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 sci-fi mishmash set in a dystopian world where a kind of human/angel hybrid will probably save mankind.
In search of her father, Selah takes a treacherous journey through the hardscrabble landscape of post-nuclear disaster.
Since the Time of Sorrows, the remaining population has returned to subsistence living, as most food sources are contaminated and the infrastructure has crumbled. Also since that time, Landers, inscrutable figures marked by a wing tattoo, periodically wash up on shore, babbling of a “final Kingdom,” to be hunted for bounty by the remnants of humanity. On her 18th birthday, shortly after finding a Lander, the Lander mark appears on Selah’s chest, indicating that she’s a half-breed. No longer safe, she leaves her Borough seeking her father and the protected fortress of the Mountain. She falls into fitful love with her gorgeous Lander companion, Bodhi, who teaches her about her new telepathic powers. Meanwhile, technology has advanced tenfold at the Mountain. Two scientists battle for dominion, while one is experimenting on Landers, using their DNA to find immortality. There are as many subplots to this novel as hydrogen bonds on a double helix, and the story is snarled by its own twists and clunky with contradictions. The romance is eye-rolling. The series’ only hope is that the plot pursues its one fresh idea: What exactly are the Landers?
A sci-fi mishmash set in a dystopian world where a kind of human/angel hybrid will probably save mankind. (Science fiction. 15-18)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8007-2376-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Revell
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
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
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