This well-paced debut follows exceptionally smart, thoughtful, and loyal friends navigating the morally ambiguous areas of...
Five friends scheme to cybersteal college tuition money from a billionaire absentee father.
Brilliant Oregon senior Bellamy gets into MIT early action, but she’s denied financial aid—despite her working-class, single mother—because the father who abandoned her is a rich Silicon Valley CEO. Best friend Nari, an accomplished hacker, comes up with a plan to skim a seemingly undetectable fraction of each of his company’s financial transactions until Bellamy has enough stashed in a secure account to at least enroll at MIT. Nari convinces Bellamy’s squad—Nari’s supportive technophobe boyfriend, Keagan; calm Olympic-hopeful diver Santiago; and adventurous artist Reese—to join the revenge heist, and the crew spends 33 days perfecting a cybercrime that requires distraction and breaking and entering at a high-security office building. The author manages to keep all five voices distinct and compelling. Any of the characters’ lives would’ve made for an interesting stand-alone, and even the two embedded romances—one maturely established, one blossoming—are layered. The friends are also seamlessly diverse (San is first-generation Mexican-American; Nari is Japanese-American on her father’s side, white on her mother’s; Reese is asexual/aromantic; and Keagan and Bellamy are cued as white). Although the plot is a page-turner, the heist itself is less interesting than the nuanced friendship dynamics at play.
This well-paced debut follows exceptionally smart, thoughtful, and loyal friends navigating the morally ambiguous areas of life. (Fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-58046-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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