An intriguing concept overtaken by thin characters and poor pacing.
Nearly a year after the death of her best friend, Lizzie, 15-year-old Emily is abducted by Lizzie’s parents to fill the void in their lives.
Emily wakes up in Maine, far from her Connecticut home, to find her hair dyed black and her eyes changed to green by contacts, making her look just like Lizzie. Lizzie’s mother tells her that as long as she cooperates, no harm will come to her or her family. Good behavior earns her a television and meals upstairs. Bad behavior means starvation and isolation. Emily begins to play along, determined to keep her family safe while at the same time finding a way to escape. But with Lizzie’s mother, father, and sister always watching, she fears she will be trapped in this nightmare forever. Then she meets Casey, a musically gifted boy who is legally blind. Together they come up with a plan to help Emily escape her prison. In this psychological thriller that studies the depths of grief, Emily’s empathy for her kidnappers keeps the sensationalism to a minimum by personalizing the betrayal. A preponderance of backstory slows the narrative and deflates the tension. Ultimately this is a story about love and loss threaded through with moments of a tense thriller. All main characters are Irish-American Catholics.
An intriguing concept overtaken by thin characters and poor pacing. (Thriller. 12-15)Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-29850-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
A winter adventure that should have skipped a print version and gone straight to TV as an after-school special.
Mother Nature battles a girl and her motley crew of sled dogs to a draw in the frozen landscape of eastern Ontario.
Forecasts of a winter storm send Hannah’s Army Reservist father to answer the call of duty, igniting a series of poor choices and near misses for his teenage daughter. In a fit of pique over spending school holidays at the family’s rural cabin, Hannah accidentally breaks her mother’s supply of insulin ampoules. Accompanied by a guilty conscience and four family dogs, Hannah sets out to save the day by dog sledding to the nearest neighbor for help. Unfortunately, the first leg of her endeavor ends with Hannah being greeted by a rifle-wielding woman having combat flashbacks. Hannah escapes with her life and Peter, a recalcitrant teenage passenger whose main contributions to the mission are sarcasm and his ability to start a fire. Anything that could go wrong does, but Hannah keeps moving forward in a learn-as-you-go adventure where only the two lead dogs have any idea what they’re doing. Below zero temperatures do nothing to warm us to either Hannah or Peter, whose snarly personalities wear as thin as the ice one of the dogs falls through. Hannah’s mother is Korean and her father is white; other characters follow a white default.
A winter adventure that should have skipped a print version and gone straight to TV as an after-school special. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4597-4300-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dundurn
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Moving imagery is muddied by disjointed character representation in a novel that feels overcrowded.
A Texas bayou holds memories and secrets, weaving together people and animals through connected histories.
Buffalo Bayou takes her place as part of an ensemble cast that spans nearly two centuries. Sixteen-year-old Cade Curtis is a white boy who works alongside his father stealing angel statues from cemeteries for an antiques dealer, and Soleil Broussard is a 16-year-old Creole Christian with a tiny honey bear jar tattooed on her wrist. The two attend school together in present-day Houston, Texas, but the story intertwines their connection with stories of slaves and an ocelot in a narrative that runs away like the rushing of a river. Texas is a gorgeous backdrop for the story, eliciting haunting imagery that spotlights the natural beauty of the state. Each character helps piece together a quilt of experiences that stream from the omnipresent bayou who sees, hears, and protects, and the revelations of their overlapping connections are well-paced throughout. The novel is less successful, however, at underscoring why there are so many voices battling for space in the text. Too-short vignettes that are rather haphazardly forced together provide glimpses into the lives of the characters but make it difficult to follow all of the threads. While an author’s note offers historical background explaining the inspiration for the characters, it does not provide sufficient cohesion.
Moving imagery is muddied by disjointed character representation in a novel that feels overcrowded. (author’s note) (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2109-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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