Part The Westing Game, part We Were Liars, completely entertaining.
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A teen must solve a multilayered puzzle to find out why she’s the recipient of a billionaire’s inheritance.
One day Avery—with her mother dead, her father missing for years, and her guardian half sister on the rebound with her abusive boyfriend—is living out of her car. The very next day she is on a plane to Hawthorne House, a mansion in Texas, where she discovers she’s the beneficiary of billionaire Tobias Hawthorne’s fortune. She must, however, abide by one condition: living for a full year with the snubbed Hawthorne family—a family that includes the billionaire’s four grandsons, young adult brothers who share a mother but have different fathers. This whirlwind story gains even more intensity when Avery learns that Hawthorne was a master of games and manipulation. To understand her role in the billionaire’s final game and why she’s the recipient of his inheritance, she must piece together clues left in his massive estate filled with hidden chambers. Short, snappy chapters supply nonstop momentum with red herrings, more family secrets, and even attempts on her life. To help her solve the riddles, Avery must turn to the Hawthorne brothers even if there’s some romantic interest at play—and even if they’re the ones who want her dead. The main characters are White; one brown-skinned Hawthorne brother describes himself as multiracial.
Part The Westing Game, part We Were Liars, completely entertaining. (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-05240-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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A blended family seeks a fresh start in a new home.
Tom’s mother believes that the family may have finally found happiness. After years of dating losers, she’s finally settled down with a nice guy—and that nice guy, Jay, happens to have a daughter, Nia, who is just a little older than Tom. The new family has moved into a nice new house, but Tom can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong. They discover a strange message written on the wall when they are stripping the old wallpaper, and there’s clear evidence that the previous owners had installed locks on the exteriors of the bedroom doors. Those previous owners happen to live a little farther down the street, and Tom quickly becomes obsessed with their teenage daughter, Amy, and the secrets she’s hiding. This obsession unfortunately becomes a repetitive slog involving many pages of Tom’s brooding and sulking over the same bits of information while everyone tells him to move on. Readers will be on everyone’s side. But then, a blessed breath of fresh air: The perspective shifts to Amy, and readers learn in spectacularly propulsive fashion exactly what she’s hiding. Regret and intrigue blend perfectly as Amy divulges her secrets. Alas, we return to navel-gazing Tom for the book’s final pages, and everything ends with a shrug. Main characters default to White.
A crackerjack thriller done in by its own dopey protagonist. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72823-189-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
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Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell...
12
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Adolescent criminals seek the haul of a lifetime in a fantasyland at the beginning of its industrial age.
The dangerous city of Ketterdam is governed by the Merchant Council, but in reality, large sectors of the city are given over to gangs who run the gambling dens and brothels. The underworld's rising star is 17-year-old Kaz Brekker, known as Dirtyhands for his brutal amorality. Kaz walks with chronic pain from an old injury, but that doesn't stop him from utterly destroying any rivals. When a councilman offers him an unimaginable reward to rescue a kidnapped foreign chemist—30 million kruge!—Kaz knows just the team he needs to assemble. There's Inej, an itinerant acrobat captured by slavers and sold to a brothel, now a spy for Kaz; the Grisha Nina, with the magical ability to calm and heal; Matthias the zealot, hunter of Grishas and caught in a hopeless spiral of love and vengeance with Nina; Wylan, the privileged boy with an engineer's skills; and Jesper, a sharpshooter who keeps flirting with Wylan. Bardugo broadens the universe she created in the Grisha Trilogy, sending her protagonists around countries that resemble post-Renaissance northern Europe, where technology develops in concert with the magic that's both coveted and despised. It’s a highly successful venture, leaving enough open questions to cause readers to eagerly await Volume 2.
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell into a family . (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-212-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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