Evocative symbols, carefully drawn details and hints of romance enrich a spare, redemptive character study.
Home from a stay at Patterson Hospital following a suicide attempt, Ryan hikes to a powerful waterfall each morning to stand under the crushing spray. Nicki, the younger sister of a boy Ryan knows from school, sees him there one day in August and strikes up a conversation. For the first time, Ryan finds himself opening up to someone besides the two Patterson friends he now talks to by phone and online. As trust, familiarity and perhaps attraction build between the two, Ryan and Nicki reveal pieces of their personal histories, though each still harbors secrets. Defying both sensationalism and cliché, the narrative explores Ryan's suicide attempt and its aftermath with what Ryan calls “Patterson Honesty: the truth, stripped down of all formalities, all politeness.” Although much is made of understanding the past—the shame and numbness that led to Ryan's attempt, the unknowable reasons behind Nicki's father's completed suicide—the story is also about moving forward: Can intimacies built inside a place like Patterson survive outside? How can the parents of a teen who attempts suicide trust their child again? What can we ever truly know about ourselves and each other?
Haunting, hopeful and masterfully crafted. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-01390-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
Categories: TEEN SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lara Jean prepares for college and a wedding.
Korean-American Lara Jean is finally settled into a nice, complication-free relationship with her white boyfriend, Peter. But things don’t stay simple for long. When college acceptance letters roll in, Peter and Lara Jean discover they’re heading in different directions. As the two discuss the long-distance thing, Lara Jean’s widower father is making a major commitment: marrying the neighbor lady he’s been dating. The whirlwind of a wedding, college visits, prom, and the last few months of senior year provides an excellent backdrop for this final book about Lara Jean. The characters ping from event to event with emotions always at the forefront. Han further develops her cast, pushing them to new maturity and leaving few stones unturned. There’s only one problem here, and it’s what’s always held this series back from true greatness: Peter. Despite Han’s best efforts to flesh out Peter with abandonment issues and a crummy dad, he remains little more than a handsome jock. Frankly, Lara Jean and Peter may have cute teen chemistry, but Han's nuanced characterizations have often helped to subvert typical teen love-story tropes. This knowing subversion is frustratingly absent from the novel's denouement.
An emotionally engaging closer that fumbles in its final moments. (Romance. 14-17)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3048-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Categories: TEEN FICTION | TEEN ROMANCE | TEEN SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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Many teen novels touch on similar themes, but few do it so memorably.
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Two struggling teens develop an unlikely relationship in a moving exploration of grief, suicide and young love.
Violet, a writer and member of the popular crowd, has withdrawn from her friends and from school activities since her sister died in a car accident nine months earlier. Finch, known to his classmates as "Theodore Freak," is famously impulsive and eccentric. Following their meeting in the school bell tower, Finch makes it his mission to re-engage Violet with the world, partially through a school project that sends them to offbeat Indiana landmarks and partially through simple persistence. (Violet and Finch live, fortunately for all involved, in the sort of romantic universe where his throwing rocks at her window in the middle of the night comes off more charming than stalker-esque.) The teens alternate narration chapter by chapter, each in a unique and well-realized voice. Finch's self-destructive streak and suicidal impulses are never far from the surface, and the chapters he narrates are interspersed with facts about suicide methods and quotations from Virginia Woolf and poet Cesare Pavese. When the story inevitably turns tragic, a cast of carefully drawn side characters brings to life both the pain of loss and the possibility of moving forward, though some notes of hope are more believable than others.
Many teen novels touch on similar themes, but few do it so memorably. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-75588-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Categories: TEEN ROMANCE | TEEN SOCIAL THEMES
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