At an ordinary private school in California, a spaceship carrying alien prisoners has crashed, something has escaped and it’s up to three seemingly normal teens to track it down.
In Dunlap’s young adult novel, nothing is quite as it seems. Farrell, Izzy and Rom might look like normal teenagers, but they’re really aliens, working for the West Coast Division of the Committee, tasked with hunting down escaped alien prisoners. When a prisoner barge crashes onto the football of Lexham Preparatory Academy and a prisoner escapes from the wreckage, the three must disguise themselves as high school students to track down the missing alien; Farrell joins the basketball squad, Izzy befriends an outcast named Carolyn and Rom battles with his aging Math teacher. Dunlap expertly renders the three leads as complex, multidimensional characters. As the leader, Farrell is stoic yet cares deeply for his makeshift family. When he meets Nora, Farrell is inexplicably drawn to her as he sees past the façade she wears. Izzy may be the least girly of girls, but behind her tough act she can read the emotions of others. Rom, a genius when it comes to math, explosions and computers, desperately yearns for a real family. Although they may be alien, Dunlap makes sure that her characters have real emotions and human complexities. At times, however, our heroes seem almost too human; the reader only learns about their origins late in the novel, and the ways in which they are different from the humans of Earth aren’t fully developed. This slow reveal of information contrasts almost too sharply with the fast pace of the plot. But soon the three alien hunters realize that the cheerleaders of Lexham are swelling in ranks and acting strangely. Nora and an alien enthusiast named Bobby join forces with Farrell, Izzy and Rom to find the escaped alien. As they confront the escaped prisoner at the Halloween Carnival, they discover that this alien is, too, not what it seems, and Nora is right in the middle of the mystery. Despite some cliché plot turns found in most young adult novels and some bad one-liners, Dunlap’s prose is rich with character and setting details and vivid descriptions. Filled with great characters, good mystery and a fun twist on normal high school appearance, Dunlap’s debut is sure to appeal to teen readers.
Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 142
Publisher: Publish Green
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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