Good, solid drama about the power of secrets to test the bounds of friendship, with just enough tension to satisfy teen...
Heading into summer with her closest friends, Maggie feels like she has it all, including a perfect boyfriend.
She even plans to step up the level of intimacy with Joey. The day after a wild party, they're at one of their favorite hangouts—a gorge where everyone but Maggie has leapt off a cliff into a swimming hole. This time Maggie decides she's ready, if Joey holds her hand. Something about the bracelet on Joey's wrist tugs at the back of her mind as they climb, and in the moment before they leap, she stops. Joey doesn't, twisting in midair as he falls to his death. Adam finds Maggie cowering in the bushes on the trail with no memory of what happened. Maggie's first-person account meanders between comforting flashbacks of Joey and her struggle to confront her fear that she caused his death. Fragments of the incident return, revealing some unwelcome truths about Joey and their friends, some of whom are grieving for very different reasons from those she could have imagined. Like a puzzle, pieces of Joey's life start to fall into place, making Maggie realize that there might have been a reason not to trust him after all.
Good, solid drama about the power of secrets to test the bounds of friendship, with just enough tension to satisfy teen readers. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: June 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60684-086-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Egmont USA
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
At its core, this is a touching father-daughter story made even stronger by realistic family complications and Jude’s need...
A poignant coming-of-age story intertwines loyalty, disease and summer love.
At age 10, Jude Hernandez pledged to her three older sisters that she would never get involved with the Vargas family, which has a long history of breaking Hernandez girls’ hearts. However, fast-forward to the summer before college, when Jude finds it hard to keep her promise as she and Emilio Vargas, a mechanic, connect over rehabbing her father’s vintage Harley. Although not really a biker—theater is more her thing—Jude spearheads the renovation project with hopes of bonding with her father and recharging his memory before it can be stripped away by El Demonio—early-onset Alzheimer’s. Despite her promise to her sisters and her frequent review of their scrapbook of broken hearts detailing the Vargas’ transgressions, as the summer progresses and her father’s health fails, Jude is drawn closer to Emilio. Narrator Jude’s voice is steady, honest and clear as she faces head-on her responsibility for her father’s care, her desire to step from her sisters’ shadows, her own genetic connection with her father’s disease and forbidden love.
At its core, this is a touching father-daughter story made even stronger by realistic family complications and Jude’s need to find her own voice. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-3038-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Lyrical and inspirational, though Lala’s inexplicably outsider view of her own culture, complete with sneers at harmless...
A white boy afraid to leave his family meets a Romani girl who wants a brief romantic encounter in the Nevada desert.
Lala’s family sells used cars in Portland, Ore., but is spending a week in the blistering heat of Nevada in order to fleece the gazhè who come to Burning Man; surely the hippies will pay generously to have their fortunes told. Ben lives in a company town that’s dying along with its shuttering gypsum mine. In alternating chapters, Lala and Ben tell of their coming-of-age crises: Lala fears the stifling sameness of her coming arranged marriage, while Ben is ashamed of the track scholarship that will provide his escape to college while his family and neighbors leave their soon-to-be ghost town for unemployment. Lala, for Ben, is his brief summer dalliance, the manic pixie dream girl who distracts him from his fears. Ben, for Lala, is the trigger she uses to take control of and redirect her life. Lala’s a powerful and independent young woman, though she also exhibits too many romantic gypsy tropes, with her “mess of dark curls...wild” and cascading over an hourglass figure, speaking in contraction-free sentences that entice Ben with their foreignness.
Lyrical and inspirational, though Lala’s inexplicably outsider view of her own culture, complete with sneers at harmless cultural practices, is a deeply jarring note . (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-74334-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
