A young woman struggles against the expectations and messy history of her family.
In Ivy's small town on Maryland's Eastern Shore, everyone knows the curse of the Milbourn women. Incredibly talented yet tragic, the women die young, leaving behind their poems or paintings and their daughters. Ivy's mother, Erica, though, just left, dumping Ivy with her grandfather. Now 17, Ivy is looking forward to a summer without all the classes and activities Granddad has always enrolled her in, searching for her talent. But the white teen knows she's mediocre and will never live up to his expectations. And then Erica—immature, angry, and resentful—returns with her two other daughters in tow. It's just one more thing for Ivy, who's also coping with the attentions of her handsome, Mexican-American friend, Alex, who seems to want more from her, and her own interest in charismatic, dark-skinned Connor, one of her grandfather's students. Somehow, Ivy must determine whether to embrace the expectations, crumble beneath them—or set her own course. Ivy is sensitively portrayed, her struggles believably met at every turn. While some secondary characters, such as Erica and Connor, are perhaps not nuanced enough, Ivy's journey is handled perfectly, and it’s her story at heart.
For anyone who suffers from too-heavy expectations, Ivy will ring true in this engaging, nearly flawless coming-of-age novel. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4926-2216-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
25
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A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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PROFILES
Many begin college with hopes of personal reinvention, and Alex Blackwood and Molly Parker are no exception.
Apparently opposite in every way, both girls nevertheless arrive for their freshman year at the University of Pittsburgh with the same goal in mind: to fundamentally change the way others perceive them and get their dream girls. Easy-peasy. Molly, whose mom is a transracial adoptee from Korea and whose father is assumed White, was socially anxious in high school. She worries that her close friendship with her mother holds her back. Willowy, blond Alex, who is implied White, has never once found herself at a loss in a social situation, and yet her fairy-tale story of adolescent beauty and wit is tempered by having a single mom whose struggles with alcohol abuse meant shouldering responsibilities far beyond her years. Utilizing tried and true tropes, married couple Lippincott and Derrick cut right to the heart of the matter when it comes to the mysteries of romance. Queerness itself is never the motivator of the drama, and gratifyingly, both girls find in one another the means to explore and unpack complexities of life unrelated to their sexualities. Nothing is made simplistic—not Alex’s relationship to self-expression and conventional beauty standards, nor Molly’s experiences of culture and community in a world that has expectations of her based on her racial identity.
Sweet, honest, and filled with personality. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9379-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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