Unlikely to draw much of a crowd—but it could be meaningful to the readers who need it most.
A closeted teen galvanizes his small town’s first-ever Pride parade.
Months after Ryan saved Jack from drowning, Jack wonders if they’re really friends at all. Meanwhile, Jack takes swimming lessons from Cody, a Thompson Mills “triple threat” (“misogynistic, homophobic, and relatively racist”). Things on the friendship front start to look up when gorgeous, city boy Benjamin shows up in art class. As luck would have it, Benjamin is gay, too. But, unlike Jack, Benjamin has no intention of hiding it. After a tragic accident sends Benjamin to the hospital, Jack decides to show Thompson Mills—a town that’s “so small that being different usually means you’re flying solo”—exactly what community looks like. This companion novel to Shaw’s Caterpillars Can’t Swim (2017) shifts the first-person narrative focus to Jack instead of Ryan. Though there are two biracial leads (Jack is Guatemalan/white, Benjamin is Chinese/white), their descriptions name and focus on their nonwhite ancestry in a way that only serves to emphasize whiteness as the default. Ryan has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. This story of rural Pride is at times inspirational, but it is flattened by Shaw’s perpetuation of queer stereotypes (e.g., the camp gay mentor). Nonetheless, the intersectional characters make this “out of the closet, into the fire” tale a slight scratch above the rest.
Unlikely to draw much of a crowd—but it could be meaningful to the readers who need it most. (Fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77260-108-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance.
A Connecticut girl and her best friend devise a series of plans in order to achieve their goals: following a dream and winning back an ex.
Eighteen-year-old Audrey Barbour has a Master Plan: attend Blue Ridge Glass School in North Carolina and someday turn her Etsy shop, Golightly Glass, into a thriving business. But her uber-wealthy parents insist that she instead follow in their footsteps and go to business school. So Audrey decides to go find the tuition money she needs with help from her best friend, Henry Chen. Henry needs a favor, too: He hopes that fake dating Audrey will help him win back his ex-girlfriend, and he points out to a reluctant Audrey that this could make her crush, Griffin, notice her. While Audrey’s parents vacation in France for three weeks, the pair rent out the Barbour mansion on the Long Island Sound. Soon romantic chemistry grows alongside their business partnership. Despite the pair’s great preparation and an abundance of secondary characters with connections and talents to help pull off their increasingly ambitious ideas, plans go awry, leaving Audrey and Henry scrambling and second-guessing their choices. The pacing is even, but the characters often take a back seat to the whirlwind of activity that drives the plot, with the emphasis falling on each person’s practical skills and their role in keeping the action moving over their emotional bonds. Audrey is white, and Henry’s surname cues him as Chinese American.
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593904794
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte Romance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression.
After surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.
Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself; her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out; her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply; and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her—who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves—Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she "like-likes" but who had pined for Ellis instead. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a "semifamous" local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way "girls who write their pain on their bodies" scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Like most issue books, this is not an easy read, but it's poignant and transcendent as Charlie breaks more and more before piecing herself back together.
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93471-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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