An extraordinary debut packed with richly drawn characters in a sure-to-entertain storyline.
A girl with magical powers enters a brutal tournament, trying to win a chance to rewrite her past.
As a child, Vesper loved stories about the Oddities and their magic. Then she became one. She’s a Harbinger, capable of manifesting people’s fears. Ever since a horrifying incident borne of her lack of control, Vesper’s been a runaway loner. After landing in San Francisco, she crosses paths with fellow Oddities and learns about a high-stakes cage-fighting tournament; the winning Oddity gets $1 million and one unraveling (undoing something that has happened, altering the past). She doesn’t know how to fight and is scared of her own dangerous powers but badly wants to undo her damaging past. Vesper teams up with Sam, a nonmagical Baseline human, who oversees her rigorous training at an MMA gym. The deal is that she gets the cash prize, and he gets the unraveling to correct where things went wrong in his last relationship two years prior. Even while planning to betray him and claim the unraveling, Vesper begins to fall for Sam. All storylines—the tournament, what happened with Sam’s ex, why the rules of magic are changing—tie together through flawless pacing and well-balanced action, leading to revelations that foster character growth. While Vesper and Sam are assumed white, secondary characters have varying skin tones.
An extraordinary debut packed with richly drawn characters in a sure-to-entertain storyline. (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-265761-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance.
A Connecticut girl and her best friend devise a series of plans in order to achieve their goals: following a dream and winning back an ex.
Eighteen-year-old Audrey Barbour has a Master Plan: attend Blue Ridge Glass School in North Carolina and someday turn her Etsy shop, Golightly Glass, into a thriving business. But her uber-wealthy parents insist that she instead follow in their footsteps and go to business school. So Audrey decides to go find the tuition money she needs with help from her best friend, Henry Chen. Henry needs a favor, too: He hopes that fake dating Audrey will help him win back his ex-girlfriend, and he points out to a reluctant Audrey that this could make her crush, Griffin, notice her. While Audrey’s parents vacation in France for three weeks, the pair rent out the Barbour mansion on the Long Island Sound. Soon romantic chemistry grows alongside their business partnership. Despite the pair’s great preparation and an abundance of secondary characters with connections and talents to help pull off their increasingly ambitious ideas, plans go awry, leaving Audrey and Henry scrambling and second-guessing their choices. The pacing is even, but the characters often take a back seat to the whirlwind of activity that drives the plot, with the emphasis falling on each person’s practical skills and their role in keeping the action moving over their emotional bonds. Audrey is white, and Henry’s surname cues him as Chinese American.
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593904794
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte Romance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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