A measured but fascinating story of love, tenacity, and the astonishing things that the past can harbor.
In Stollenwerck’s YA novel, a teenager digging into her great-grandfather’s complicated history may not like what she finds.
In the author’s previous novel, Hello, Goodbye (2022), Texan Hailey Rogers learned surprising details about her great-grandparents; for instance, her great-grandfather, Jack Weber, was a Nazi hunter who left behind a collection of Nazi-stolen paintings he’d recovered. While in Jerusalem to speak about her ancestors at a Holocaust memorial, Hailey gets a cryptic note implying Jack wasn’t alone in scouring for art that the Nazis pilfered. This leads Hailey and her boyfriend Blake to an evasive woman who promises that answers regarding Jack await them in Paris. Hailey and Blake find a helping hand and a traveling companion in Blake’s wealthy grandfather Alan Alexander. Sadly, the clandestine group they meet up with in France initially offers little information and seems more interested in a rare book of Jack’s that Hailey now has. Alexander’s longtime friends aid in investigating Jack’s past, which teems with atrocities that rattle Hailey. The growing cast in Stollenwerck’s sequel adds welcome intrigue (the widowed Alexander has for decades avoided an old flame in Paris, and his friend’s 19-year-old son Julian has a certain charm Hailey can’t ignore). In vivid prose (“The enormous entryway is bathed in sunlight that flashes over a soaring geometric, multi-dimensional brushed gold chandelier”), the author delivers a narrative rich in historical details, from various artworks Hitler desired to particulars on CIA-precursor the OSS. All of this background nearly eclipses the mystery, which unfolds in bits and pieces as Hailey picks up more about Jack’s Nazi-hunting days and unearths the occasional clue. Still, the resplendent, compassionate young hero consistently acknowledges her own flaws and works at bettering an already impressive self.
A measured but fascinating story of love, tenacity, and the astonishing things that the past can harbor.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9798991076203
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Iceblink Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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