Deft, page-turning, and fresh as the latest college admissions gossip.
Ripped from the headlines of the 2019 Varsity Blues admissions scandal.
Seventeen-year-old Chloe Berringer is the wealthy, white daughter of Joy Fields, beloved TV sitcom star. An indifferent student, Chloe attends private school and is stunned by the revelation that her entire application was doctored. Chloe wrestles with guilt, shame, anger, brutal social media responses, and frayed family relationships following the revelation of her parents’ cheating and bribery. The intersections of race, class, and privilege are explored primarily through Chloe’s relationship with her best friend, Shola, a Nigerian American girl on scholarship at the school. The chapters alternate between the present day, beginning when her mother is arrested, and the point leading up to the arrest, starting three weeks into her senior year. Knowing that there were dozens of real-life students coping with similar crimes and the deep betrayal of their trust in their parents makes Chloe’s tale both heartbreaking and thought-provoking. Believable subplots focus on her love interest (a biracial Asian Indian/white boy), undocumented immigrants (through Chloe’s mentoring of a young El Salvadoran boy), and the pain of drug addiction (through her older half brother). While not entirely one-dimensional, supporting characters who do not share Chloe's racial and financial privilege sometimes seem to be present as devices to support her awakening.
Deft, page-turning, and fresh as the latest college admissions gossip. (Fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984893-62-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
An engaging story of personal growth and a second-chance romance.
The senior prank at Ames, an upscale Rhode Island boarding school, reignites romance and conflict for Lily Hopper and ex-boyfriend Tag Swell.
Their relationship lasted nearly two years before Lily broke it off. Her feelings for Tag remain intense—but so is her jealousy over his girl admirers, especially valedictorian Blair Greenberg, whom he dated next. After Tag and Blair’s split, Lily keeps her distance until she’s tapped to join the senior prank, an invitation that secretly comes from Tag himself. They are setting up student body president Daniel Rivera—whose promposal Lily regrets accepting—by hiding the new yearbooks he’s scheduled to hand out in two days. Planting a trail of clues for Daniel across campus at night, Lily and Tag revisit their history and feelings; the one obstacle to their happiness was Lily’s insecurity, the plot’s linchpin. Athletic and an accomplished dancer, she’s the class salutatorian and bound for Georgetown University, but attending Ames for free as the daughter of one of the most popular teachers on campus and surrounded by students who are far wealthier, she is acutely self-conscious of her “fac-brat” status, has always played it safe, and struggles with self-doubt. Rehashing their past through flashbacks, Lily faces difficult emotional truths. Tag’s Type 1 diabetes is well described and woven into the story without being the focus of his characterization. Lily and Tag read White; surnames cue ethnic diversity in the supporting cast.
An engaging story of personal growth and a second-chance romance. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9781728263137
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A worthy successor to an explosive debut.
After Awakening the dormant spirit of her ancestor King Arthur Pendragon, almost-17-year-old Briana Matthews must fight to learn and control her magical inheritances.
As a Black person who also possesses the ability to use Root, a form of magic borrowed from deceased practitioners and passed down to her through her mother’s family, Bree is unique in the Line of Pendragon. It is through blood and violence that Bree’s magical abilities intertwined—both those from Arthur’s Welsh origins and from her family’s Bloodcraft originating during chattel slavery in the American South. Together they have turned her into one of the most powerful people either Line has ever known. The intricacies of her navigation of her new powers are at the heart of this sequel to Legendborn (2020), especially as Bree balances the knowledge that her Blackness creates a critical distance between her and the racist people she is sworn to protect as the king of all Legendborns. The plot is complex, and the morsels of information that help fill in the gaps of knowledge don’t always feel fully formed, which may leave readers confused as they try to keep up with the new powers and beings that are presented. Still, there are important, if hard to read, references, for example, when Bree is kidnapped and experimented on by an all-White council, a turn of events that reflects Deonn’s commitment to presenting unflinching truths about the cyclical insidiousness of racism.
A worthy successor to an explosive debut. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4163-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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