Mostly generic, but flashes of originality raise expectations for future installments.
In this debut series opener set 20 years in the future, teens identified as future criminals are exiled to "the wheel," a remote island wilderness (metaphorical and real) where few live past 18.
Alenna, 16, the demure orphanage-raised child of political dissidents, is shocked to awaken there. Her savvier fellow new arrival is quickly captured by drones serving the mysterious Monk; luckier Alenna is rescued by Gadya, whose gentler tribe welcomes her. The girls bond, although Alenna’s blossoming relationship with Liam, Gadya’s ex, troubles the waters. Besides battling drones, the tribe tends kids who’ve fallen puzzlingly ill and hatches desperate plans to hijack an aircraft from the mysterious gray zone. Sketchy worldbuilding is a deficit. The United Northern Alliance—the United States, Canada and Mexico, fused—has imposed efficient totalitarian rule with breathtaking speed. As in most dystopias for teens, it’s not the state, but the private sector that’s withered away. Alenna’s passivity around Liam, trite observations on personal growth and girl talk with Gadya about dating and popularity seem bizarrely borrowed from another genre. Hang in there—when the action moves to the eerie gray zone, the plot gains traction and suspense builds. Here the girls must depend on themselves—not Liam—to survive.
Mostly generic, but flashes of originality raise expectations for future installments. (Dystopian romance. 12 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-3265-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This scorching glimpse of life (and death) among the moneyed classes hits its marks, if a bit mechanically.
A summertime stay on Martha’s Vineyard confirms everything Linden thinks about rich people.
Best known for emotional YA romances, Cotugno tries her hand at an emotional whodunit—and readers who can roll with the weird attraction her protagonist seems to exert on the two main young women here may find themselves caught up in an engrossing whirl of, as the title promises, lies, secrets, and louche living. Hardly has he arrived for a two-week stay at palatial August House than Michael Linden and his host and boarding school roommate Jasper’s twin sister, Eliza, are bedroom-bound; his ghosted former platonic friend Holiday turns up; and Greg, despised boyfriend of another houseguest, winds up in a coma after an apparent accident. Dragged along by Holiday, who, along with inexplicably letting bygones be bygones, turns out to be an enthusiastic amateur sleuth, scholarship student Linden finds plenty of fuel for his (supposedly) secret resentment of the privileged classes and the way they can get away with anything. Though not, as it turns out after a comfortably conventional denouement complete with surprise confession, murder. Also, as a tease at the end suggests, for all that he comes clean about several secrets of his own, Linden leads the pack in the “things to hide” department. Aside from one prominent supporting character—a brown-skinned lacrosse champion—the central cast reads White.
This scorching glimpse of life (and death) among the moneyed classes hits its marks, if a bit mechanically. (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780593433287
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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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