Fifteen-going-on-sixteen, Andi is bored, lonely and cynical in 1970s suburbia. Her sole friend moved away, and her brother, Mike, is busy getting stoned at college, leaving Andi alone with her parents, Shirley and Fred. Shirley is emotionally detached from her husband and children, while Fred forces small fatherly overtures that feel insincere. Eventually, Andi relates a family secret that accounts for their dysfunction. When a chance encounter with much-older Frank develops into a sexual relationship, Andi takes refuge in the illicit affair, possibly because it offers an escape from her tedious and unsatisfactory home life. Frank’s mercurial moods run hot and cold, unsettling Andi, but making her crave his approval. The story wraps up a bit too neatly when, after a heart-to-heart with Mike, Andi avoids making a life-altering mistake. Despite the abrupt ending, teens will appreciate the plot that builds satisfactorily to a climax while exposing the underbelly of life in the suburbs. Unfortunately, however, the characters are unremarkable and the 1970s setting adds nothing but outdated slang to the story. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: June 14, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-73198-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005
Painful yet compulsively readable.
A white teen living a sheltered life seeks to break her rock-star mother out of the cycle of abuse perpetrated on their family.
Sixteen-year-old Jane lives in a large, old Victorian house with younger brother Henry, father Vernon, their cook, their gardener—and Mina, her mother, who, when she’s not out on tour with her world-famous punk band, Placenta, is confined by Vernon to a system of pneumatic tubes that traverse their house. Ever since the onset of the global pandemic over four years ago, Jane and Henry haven’t been allowed to return to school, instead receiving a bizarre regimen of home-school instruction from Vernon, while Mina watches on helplessly from her capsule in the tubes. Only when Jane stumbles on a cache of home movies—actually security camera footage from around their house dating back to her parents’ courtship days—does she begin to gain some perspective on her dysfunctional, abusive family life. In secret, she starts composing a punk opera to express her desire to save her mother from the life she seems trapped in. When Mina leaves to go on tour for Placenta’s latest album, Jane uses her wits to mount a nascent, persistent rebellion against Vernon’s toxic grip on their family’s psyche. Expertly blending fabulism with hard realism and Victorian language with contemporary teen-speak, this powerful narrative examines the myriad effects of emotional and physical abuse on a family.
Painful yet compulsively readable. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780593353974
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
A twisty thriller that asks: How much do you really know about your parents?
Four teens try to piece together a 35-year-old mystery.
In Canterstown in the present day, four close friends—Liam, Elayah, Marcie, and Jorja—dig up a time capsule that their parents buried decades ago and find, among a few harmless keepsakes, a bloodied knife and a note that reads, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill anyone.” Not long after, Elayah is attacked in her own home and almost dies. Though Liam’s dad is the sheriff and he says he’s on the case, the four friends begin harboring suspicions against their own parents when their excuses and backstories just don’t add up. Meanwhile, in 1986, the stories of Dean, Jay, and twins Marcus and Antoine unfurl, chronicling the lead-up to the burial of the capsule (and its murder weapon). As the contemporary amateur sleuths try to find answers, they risk endangering themselves further for a truth they might not want to hear. Though the novel is a bit bloated with its long list of characters and hefty page count, the central mystery and various twists will keep readers turning pages. Lyga does an excellent job of portraying a racially and sexually diverse cast, not shying away from the realities of having a marginalized identity but rather braiding those elements into the plot itself.
A twisty thriller that asks: How much do you really know about your parents? (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-53778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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