Deeply enmeshed with a magical world and its impossible choices before readers ever meet her, Ava and her wholly believable...
An indentured magical assassin just wants a little peace with her chosen family.
Firebug Ava, who can set fires with her mind, has been on the run her whole life. When Ava’s firebug mother became pregnant, she did the unthinkable and fled from the supernatural mob, raising Ava on the road for years, always in hiding. But nobody escapes the Coterie alive, and Ava’s mom was no exception. Orphaned, Ava lives with her mother’s human childhood sweetheart in rural Maine. She’s allowed to stay in Maine only on the condition of her loyalty to Venus, the Coterie’s bloodthirsty vampire leader. Along with her two best friends, also unwilling Coterie employees, Ava’s an unpaid assassin. Ava, Ezra, a werefox, and Lock, a handsome dryad, are Venus’ enforcers, putting down any supernaturals foolish enough to challenge Venus’ power. As long as Ava does the bloody work, she and her loved ones are left alone—but what happens when Venus demands something Ava simply won’t do? Ava’s exhausted despair, her love for her found family and her coldly practical choices are pre-existing conditions, and the moral decisions she makes are surprisingly nuanced.
Deeply enmeshed with a magical world and its impossible choices before readers ever meet her, Ava and her wholly believable despair are a refreshing change from the endless parade of naïve heroines found elsewhere . (Fantasy. 14-16)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9862-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
There’s a built-in audience for the London sisters’ adventures, but beneath all the glitter is a bunch of blah.
Hardworking sisters face glamorous romantic and professional challenges in Los Angeles.
Approachable fashionista-next-door video bloggers Sophia and Ava London have built an impressive reputation as savvy guides to fashion, accessories and personal grooming and are thrilled to be moving up in their shared career. An award naming the tightknit sisters Best Webstars of the Year leads to a licensing deal for their own makeup line—London Calling—with LuxeLife Cosmetics, and now the hottest men in Los Angeles are falling at their feet. Ava begins dating paparazzi-bait–turned–doting boyfriend Liam Carlson (but she continues to enjoy flirtatious banter with Dalton, a fellow volunteer at the local animal shelter). Meanwhile, Sophia, “boytoxing” after being blindsided by a terrible breakup, finds herself torn between wealthy smoothie Hunter Ralston and gorgeous Italian bartender-sculptor Giovanni. The Fowlers—who, like their protagonists, are beauty-and-fashion video bloggers—let their otherwise-effervescent modern fairy tale of sisterly love and self-actualization get bogged down in a dreary subplot of sibling separation anxiety and jealousy, basing it on the flimsiest of serial miscommunications and resolving it in a single paragraph. A last-chapter twist threatens the sisters’ reputation (and sets up a potential sequel), making the novel simply stop, rather than resolve.
There’s a built-in audience for the London sisters’ adventures, but beneath all the glitter is a bunch of blah. (Chick lit. 14-16)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-00618-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
Bloated and banal
Eyes will roll.
Ash is a scorned twin-blood Darkling—hybrid son of a human and a vampire—who hustles Haze, the drug that occurs naturally in Darkling venom, to the addicted human youth of Black City. Natalie is all human, daughter of Black City’s newly returned Emissary, local head of the national government that just won a bitter war against the Darklings and is committed to racial purity. When they meet under a bridge after Natalie slips her security detail, Natalie’s heart skips a beat. So does Ash’s, which is seriously weird, because twin-bloods’ hearts don’t beat at all. (Full Darklings have two hearts, one of the book’s many arbitrary and wholly unconvincing quirks of biology.) They meet again at school; they engage in pro forma animosity; they realize they love each other. While this narrative arc is entirely predictable, at least it is relatively short—but into the mix are thrown political upheaval, a murder mystery, a contagious wasting disease, brutality against animals, parental infidelity, steamy near-sex scenes, vivisection and public crucifixions, along with grindingly obvious parallels to Nazism and the American skinhead movement. Copious infodumps do not compensate for slipshod worldbuilding. There is as little nuance to the relationships as everything else; in addition to the ludicrous destiny that binds Natalie and Ash, friendships dissolve and come back together with all the subtlety of a preschool playground.
Bloated and banal . (Paranormal romance. 14-16)Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15943-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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