Lizzie Borden’s story gets a contemporary reimagining.
Sisters Charlotte and Maddi grieve for their deceased mother. They were told her heart stopped, but they find that suspicious. To make matters worse, Amber, their mother’s young personal assistant, is now dating their dad and wearing their mother’s jewelry. When Maddi uncovers poison in their house, the siblings start to question whether their dad and Amber had something to do with their mother’s death. They share their worries with Uncle Jake, their mom’s brother, and new student Lana seeks Charlotte’s friendship and offers to help as well. However, Charlotte and Maddi soon learn the only ones they can truly trust and rely on are each other, and drastic measures may be warranted. Readers familiar with the true Borden story will know that murder is coming, but this novel’s focus is on the mindsets and emotions of the sisters as their grief turns to anger and rage. Short chapters shift between Charlotte’s and Maddi’s narratives. Charlotte in particular feels like an unreliable narrator, as she constantly questions and contradicts herself, which will make readers question her mental state. The story has all the trimmings of a slow-burn psychological thriller, but the straightforward, repetitive text is dull while the twists and turns are obvious and lack shock value or are simply not believable. Main characters are assumed White.
Lackluster. (author’s note, resources) (Psychological thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-37552-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
25
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A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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PROFILES
A blended family seeks a fresh start in a new home.
Tom’s mother believes that the family may have finally found happiness. After years of dating losers, she’s finally settled down with a nice guy—and that nice guy, Jay, happens to have a daughter, Nia, who is just a little older than Tom. The new family has moved into a nice new house, but Tom can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong. They discover a strange message written on the wall when they are stripping the old wallpaper, and there’s clear evidence that the previous owners had installed locks on the exteriors of the bedroom doors. Those previous owners happen to live a little farther down the street, and Tom quickly becomes obsessed with their teenage daughter, Amy, and the secrets she’s hiding. This obsession unfortunately becomes a repetitive slog involving many pages of Tom’s brooding and sulking over the same bits of information while everyone tells him to move on. Readers will be on everyone’s side. But then, a blessed breath of fresh air: The perspective shifts to Amy, and readers learn in spectacularly propulsive fashion exactly what she’s hiding. Regret and intrigue blend perfectly as Amy divulges her secrets. Alas, we return to navel-gazing Tom for the book’s final pages, and everything ends with a shrug. Main characters default to White.
A crackerjack thriller done in by its own dopey protagonist. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72823-189-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
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