Although reality shows and religion don’t usually mix, this text blends both well and serves up Addy as a believable and...
This light teenage romance with a reality-show twist is entertaining and forgivably predictable.
Getting good grades and into an Ivy League college are 17-year-old Addy’s two goals in life. So when her principal taps her to represent her school on the new reality TV show The Book of Love, Addy isn’t thrilled, despite the show’s prize of a date to the prom with Jonathon Jackson, the son of the president of the United States. Looking to be sent home quickly, unlike the other 99 girls, Addy doesn’t fawn over the First Son and instead chooses to just be herself, which, to her dismay, endears her to viewers and prolongs her stay. Addy’s positive attention attracts some serious nastiness from her competitors and the show’s director, Hank, which convinces Addy that her purpose on the show is to really share her faith. Relying on Christianity, Addy musters the courage to persevere, just like her deceased missionary parents, who are referenced throughout. Short transcripts of interviews with the show's participants are sprinkled between chapters, underscoring the vapid nature of the other girls.
Although reality shows and religion don’t usually mix, this text blends both well and serves up Addy as a believable and endearing heroine. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4016-8488-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
Evocations of Narnia are not enough to salvage this fantasy, which struggles with thin character development.
A portal fantasy survivor story from an established devotional writer.
Fourteen-year-old Eva’s maternal grandmother lives on a grand estate in England; Eva and her academic parents live in New Haven, Connecticut. When she and Mum finally visit Carrick Hall, Eva is alternately resentful at what she’s missed and overjoyed to connect with sometimes aloof Grandmother. Alongside questions of Eva’s family history, the summer is permeated by a greater mystery surrounding the work of fictional children’s fantasy writer A.H.W. Clifton, who wrote a Narnialike series that Eva adores. As it happens, Grandmother was one of several children who entered and ruled Ternival, the world of Clifton’s books; the others perished in 1952, and Grandmother hasn’t recovered. The Narnia influences are strong—Eva’s grandmother is the Susan figure who’s repudiated both magic and God—and the ensuing trauma has created rifts that echo through her relationships with her daughter and granddaughter. An early narrative implication that Eva will visit Ternival to set things right barely materializes in this series opener; meanwhile, the religious parable overwhelms the magic elements as the story winds on. The serviceable plot is weakened by shallow characterization. Little backstory appears other than that which immediately concerns the plot, and Eva tends to respond emotionally as the story requires—resentful when her seething silence is required, immediately trusting toward characters readers need to trust. Major characters are cued white.
Evocations of Narnia are not enough to salvage this fantasy, which struggles with thin character development. (author’s note, map, author Q&A) (Religious fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780593194454
Page Count: 384
Publisher: WaterBrook
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
A 17-year-old has a shallow religious epiphany followed by an equally shallow retreat from religion and political awakening. In the old days, Mia repeatedly assures us, she only wanted "to get high, make music and have sex." Now she's studying at a Jerusalem yeshiva; hoping for a spiritual reawakening, Mia has blindly decided she'll find it in Orthodox Judaism. Unfortunately, she connects neither with her classmates nor their religious or political beliefs. The more she learns about the ugly creation of Israel's national myth of a previously empty land being made green, the more barren she finds Orthodox Judaism. Her political self-education gets tangled up with her conviction that she is "sick of wearing ugly clothes," her disinterest in yeshiva studies and her lust for Andrew, the sexy guitar bum she meets in the streets of Jerusalem. The issues are vitally important, but the heroine's facile acceptance of a hot boy's pacifism is hardly convincing, the straw-man yeshiva students diminish the painful political realities and Mia just isn't likable enough to carry the tale. (Fiction. 12-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55469-265-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
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