Nola has always stood by her younger sister, Song—through surgery, chemotherapy, remission and the recurrence of Song’s cancer—but, craving adventure and normalcy, she takes a summer job as a waitress at Rocky Cove, a swanky Maine resort. On the bus, she immediately bonds with spontaneous, gregarious Carly. When Carly abruptly replaces Nola’s roommate Bridget, Nola is overjoyed, and the two girls spend the first half of the summer as an inseparable duo, known to all as “the Cannolis.” As busy mealtimes in the dining room, lazy days at the beach and beer-soaked parties bleed together, Carly takes over Nola’s life—copying her haircut, becoming pen pals with Song, flirting with the boy Nola likes—undermining Nola’s confidence and sense of self all the while. During a surprise visit from Song, Carly precipitates a dangerous stunt, which prompts a major confrontation with Nola. Carly is ultimately a pitiable figure, and Jacobson’s gradual reveal, through Nola’s first-person, present-tense narration, of the fun, then the danger, of this classic frenemy’s borderline personality disorder is deliciously, palpably tense. (Fiction. 15 & up)
Pub Date: April 27, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-689-87800-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Richard Jackson/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
Perhaps the television incarnation will have some life.
One hundred teen convicts may be the only hope of the human race.
Three hundred years after the Cataclysm made Earth uninhabitable, the remnant of humanity lives in an aging space station. Strict population-control laws help conserve the dwindling resources, and adults convicted of crimes are summarily executed. Criminal teens held in Confinement are given a retrial at 18, and some go free. Fearing the colony has few years left, the Chancellor decides to send 100 of these teens to Earth with monitoring bracelets to see if the planet’s surface is survivable. The story concentrates on four of them. Wells commits a crime in order to accompany his girlfriend; Bellamy breaks into the dropship to go with his sister; in hopes of reuniting with her boyfriend, Glass escapes the dropship to return to her privileged mother. And Clarke, the object of Wells’ affection, struggles with demons and hormones. Will they survive? Morgan’s debut, which has already been optioned for a CW series, has a promising premise as long as readers don’t apply too many brain cells. (Why convicts? Why not give them communication devices? Isn’t there birth control in the future?) However, it slowly devolves into a thrill-free teen romance. Lengthy flashbacks flatten the action in nearly every chapter. The characters do little to distinguish themselves from their run-of-the-mill dystopian brethren. Steer teens in search of science fiction to Beth Revis, Robison Wells and Veronica Roth.
Perhaps the television incarnation will have some life. (Dystopian adventure. 15 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-23447-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
Few chills and even less logic.
Can Liv put the pieces of her life back together after her father’s mental breakdown?
In rural Bloughton, Iowa, Liv takes solace in the cross country team and the idea that she will be off to college before too long. Three years ago, her father, the high school’s former English and drama teacher, vanished only to return naked and talking about alien abduction. He disappeared for good eight months later. Liv and her friend Doug check the elaborate traps her father built in the woods during those eight months every Sunday. The teacher who replaced him decides to stage the same musical that was her father’s swan song, and after getting in trouble for an outburst over her insensitivity, Liv decides to destroy the traps…but discovers that one has caught an alien. After hiding the horrifying creature in her father’s shed, they discover it has her father’s compass. In anger, Liv attacks the beast and then she and Doug torture it repeatedly as revenge for her missing father…but the alien is not what they perceive him to be, and as the truth is revealed, the horror mounts. Kraus’ (Blood Sugar, 2019, etc.) newest horror fantasy (there is no science here) might inspire more anger than horror as the protagonists respond to otherness with violence. Outrage will likely be followed by laughter at the stagy, manipulative, over-the-top conclusion. Most characters seem to be white.
Few chills and even less logic. (Horror. 16-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-15167-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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