The misery of Anna’s home life is a secret weighing heavily on her shoulders.
Only child Anna feels caught between parents whose personal cold war regularly erupts in outright, vocal hostility. Once upon a time they had a happy household, enjoying vacations together and silly laughter over meals. Now her kindergarten teacher mother is unemployed and her epidemiologist father works long hours. The Atlanta teen, who aspires to become a globe-trotting journalist, tiptoes around on eggshells. The tension at home interferes with her schoolwork, resulting in angry lectures from her father and disappointment in herself. Her mother drinks too much and expresses her anger by aggressively cleaning the house. Anna has a budding romance with classmate Dave and a close relationship with her best friend, Jess, but as her home life becomes increasingly unpredictable, her shame over hiding the truth about her life increases. Debut author Bruce’s novel in verse exquisitely captures the emotional pain of a girl who desperately wants to enjoy school dances, take pride in her academic work, and connect with parents who are too preoccupied with their own conflict to see the suffering they’re causing her. Anna’s direct, vulnerable first-person narration will draw in readers as she attempts to navigate stressful situations on her own. All characters seem to be white.
An emotionally layered, deeply affecting work accessible to reluctant readers. (Verse novel. 13-18)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5383-8264-6
Page Count: 200
Publisher: West 44 Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
22
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A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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PROFILES
Poignant and real, beautiful and intense, this story of a girl struggling to define herself is as powerful as Xiomara’s...
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Poetry helps first-generation Dominican-American teen Xiomara Batista come into her own.
Fifteen-year old Xiomara (“See-oh-MAH-ruh,” as she constantly instructs teachers on the first day of school) is used to standing out: she’s tall with “a little too much body for a young girl.” Street harassed by both boys and grown men and just plain harassed by girls, she copes with her fists. In this novel in verse, Acevedo examines the toxicity of the “strong black woman” trope, highlighting the ways Xiomara’s seeming unbreakability doesn’t allow space for her humanity. The only place Xiomara feels like herself and heard is in her poetry—and later with her love interest, Aman (a Trinidadian immigrant who, refreshingly, is a couple inches shorter than her). At church and at home, she’s stifled by her intensely Catholic mother’s rules and fear of sexuality. Her present-but-absent father and even her brother, Twin (yes, her actual twin), are both emotionally unavailable. Though she finds support in a dedicated teacher, in Aman, and in a poetry club and spoken-word competition, it’s Xiomara herself who finally gathers the resources she needs to solve her problems. The happy ending is not a neat one, making it both realistic and satisfying. Themes as diverse as growing up first-generation American, Latinx culture, sizeism, music, burgeoning sexuality, and the power of the written and spoken word are all explored with nuance.
Poignant and real, beautiful and intense, this story of a girl struggling to define herself is as powerful as Xiomara’s name: “one who is ready for war.” (Verse fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-266280-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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PERSPECTIVES
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