![THE BLACK BOOK [DIARY OF A TEENAGE STUD]](https://d1fd687oe6a92y.cloudfront.net/img/user-media/titles/title/cover/c1612d2453e54d068d71c16e621df1ac/0064407985.jpg.300x0_q85_autocrop.webp)
Laugh-out-loud funny, this engaging, high-concept novel about a 17-year-old boy’s world, both real and imaginary, is a story that teases, building up reader suspense and expectation then refusing to deliver. Jonah Black, a high-school senior, moves back to Florida to live with his mother and sister after being expelled from the private school he attended in Pennsylvania, where he lived with his dad. The most amusing parts deal with the hero’s whacked-out, beyond new-age mother, a kind of Dr. Ruth for the teenaged set, who has just penned the soon-to-be-bestselling tome, Hello Penis! Hello Vagina! Told in diary format, the tale is two-pronged: One details Jonah’s real-life woes—problems at home with Mom, being forced to repeat 11th grade, and his unrequited love for best friend Posie—the other his lurid, highly sexed fantasy life. The author has a sharp satirical eye, which he uses to good advantage so that Jonah’s factual and fictional life intersects in hilarious and imaginative ways. The secondary characters are all over the map in terms of consistency and clarity, but Jonah is a winning creation, and both boys and girls should be rooting for him all the way. However, caveat lector: Rather than resolving its plotlines, the story just stops cold in the middle of an exciting scene, leaving the hero in jeopardy and the reader in frustration. To be continued. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-440798-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
An engaging, fast-paced narrative with real-world implications.
Members of a basketball team and their cheerleaders experience a plane crash that leaves few survivors on an island in this Lord of the Flies–esque survival thriller originally published in the U.K. as The Trial (2021).
What happens on tour, stays on tour—until a horrific plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico leaves only seven teens still alive and secrets come spilling out. Basketball players Jason, Brian, and Elliot and cheerleaders May, Jessa, Shannon, and Hayley must quickly learn to work together, foraging for food and water and securing shelter in their new environment. Popularity and social hierarchies don’t matter when you’re struggling for survival. The plot intensifies as someone falls (or is pushed) and the crash survivors contend with incidents involving leeches and a terrifying shark attack that are clearly not accidental. Is there someone else on the island who is trying to hurt them, or is it one of their own? Hayley takes charge, holding a trial to get to the bottom of things during which multiple events from the party the night before the plane went down are revealed. Themes of consent, toxic masculinity, elitism, misogyny, feminism, and the meaning of justice emerge as Bates creates conversations among the group members that are sobering and thought-provoking. Most characters default to White; May is Japanese American, and Jessa is Black.
An engaging, fast-paced narrative with real-world implications. (content warning, author’s note, resources) (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72820-676-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Lush, angsty, queer horror.
When the monsters they imagine come to life, two boys fight for their lives—and each other.
Andrew Perrault, who’s from Australia, writes beautiful, macabre fairy tales. His roommate at his American boarding school, Wickwood Academy, is talented artist Thomas Rye, who brings his stories to vivid life in paint and charcoal. Andrew’s twin sister, Dove, is all but ignoring him, so he has plenty of time to focus on Thomas’ increasingly odd behavior. Thomas’ parents disappeared just before the new school year started, and Andrew noticed blood on his roommate’s sleeve on their first day back. When he follows Thomas into the forest one night, Andrew discovers him fighting one of the monsters that Thomas has drawn from these stories. The boys soon find themselves coping with vicious bullies by day and fighting monsters by night. At the same time, Andrew struggles to reconcile his feelings for Thomas with his growing awareness of his own asexuality. But when the sinister Antler King breaches Wickwood’s walls, Andrew realizes that he and Thomas may not survive their own creations. This novel, written in rich, extravagant prose, features frank portrayals of disordered eating, self-harm, bullying, and mental illness. Andrew grapples realistically with his sexual identity, and the story has ample genuinely creepy moments with the monsters. Andrew, Thomas, and Dove are white.
Lush, angsty, queer horror. (content warning) (Horror. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250895660
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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