Spine-chilling and splendidly gory, with a genre-perfect stormy night denouement: the power cut, the phones out, the corpses...
A serial killer's son is drawn to the daughter of his dad's final victim.
It's been years since Kyle's dad was convicted for the infamous Bonebreaker murders, and he finally has the chance to escape that legacy. Uncle Coby's somehow wrangled Kyle a place at a Pennsylvania prep school. At Killdeer Academy, he can become Kyle Henry instead of Kyle Henry Bluchevsky, the Bonebreaker's son. Surely it's only a heinous coincidence that his first friend at Killdeer turns out to be Naomi Steadman, the only girl to see the Bonebreaker and live? But it can't be a coincidence that people are dying: a girl falls from the academy roof, and a boy is found hanging in the dark. Killdeer Academy provides a suitably Gothic setting for these new deaths: the ivy-covered turrets, the alcoves populated by dusty taxidermic birds, the campus hidden behind iron gates in the deep woods, once a mental institution until arson by inmates in the 1940s left many in the asylum dead. Chapters interleave Kyle's voice with Naomi's (both are white), occasionally interrupted with news clippings, court documents, and other ephemera. These, along with subtle in-story hints (and numerous red herrings) slowly paint a picture of the Bonebreaker's past—and Killdeer's present.
Spine-chilling and splendidly gory, with a genre-perfect stormy night denouement: the power cut, the phones out, the corpses revealed by lightning . (Thriller. 12-15)Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7624-5908-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
A somewhat entertaining, fast-paced journey that fizzles at the end.
A teenager runs away to Seattle, hoping to locate her missing sister.
Fifteen-year-old Eleanor idolizes her older sister, Sam, despite their being complete opposites: Sam is outgoing and wild, while socially awkward Eleanor is known as Little Miss Perfect, always doing the right and safe thing. After Sam runs away from home, the only communication she has with Eleanor are three postcards sent from Seattle. Eleanor decides to trace her 18-year-old sister’s footsteps, leaving her messages and hopping on a bus to find her. But when Sam doesn’t meet her at the bus depot, Eleanor, who has no real plan, has to learn how to survive on her own while searching the city for her sister. While the close bond between the girls is well depicted through flashbacks, the reveal of an important secret ultimately feels anticlimactic. A major plot point relies too heavily on chance and coincidence to be fully believable. While the color scheme, cityscapes, and background illustrations are atmospheric, the manga-inspired drawing style comes across as dated and flat. The depiction of the fabricated stories Eleanor tells is intriguing, as are the themes of friendship, living in the moment, and maintaining hope; unfortunately, none are thematically strong enough to resonate. The emotional impact of Eleanor’s experiences is diluted by her at times humorous narration. Eleanor and the main cast read as White.
A somewhat entertaining, fast-paced journey that fizzles at the end. (Graphic novel. 12-15)Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-50023-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Flat secondary characterizations and humdrum dialogue won’t keep teens from relishing this histrionic tale of love, death...
Wealthy high school junior Mcalister “Caggie” Caulfield seeks relief from grief over her younger sister’s death by entering into a dangerous relationship with a mysterious boy.
After her little sister drowns in the pool at her family’s beach house in the Hamptons, Caggie wants to die too, to the point that she contemplates jumping off the roof at a friend’s party in Manhattan. A schoolmate named Kristen saves her at the last minute but nearly falls herself. Caggie actually ends up pulling Kristen back and is credited as a hero, which only makes her feel worse. In her grief, Caggie spurns the attentions of her best friend and devoted boyfriend, but she finds a kindred spirit in Astor, a tall, dark and damaged new boy at school who recently lost his mother to cancer. But what Caggie comes to realize about her relationship with Astor is that “[d]arkness stacked on darkness just makes it that much harder to find the light.” After another nearly fatal disaster with Astor at the beach house, Caggie is forced to confront the falsehoods she has told her family and friends and let go of her guilt over her sister’s death. Though Caggie makes a point of telling readers that her paternal grandfather called people like her “phony,” almost nothing is made of the connection to Catcher in the Rye, and it serves merely to make Caggie’s tale suffer by comparison.
Flat secondary characterizations and humdrum dialogue won’t keep teens from relishing this histrionic tale of love, death and lies. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-3316-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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