A flawed but affecting portrayal of challenging adolescent realities
In the second book of Tillit’s The Way I See It YA series, the author introduces a new character facing her own challenges.
Zonta Jones, a biracial teenager with ADHD, navigates the turbulent waters of high school and finds herself caught in a relentless storm of unwanted attention from Carlos, a classmate bent on hooking up with her. Despite her attempts to brush off his incessant scrutiny and advances, he persists, and Zonta grapples with an overwhelming sense of exhaustion from maintaining a facade of perpetual pleasantness: “I was sick of being nice. Or at least trying to be nice and kind and saying the right things to people.” Struggling against societal and family expectations, and gender norms that demand her compliance, Zonta’s frustrations mount as she continues to endure the unwelcome spotlight. Compounding her distress is a recurrent feeling of inadequacy whenever she attempts to articulate her thoughts and emotions, which is partly explained by her having ADHD, which also affects her studies. Each effort to convey her perspective leaves her feeling small and unheard, giving her a profound sense of self-doubt, which ends up compromising the friendships she struggles to build. The author’s series aims to present a mosaic of teenage perspectives as students grapple with the gritty challenges of life at Hancock High, tackling weighty societal issues like poverty, prejudice, abuse, harassment, and racial tensions (the previous installment’s protagonist, Ozzie, makes an appearance here as Zonta’s friend). The prose is basic but effectively captures Zonta’s struggles, and her frustration at being misunderstood is palpable: “My parents were upset. Really upset. And they thought I didn’t know what I was talking about at all. They never did really understand how I saw things.” The open ending feels abrupt and lacks resolution, leaving the narrative somewhat incomplete.
A flawed but affecting portrayal of challenging adolescent realitiesPub Date: July 15, 2022
ISBN: 9781735264226
Page Count: 191
Publisher: My Easy Read Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A taut yet winding mystery that will keep readers guessing.
In this thriller, a flyer on the cheer team at her small-town Texas high school is dragged back into the awful events that claimed her best friend and her boyfriend.
Senior Iris Henley was horrified when her boyfriend, Rocky Koenig, and her former best friend, Lynette Zeiger, were found dead in a presumed murder-suicide the previous school year. She and Lynette, whose drug use was spiraling out of control, had already fallen out, but Iris had no idea Rocky was cheating on her with Lynette. But when anonymous social media posts claim that Iris herself is responsible for their deaths, her life becomes a nightmare of accusations and betrayal. Employing first-person, present-tense narration that feels immediate and anxious, this mystery builds steadily over the course of 25 days during which Iris feels increasingly desperate and unsure whom she can trust. Her troubled relationships with her friends and family are multidimensional and render her a sympathetic and likable narrator, who worries about her own reliability as she was drunk and high the night of the deaths. In particular, a subplot involving Iris’ growing understanding of her younger sister, Noelle, lends emotional depth to this whodunit. The central cast is white, and surnames suggest that some members of the supporting cast are Latine, including Iris’ best friend.
A taut yet winding mystery that will keep readers guessing. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250323835
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution.
A teenage girl finds herself alone after everyone else in her town mysteriously disappears, leaving her scrambling to figure out how to find them all.
One late summer day, everybody in July Fielding’s town disappears. She is left to piece together what happened, following a series of cryptic signs she finds around town urging her to “GET THEM BACK.” The narrative moves back and forth between July’s present and the events of the summer before, when her relationship with her best friend, cross-country team co-captain Sydney, starts to fracture due to a combination of jealousy over July’s new relationship with a cute boy called Sam and sweet up-and-coming freshman Ella’s threatening to overtake Syd’s status as star of the track team. The team members participate in a ritual in which they jump off a cliff into the rocky waters below at the end of their Friday practice runs. Though Ella is reluctant, Syd pressures her to jump. Short, frenetically paced sections move the story along quickly, and there is much foreshadowing pointing to something terrible that occurred at the end of that summer, which may be the key to July’s current predicament, but there is much misdirection too. Ultimately this is a story without enough setup to make the turn the book takes in the end feel fully developed or earned. All characters read white.
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593327173
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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