Readers will root for these appealing, realistically flawed characters to find their respective happy futures.
A timely exploration of the line between idiosyncrasies and mental illness featuring two Australian teenagers.
Penny thinks she’s got her entire life sorted: She’s a standout on her high school’s swim and debate teams and is the school newspaper’s ace reporter. She owns her considerable ambition proudly and likes to keep things simple, gliding through life as smoothly and cleanly—without any messy peer relationships to gum up the works—as she does through the water. When she discovers a fellow student’s anonymous posts on a forum for love-shy men (so anxious about interactions with women that they avoid relationships altogether), Penny senses a hot story, pursuing it with a doggedness verging on obsession. Hyperdreamy Nick’s love-shyness is rooted in emotional abuse, phobias and deep-seated anxieties that nearly cripple him socially, and Penny determines to help him, Henry Higgins–style. This goes fairly well, but Nick is also unwittingly misogynistic, simultaneously idolizing and hating girls. When Penny finally calls him out on it, it’s a triumphant moment. Along the way, Nick’s behavior forces Penny to see that she is more isolated and friendship-craving than she’d like to admit. There is much to love about this book besides its plot; Penny’s relationships with other characters add both dimension and humor.
Readers will root for these appealing, realistically flawed characters to find their respective happy futures. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-74237-623-3
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Suspense, romance, and the excitement of discovery make this Western thoroughly enjoyable.
In the great era of dinosaur-hunting, two teenagers accompany their paleontologist fathers in a race to discover the biggest of them all: the rex.
A spirit of adventure permeates this fast-paced novel by the award-winning Oppel. Rachel Cartland is the rare 19th-century girl whose father allows her to pursue her interest in the natural sciences, at least until she marries. Samuel Bolt, with his knack for assembling fossilized bones, convinces his nearly penniless father to mount an expedition to head west and follow up on a lead from an amateur bone collector. On the train to Nebraska, they discover that the moneyed Cartlands are headed to the same place with identical intentions—and a crew of paleontology students from Yale and a U.S. Army escort. With their fathers embroiled in rivalry, Sam and Rachel are meant to spy on each other, which gives them a chance to become acquainted out of sight of others. Rich in period details and dialogue, the story shifts between Rachel’s and Sam’s alternating first-person voices. Rachel’s narrative reveals that she’s one of the few white characters with enough conscience to reflect on the savagery of the explorers’ treatment of the local Pawnee and Lakota Sioux.
Suspense, romance, and the excitement of discovery make this Western thoroughly enjoyable. (Historical fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6416-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
For readers who like a light serving of mystery with a side of romance.
Murder turns would-be romance novelist Emmy into the heroine of her own romantic mystery.
The worst Emmy Danvers, a white 16-year-old, has faced is the long string of losers her mom has dated since her dad left them while her mom was still pregnant and the tension of unrequited feelings for good white friend Ben. But while she’s working on another story idea for a romance in a coffee shop, an unknown elderly man warns her that she—along with her absent father—is not safe before covertly handing off an encrypted high-tech tablet and promptly dying right on top of her. As in the improbable scenarios of her stories, Emmy, not knowing which adults to trust, brashly accepts the offer of the murdered man’s rich, white teenage grandson, Sebastian, a self-described “Certified Bad Boy,” to attend elite Emptor Academy on a scholarship. Although this is nominally a murder mystery, the suspense is mild, as Emmy spends more time navigating her new high school (particularly interactions with mean girls) and reconciling her feelings for both Ben and Sebastian (this is a romance, after all) than trying to track down her missing father, access the tablet’s hidden contents, and stay out of danger. The author adds diversity through Emmy’s circle of new and old friends and Emptor’s instructors. A heightened conclusion with unresolved answers sets the scene for a sequel.
For readers who like a light serving of mystery with a side of romance. (Mystery. 14-17)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4405-9585-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Merit Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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