A charming flight of fancy that provides a pleasant, thoughtful diversion.
A time-travel fantasy that transports four teenage cave dwellers to modern-day Los Angeles.
Luber’s (Match to the Heart, 2009) fictional Kishoki people live 10,000 years ago in an unspecified location near the River Gan. They’re hunters and gatherers, and the harsh conditions have led most of their people to leave their settlement in search of something better. Others took the advice of their shaman, Man Who Stands Alone, not to follow the “Antelope People” who left. But if nothing changes, the remaining group will die out completely. Enter Sita, the spiritual leader of an adventurous pack of 14-year olds who are about to take a journey through time and space. She’s a “star stepper” who sees bits and pieces of the future in her dreams. She’s also a “shaman-in-waiting,” the first girl to ever be in such a position. Her boyfriend, Ty, is an adventurer who’s determined to find the long-departed Antelope People and learn their secrets of survival. Ko and Shum, Ty’s “wings” (buddies), agree to accompany him in his search. After they encounter a deadly “emmydactyl” and drink a potion mixed by Sita, they awake to find themselves in the 21st century on a hilltop where the neurotic, 24-year-old Darren Davies is shooting a commercial for his father’s carpet empire. The narrative explores the friendship that develops among Darren, Ty, and Sita, as each seeks his or her identity and purpose. Luber has constructed a lighthearted romp that’s permeated by humor regarding adolescent antics, 20-something angst, and a wealth of inevitable culture-clash misunderstandings. But it also deals with some serious issues, including modern-day bigotry (the Kishoki are a dark-skinned people), the sometimes-troubled relationships between parents and offspring, and the need to find and follow one’s own truth. The author’s Kishoki words are inventive, although the translations sometimes seem frivolous: “ ‘Shnikee!’ she gasped, Kishoki for ‘yikes.’ ” Some “Questions for Discussion” appended to the end also seem unnecessary, unless Luber intends the book to be read in schools.
A charming flight of fancy that provides a pleasant, thoughtful diversion.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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