Though set in the late 1960s and festooned with period detail, this tale of an Oregon teenager struggling to free herself from the constraints of peer and parental expectations has a perfectly contemporary ring. A door opens in Kathy's mind when she realizes that what she feels after losing a bid to join the rally squad is relief. She next tries folk-singing, art, and the theatre, joining the long- haired crowd and absorbing their political awareness and sense of freedom. Along comes James, as admirable for his willingness to let Kathy think and act for herself as he is for standing up to school authorities to protest random locker searches, or educating himself and others about Vietnam. He and Kathy make a wonderfully appealing couple, negotiating the emotional minefields of adolescence as they grow closer, avoiding the temptations of drugs and sex on their way to maturity. Crew (Fire on the Wind, 1995, etc.) pokes gentle fun at Kathy's clueless, loving parents as she plants seeds of personality in her young characters that will later blossom into perfect careers. Although Kathy and James are suddenly separated when his family moves away, the author reunites them in a coda that carries them, happily married, up to the present—she's a novelist, he's an ACLU lawyer. An amiable love story, lit by a likable cast and underlaid with reassuring, deftly inserted messages. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-32496-0
Page Count: 197
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
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An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss.
It’s 1983, and 13-year-old Indian American Reha feels caught between two worlds.
Monday through Friday, she goes to a school where she stands out for not being White but where she has a weekday best friend, Rachel, and does English projects with potential crush Pete. On the weekends, she’s with her other best friend, Sunita (Sunny for short), at gatherings hosted by her Indian community. Reha feels frustrated that her parents refuse to acknowledge her Americanness and insist on raising her with Indian values and habits. Then, on the night of the middle school dance, her mother is admitted to the hospital, and Reha’s world is split in two again: this time, between hospital and home. Suddenly she must learn not just how to be both Indian and American, but also how to live with her mother’s leukemia diagnosis. The sections dealing with Reha’s immigrant identity rely on oft-told themes about the overprotectiveness of immigrant parents and lack the nuance found in later pages. Reha’s story of her evolving relationships with her parents, however, feels layered and real, and the scenes in which Reha must grapple with the possible loss of a parent are beautifully and sensitively rendered. The sophistication of the text makes it a valuable and thought-provoking read even for those older than the protagonist.
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss. (Verse novel. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304742-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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