Although overlong and narrowly aimed at romantically minded early-adolescent girls, this story will reward tenacious readers...
After 13-year-old Mabry Collins is dropped by her heartthrob, Nick Wainwright, (her 19th straight dumping in a row), Thad Bell, a boy with his own grudge against Nick, promises to teach her how to become the yin to Nick’s yang.
Thad’s lessons come with a condition, though: once Nick is smitten, Mabry has to promise to break his heart. It’s a cute premise, though the problems the two protagonists face are so disproportionately weighted that its execution feels uneven. Mabry, Stewart’s one-note histrionic protagonist, primarily spends her days obsessing about love, picking up her exaggerated romantic ideas from La Vida Rica, a telenovela she watches religiously. On the other hand, Thad’s father recently died in an accident that also left his mother disabled, and he’s still reeling from the loss as well as his new familial responsibilities. So while Mabry’s problems are essentially trivial, Thad’s are deeply profound, which makes it difficult to summon up sympathy for the tediously self-involved heroine. Still, Thad and Mabry have a nice give-and-take—they slowly develop a real connection—and as Mabry grows emotionally, readers’ impatience should largely dissipate.
Although overlong and narrowly aimed at romantically minded early-adolescent girls, this story will reward tenacious readers with a touching conclusion. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4231-7181-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quest fantasy that moves further into mediocrity despite plenty of borrowed notions and tropes.
Vega Jane and her cohorts at last find the home base of the evil wizards who have conquered the world—and discover that rebellion carries a high price.
Having escaped the town of Wormwood and the spell-protected wilderness around it in search of her family, newly fledged sorceress Vega Jane now confronts the Maladons—malign magicians who have ruled everywhere else for eight centuries over a populace brainwashed into mindless contentment. Working from a mansion that the head Maladon visited in olden times but is now somehow hidden (internal consistency is not a priority here), Vega Jane recruits and trains a small army of magicians to fight back while effecting rescues and eluding multiple ambushes with help from a ring of invisibility and spells that involve pointing wands and shouting words such as “Embattlemento” and “Engulfiado” that beg (unfavorable) comparison to J.K. Rowling. Baldacci mixes adolescent snogging, animate housewares, another talking book (see Volume 2, The Keeper, 2015), and bad guys uniformly dressed in pinstripe suits and brown bowlers into a tale that also features casual killing, torture, and forked-tongued demons. Throughout, he continues to demonstrate that he doesn’t have Rowling’s knack for mixing sly fun with truly dark doings. Moreover, repeated glimpses of characters with dark or brown (or “walnut”) skin are at best weak efforts to inject diversity into the cast.
A quest fantasy that moves further into mediocrity despite plenty of borrowed notions and tropes. (glossary) (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-83196-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Heavy for its small size but light as a feather in content, this vade mecum for the newly necrotic fills garishly hued pages of coated stock with advice and superficial “information” about zombie varieties, makeup and fashion wear; zombie friends and predators; “zombielicious” party food, rock bands, reading matter, board and video games and more. Written in digestible blocks over generic but blood-spattered, heavily manipulated photomontages, the narrative goes down like freshly scooped entrails, thanks to its chatty tone and upbeat sentiments like, “With proper care any zombie can have a long, fulfilling reanimation,” and “Nothing can stand in your way when you’re comfortable in your own (rotting) skin.” Compared to vampires and werewolves, zombies don’t get their fair share of undead love outside of a handful of classic films; for partly decomposed—or still-breathing zombie wannabes—this is a shamble in the right direction. (index) (Faux-nonfiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4934-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
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