Insightful and compassionate storytelling.
In this fresh take on a familiar paradigm, a sensitive teen inherits a well-kept family secret touching on Sweden’s role in World War II that’s profoundly affected her family.
It’s been five years since their mother died, but Louisa and her older sister, Greta, like their dad, still haven’t healed. Greta’s miserable, but Louisa approves their father’s decision, prompted by his own mother’s death, to move the family to his childhood home in Pennsylvania. Long estranged from his parents, he’s a proponent of never looking back. Louisa begins to wonder: Who was her dad as a child? What made him the man he is now? More than ready for change, Louisa enjoys school, especially photography class, and basks in unaccustomed attention from two boys. She’d be content to float along on the sparkling present but for the calls on the old, disconnected rotary phone in the attic that anchor her to the past. Each time she answers, a voice begins to relay a chapter, drawn from the well of vanished family history, in the life of her father’s father in Sweden. He and his twin brother were barely adults when war broke out and increasingly troubled by Sweden’s compromised neutrality. Subplots and an awkward, occult plot device briefly distract, but Louisa and her taut, fragile connection to a rarely explored past hold readers’ interest.
Insightful and compassionate storytelling. (Historical fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4405-8306-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Merit Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play.
Garber returns to the world of bestseller Caraval (2017), this time with the focus on younger, more daring sister Donatella.
Valenda, capital of the empire, is host to the second of Legend’s magical games in a single year, and while Scarlett doesn’t want to play again, blonde Tella is eager for a chance to prove herself. She is haunted by the memory of her death in the last game and by the cursed Deck of Destiny she used as a child which foretold her loveless future. Garber has changed many of the rules of her expanding world, which now appears to be infused with magic and evil Fates. Despite a weak plot and ultraviolet prose (“He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.”), this is a tour de force of imagination. Themes of love, betrayal, and the price of magic (and desire) swirl like Caraval’s enchantments, and Dante’s sensuous kisses will thrill readers as much as they do Tella. The convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts (one of the Fates), Legend, and even the empress serve as the impetus for Tella’s story and set up future volumes which promise to go bigger. With descriptions focusing primarily on clothing, characters’ ethnicities are often indeterminate.
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09531-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story.
Is an exuberant extended family the cure for a breakup? Sophie is about to find out.
When Sophie unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend, she isn’t thrilled about spending the holidays at her grandparents’ house instead of with him. And when her grandmother forms a plan to distract Sophie from her broken heart—10 blind dates, each set up by different family members—she’s even less thrilled. Everyone gets involved with the matchmaking, even forming a betting pool on the success of each date. But will Sophie really find someone to fill the space left by her ex? Will her ex get wind of Sophie’s dating spree via social media and want them to get back together? Is that what she even wants anymore? This is a fun story of finding love, getting to know yourself, and getting to know your family. The pace is quick and light, though the characters are fairly shallow and occasionally feel interchangeable, especially with so many names involved. A Christmas tale, the plot is a fast-paced series of dinners, parties, and games, relayed in both narrative form and via texts, though the humor occasionally feels stiff and overwrought. The ending is satisfying, though largely unsurprising. Most characters default to white as members of Sophie’s Italian American extended family, although one of her cousins has a Filipina mother. One uncle is gay.
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story. (Fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-368-02749-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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