Readers who are willing to suspend disbelief will enjoy this action-packed psychological thriller
Boston-area high school junior Wylie Lang is in danger of losing everything she loves.
Her beloved, brilliant, war-photographer mother died in a car accident four months ago, and her best friend, Cassie, seems to be going rapidly off the rails. Suffering from acute anxiety, Wylie is unable to go to school and is stuck at home with her unsympathetic twin brother and her father, “a hard-core nerd scientist who lives entirely in his head.” When Cassie’s boyfriend gets a troubling text message from Cassie, Wylie manages to conquer her agoraphobia and accompanies Jasper on a desperate drive to an abandoned summer camp in northern Maine, where Cassie is being held by a mysterious group. In this story, no one is who they appear to be, and few adults can be trusted. Wylie, Cassie, and Jasper (all evidently white) become pawns in a complex charade involving the attempted hijacking of Dr. Lang’s research by defense contractors who see profit in his discovery of rare emotional intelligence in a few research subjects, known as "outliers," including Wylie herself. At times the plot, like the Maine woods, thickens to a point of impenetrability, and the twists become far-fetched. Wylie’s present-tense account is smooth and well-paced, however, if not strikingly original.
Readers who are willing to suspend disbelief will enjoy this action-packed psychological thriller . (Thriller. 12-16)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-235909-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
In a satisfying trilogy conclusion, Liza confronts the conflicts between saving the world and saving her friends in an...
With the faerie and mortal lands crumbling away, a teenage girl must work with both worlds if anyone is to survive.
The Bones of Faerie series concludes with this high-stakes adventure for Liza. Relative peace has descended upon Liza’s town, where she practices her summoner magic and waits for her half-faerie baby sister to be born. But the forest is showing new dangers, though subtle ones: a strange-smelling gray leaf that crumbles away; a dying squirrel whose back half has turned to dust; “a pair of empty boots, as far apart as a man might stand, filled with the same dust.” Liza’s quest to find out what’s wrong reveals fresh disasters. In Faerie, the dust is everywhere but hardly as tragic as the fire fever— radiation poisoning—that’s devastated the population since the War. In the mortal world, the dust is rapidly spreading in the bloodthirsty, carnivorous forest that was Faerie’s weapon against the humans. Liza’s solution to the problem of the rapidly unwinding universe is not always easy to follow, but the personal is sufficiently compelling to outweigh any problems with the metaphysical.
In a satisfying trilogy conclusion, Liza confronts the conflicts between saving the world and saving her friends in an environment where nobody is willing to let go of the last generation’s hatreds. (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: May 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87069-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
An inspiring tale, simply told.
Teens at Texas’ ethnically diverse Southside High fight an anti-gay school policy after incidents of homophobic bullying.
When her teacher witnesses an act of anti-gay violence in the school hallway and refuses to intervene, Bella—short for Isabel—is horrified. Even though Dominic, the student being bullied, downplays the incident when Bella asks him about it, Bella feels called to action. When she decides to join the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, however, she discovers the club only exists unofficially. Zoe, one of the students involved, explains, “There’s something going on....The teachers are totally freaked out about anything having to do with gay people.” Readers who remember The Alliance (2013), set at Southside a year earlier, will recognize the district’s “neutrality policy” as the reason teachers refuse to intervene in homophobic bullying or even teach works by queer creators such as Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay or Aaron Copland. Here, Bella and Zoe uncover the policy and launch a community-wide battle against it. Although the story is bare-bones short, the characters are well-drawn, and there is room for nuance. Bella is interested in a female classmate, June, but what that means about her sexuality is left refreshingly ambiguous.
An inspiring tale, simply told. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4677-0709-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Darby Creek
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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