Atmospherically grapples with literal and figurative ghosts in an eerie Indiana.
A long-standing feud simmers with supernatural significance.
It’s been only a year since Madoc Miller killed Ava Thorn’s parents in a car crash, but the tensions between the two families go back generations—and now he’s taking her home. Heir to a faded fortune and a legacy of bad luck, 17-year-old Ava’s forced out of Thorn Manor when Uncle Ty sells the ancestral heap to Madoc and his family. Stuck in Burden Falls, Indiana, for her senior year, Ava is determined not to let the Miller siblings—flamboyant Freya and her older brother, Dominic, a haughty hottie—profit from her family’s tragedies and her private grief. The duo are internet-famous thanks to their phony paranormal web series, but Ava doesn’t want them to exploit Dead-Eyed Sadie, the eyeless ghost who is said to haunt Thorn Manor…and whose appearance supposedly presages death for the Thorns. Already juggling work, school, a complicated friendship, and a budding romance, Ava soon falls under suspicion for a series of deaths and disfiguring attacks. A small-town goth in a gothic tale, aspiring graphic novelist Ava is a tart-tongued, realistically rendered heroine, snarky but sympathetic—think Scooby Doo meets Veronica Mars. Maintaining her knack for spooky suspense, Ellis keeps the tension taut, delivering a gritty whodunit, a spine-tingling supernatural story, and a twisty psychological thriller all in one. Ava and the Millers are White; there is some diversity in the supporting cast.
Atmospherically grapples with literal and figurative ghosts in an eerie Indiana. (Suspense. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984814-56-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Another engaging entry in this world of spies and international intrigue.
Pop superstar Winter Young is again drawn into the world of secret agent Sydney Cossette in this follow-up to Stars and Smoke (2023).
Though constantly on one another’s minds, Winter and Sydney have resisted making any contact with each other since narrowly surviving a mission in which Panacea, the secret organization Sydney works for, tapped Winter to use his megastar status to infiltrate a wealthy and powerful criminal underworld. Ratcheting up the tension in this enemies-to-lovers romantic thriller is the fact that Sydney is being sent to Singapore to extract Tems, a fellow agent who also happens to be her ex. Winter, who needs a plus-one for a Warcross Championship gala in order to better maintain his cover, invites his former girlfriend. Witty insults and crossed signals abound in the pair’s smoldering relationship, but this second installment is a bit darker than the first. If some of the betrayals and losses involved are easy enough to spot coming, they still pack an emotional punch due to the strong development of Winter’s and Sydney’s respective backstories, told in alternating third-person narratives, both involving abuse and psychological pain. Winter is Chinese American; Sydney is white, and there’s a diverse cast of supporting characters whom readers will likely see again—Lu has left the ending tantalizingly open for another installment.
Another engaging entry in this world of spies and international intrigue. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781250852915
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell...
Adolescent criminals seek the haul of a lifetime in a fantasyland at the beginning of its industrial age.
The dangerous city of Ketterdam is governed by the Merchant Council, but in reality, large sectors of the city are given over to gangs who run the gambling dens and brothels. The underworld's rising star is 17-year-old Kaz Brekker, known as Dirtyhands for his brutal amorality. Kaz walks with chronic pain from an old injury, but that doesn't stop him from utterly destroying any rivals. When a councilman offers him an unimaginable reward to rescue a kidnapped foreign chemist—30 million kruge!—Kaz knows just the team he needs to assemble. There's Inej, an itinerant acrobat captured by slavers and sold to a brothel, now a spy for Kaz; the Grisha Nina, with the magical ability to calm and heal; Matthias the zealot, hunter of Grishas and caught in a hopeless spiral of love and vengeance with Nina; Wylan, the privileged boy with an engineer's skills; and Jesper, a sharpshooter who keeps flirting with Wylan. Bardugo broadens the universe she created in the Grisha Trilogy, sending her protagonists around countries that resemble post-Renaissance northern Europe, where technology develops in concert with the magic that's both coveted and despised. It’s a highly successful venture, leaving enough open questions to cause readers to eagerly await Volume 2.
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell into a family . (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-212-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK TO SCREEN
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