Enchanting.
A riveting tale of testing one’s mettle while finding one’s roots.
Alaine Beauparlant is a 17-year-old Haitian American senior living in Miami with her psychiatrist father. Alaine plans to follow in the footsteps of her renowned journalist mother by majoring in journalism at Columbia. With mere months to go before graduation, though, Alaine’s world starts unraveling and is later turned on its side when she royally messes up a school presentation. Her punishment is to spend two months volunteering in Haiti—though she wasn’t given much of a choice. Alaine wants to go to Haiti—the country both of her parents are from—but she would prefer it to be under much different circumstances. With the help of her Tati Estelle and, later, her usually distant mother, Alaine comes to find that there is much more to her family’s history than she imagined. In the process, she discovers an even deeper love for the ancestral homeland that she had only known from afar. The Moulite sisters’ joint debut has heart and humor. The varied formats, such as emails, texts, and letters, add interest and serve to make the story feel modern. However, the excessive pop-culture references are unnecessary additions to an otherwise captivating novel. This exploration of a culture steeped in magical realism beautifully showcases the sacrifices we are sometimes called to make for the ties that bind us.
Enchanting. (Fiction. 15-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-335-77709-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet, slow-paced novel about a teen learning to love her body.
Greer Walsh wishes she were one person...unfortunately, with her large breasts, she feels like she’s actually three.
High school sophomore and math whiz Greer is self-conscious about her body. Maude and Mavis, as she’s named her large breasts, are causing problems for her. When Greer meets new kid Jackson Oates, she wishes even more that she had a body that she didn’t feel a need to hide underneath XXL T-shirts. While trying to impress Jackson, who has moved to the Chicago suburbs from Cleveland, Greer decides to try out for her school’s volleyball team. When she makes JV, Greer is forced to come to terms with how her body looks and feels in a uniform and in motion as well as with being physically close with her teammates. The story is told in the first person from Greer’s point of view. Inconsistent storytelling as well as Greer’s (somewhat distracting) personified inner butterfly make this realistic novel a slow but overall enjoyable read. The story contains elements of light romance as well as strong female friendships. Greer is white with a Christian mom and Jewish dad; Jackson seems to be white by default, and there is diversity among the secondary characters.
A sweet, slow-paced novel about a teen learning to love her body. (Fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-1524-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
An unpolished grab bag of incidents that tries to make a point about racial inequality.
Two teenage girls—Lena and Campbell—come together following a football game night gone wrong.
Campbell, who is white and new to Atlanta, now attends the school where Lena, who is black, is a queen bee. At a game between McPherson High and their rival, a racist slur leads to fights, and shots are fired. The unlikely pair are thrown together as they try to escape the dangers on campus only to find things are even more perilous on the outside; a police blockade forces them to walk through a dangerous neighborhood toward home. En route, a peaceful protest turns into rioting, and the presence of police sets off a clash with protestors with gruesome consequences. The book attempts to tackle racial injustice in America by offering two contrasting viewpoints via narrators of different races. However, it portrays black characters as violent and criminal and the white ones as excusably ignorant and subtly racist, seemingly redeemed by moments when they pause to consider their privileges and biases. Unresolved story arcs, underdeveloped characters, and a jumpy plot that tries to pack too much into too small a space leave the story lacking. This is not a story of friendship but of how trauma can forge a bond—albeit a weak and questionable one—if only for a night.
An unpolished grab bag of incidents that tries to make a point about racial inequality. (Fiction. 15-adult)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7889-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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