens to be her ex. Winter, who needs a plus-one for a Warcross Championship gala in order to better maintain his cover, invites his former girlfriend. Witty insults and crossed signals abound in the pair’s smoldering relationship, but this second installment is a bit darker than the first. If some of the betrayals and losses involved are easy enough to spot coming, they still pack an emotional punch due to the strong development of Winter’s and Sydney’s respective backstories, told in alternating third-person narratives, both involving abuse and psychological pain. Winter is Chinese American; Sydney is white, and there’s a diverse cast of supporting characters whom readers will likely see again—Lu has left the ending tantalizingly open for another installment.
Another engaging entry in this world of spies and international intrigue. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781250852915
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
A lukewarm thriller.
In England, a group of teenagers tries to stay alive when a long weekend in an abandoned castle goes wrong.
When Bessie and her friends decide to join a party their classmate Allegra is throwing in her family’s abandoned castle before it’s converted into apartments, they think the biggest issues they’ll face are making it there before a big storm hits and keeping their plans secret from their parents and teachers. Once they arrive at the castle, however, Bessie and best friend Kashvi discover menacing graffiti and evidence that someone has been staying in the cellar. They also learn that protestors from the nearby village are angry about the development plans for the castle—one of them even argues that it would be better to burn it down. A handful of classmates manage to get there before the storm gets too severe. But when the teens wake up the next day to discover one of their own dead, and the storm makes it impossible for them to leave, they quickly realize that they’re in danger. But is the killer one of the members of the Facebook protestors’ group…or one of their own? Despite the book’s intriguing setup, the prose is dominated by repetitive conversations that convey little substance. Still, readers may still find themselves propelled forward by a need to discover the identity of the murderer. The central cast is racially diverse.
A lukewarm thriller. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593704080
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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