Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues...
He’s in remission from the osteosarcoma that took one of his legs. She’s fighting the brown fluid in her lungs caused by tumors. Both know that their time is limited.
Sparks fly when Hazel Grace Lancaster spies Augustus “Gus” Waters checking her out across the room in a group-therapy session for teens living with cancer. He’s a gorgeous, confident, intelligent amputee who always loses video games because he tries to save everyone. She’s smart, snarky and 16; she goes to community college and jokingly calls Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, her only friend besides her parents. He asks her over, and they swap novels. He agrees to read the Van Houten and she agrees to read his—based on his favorite bloodbath-filled video game. The two become connected at the hip, and what follows is a smartly crafted intellectual explosion of a romance. From their trip to Amsterdam to meet the reclusive Van Houten to their hilariously flirty repartee, readers will swoon on nearly every page. Green’s signature style shines: His carefully structured dialogue and razor-sharp characters brim with genuine intellect, humor and desire. He takes on Big Questions that might feel heavy-handed in the words of any other author: What do oblivion and living mean? Then he deftly parries them with humor: “My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actually touched.” Dog-earing of pages will no doubt ensue.
Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues to make it through Hazel and Gus’ poignant journey. (Fiction. 15 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-47881-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A disappointing futuristic retelling of Romeo and Juliet.
Cole, a Geneserian, and Davis, a Prior, battle segregation, disease and meddling families to cling to the strongest love they’ve ever known.
Davis has never been anything but beautiful and accomplished. But life is still hard for this 16-year-old. Just because she’s genetically programmed to overcome certain biological events, such as illness, doesn’t mean she can avoid complicated relationships with her friends and family. She also has to practice hard to achieve her dream of becoming a ballerina like her mother. Cole has it much worse. He lives in the slums and resorts to cage fighting for cash. When they meet and fall in love, it’s complicated, and not just because there’s a deadly disease striking down Priors. Debut novelist Hastings relies too heavily on stereotypes to offer anything new to readers hungry for tales of love in the time of dystopia. Instead, this book feels like a novel they’ve all read before. The action sometimes leaps over explanatory moments so it’s hard to catch up to characters, who flit from one emotionally overloaded scene to another. Secondary characters like Davis’ friend Oscar and a creepy boatman are more intriguing that the main characters, who suffer from dialogue made of clichés: “I’ll never give up if you’re beside me.”
A disappointing futuristic retelling of Romeo and Juliet. (Dystopian romance. 15-18)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-05771-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Readers will wish they had a jinni to grant them the next book in the series.
Nalia lives in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, a glittering world of parties and fast cars. She can have anything she wants—except her freedom.
Nalia is “just another jinni on the dark caravan” of the slave trade, forced to spend her days granting wishes on behalf of her human master, Malek, in order to advance his wealth and power. Nalia was trafficked in a bottle from her home realm of Arjinna to Earth after a coup wiped out her entire caste. She is the only surviving Ghan Aisouri, a royal knight and the heir to the Arjinnan throne. Arjinna is now under the martial law of the ruthless Ifrit, the lowest and most despised caste, and all that matters to Nalia is returning home to rescue her 8-year-old brother from the brutal Ifrit work camps—but Nalia can only be free when Malek makes his third and final wish. Enter Raif, sexy leader of the revolution in Arjinna, who makes her an offer; Nalia must decide whether she’ll break her most sacred vow to save the person she loves most, but she’ll pay any price to be her own mistress. The story unfolds at a swift, even pace, and the worldbuilding is superb; the jinn inhabit an intoxicating, richly realized realm of magic, politics, spirituality and history.
Readers will wish they had a jinni to grant them the next book in the series. (Fantasy. 15 & up)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-231856-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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