The novel hobbles itself with excessive details, but Lance’s journey is a lively, satisfying one.
Debut author Joevon presents an urban novel about an aspiring songwriter’s quest to transcend his surroundings.
When the reader first meets Lance Adams, he’s not happy. Lance wrote a smash song for the rapper J-Money and, although Lance received $10,000 for his efforts, he feels he deserves more (“He’s making MILLIONS off of my LIFE!”). As the reader learns, Lance’s life certainly makes for good hip-hop copy. He grew up in the Marcus Garvey Projects in Brooklyn surrounded by drug abuse and violence. He spent three years in prison and is quick to throw a punch. Now that he’s a free man, he dreams of making music and spends long hours at Barnes & Noble writing lyrics. At the bookstore, he meets the thoughtful Ayana, and they eventually have a son together. Lance looks to be on the right path, but his old troubles haunt him. His is a world where slighting the wrong person can end poorly, and drugs can drain resources and end lives in a flash. Lance points out the stupidity of stealing an iPhone, saying that the $700 phone isn’t worth the risk: “A crackhead can smoke that away in ten seconds!” Halfway through the story, following an incident with a gun, Lance enters a strange realm where he is taught various life lessons. He emerges as someone who has journeyed to the recesses of his own mind. He also emerges as a very different person. The excitement for the reader comes in finding out how Lance will succeed now that he is both physically and mentally changed. And there is plenty of excitement to be had: bullets fly, egos collide, and music is made even if the storyline sometimes sags with mundane details, including Polonius-like advice Lance gives his young son about borrowing money. The reader need not know so many specifics, but the payoff is with the protagonist. Lance is often down but will he ever be out? It’s a question that keeps the story moving until the very end.
The novel hobbles itself with excessive details, but Lance’s journey is a lively, satisfying one.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5136-1473-1
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Movement Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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