An engaging, fast-paced narrative with real-world implications.
Members of a basketball team and their cheerleaders experience a plane crash that leaves few survivors on an island in this Lord of the Flies–esque survival thriller originally published in the U.K. as The Trial (2021).
What happens on tour, stays on tour—until a horrific plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico leaves only seven teens still alive and secrets come spilling out. Basketball players Jason, Brian, and Elliot and cheerleaders May, Jessa, Shannon, and Hayley must quickly learn to work together, foraging for food and water and securing shelter in their new environment. Popularity and social hierarchies don’t matter when you’re struggling for survival. The plot intensifies as someone falls (or is pushed) and the crash survivors contend with incidents involving leeches and a terrifying shark attack that are clearly not accidental. Is there someone else on the island who is trying to hurt them, or is it one of their own? Hayley takes charge, holding a trial to get to the bottom of things during which multiple events from the party the night before the plane went down are revealed. Themes of consent, toxic masculinity, elitism, misogyny, feminism, and the meaning of justice emerge as Bates creates conversations among the group members that are sobering and thought-provoking. Most characters default to White; May is Japanese American, and Jessa is Black.
An engaging, fast-paced narrative with real-world implications. (content warning, author’s note, resources) (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72820-676-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging
Audrey Rose Wadsworth, 17, would rather perform autopsies in her uncle’s dark laboratory than find a suitable husband, as is the socially acceptable rite of passage for a young, white British lady in the late 1800s.
The story immediately brings Audrey into a fractious pairing with her uncle’s young assistant, Thomas Cresswell. The two engage in predictable rounds of “I’m smarter than you are” banter, while Audrey’s older brother, Nathaniel, taunts her for being a girl out of her place. Horrific murders of prostitutes whose identities point to associations with the Wadsworth estate prompt Audrey to start her own investigation, with Thomas as her sidekick. Audrey’s narration is both ponderous and polemical, as she sees her pursuit of her goals and this investigation as part of a crusade for women. She declares that the slain aren’t merely prostitutes but “daughters and wives and mothers,” but she’s also made it a point to deny any alignment with the profiled victims: “I am not going as a prostitute. I am simply blending in.” Audrey also expresses a narrow view of her desired gender role, asserting that “I was determined to be both pretty and fierce,” as if to say that physical beauty and liking “girly” things are integral to feminism. The graphic descriptions of mutilated women don’t do much to speed the pace.
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging . (Historical thriller. 15-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-27349-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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