Mesmerizing.
Queer romance, friendship rivalries, and ominous secrets twist together in Lo’s latest enthralling tale.
Chinese-American Jess Wong has known her white best friend, Angie Redmond, since grade school—the problem is she’s loved Angie for nearly as long, unrequited. When Angie begins dating Margot Adams, a wealthy white student at a nearby private school, Jess knows she should be happy that her friend is happy, but as jealousy and suspicion about Margot eat at her instead, her friendship with Angie begins to crack apart. Jess tries to throw herself into her comics art, but even there, themes of loyalty, love, and betrayal arise. As tensions reach their breaking point, a classmate and friend of Margot’s is discovered murdered in the park, and the resulting upheaval and search for a killer sheds light on some harrowing truths about everyone. Lo has delivered an intricate tapestry of narrative, woven in a labyrinthine pattern of secrets and colored with intersecting hues of Chinese-American identity, the dark intensity of relationships, and telltale stains of blood. A sudden (and likely disorienting) shift from Jess’ first-person perspective to a more detached third-person narration serves the practical purpose of providing information; together with police interview transcripts to which Jess couldn’t be privy, it artfully signals to readers that Jess is no longer in control of the story…or the facts.
Mesmerizing. (Thriller. 13-17)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2742-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story.
Is an exuberant extended family the cure for a breakup? Sophie is about to find out.
When Sophie unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend, she isn’t thrilled about spending the holidays at her grandparents’ house instead of with him. And when her grandmother forms a plan to distract Sophie from her broken heart—10 blind dates, each set up by different family members—she’s even less thrilled. Everyone gets involved with the matchmaking, even forming a betting pool on the success of each date. But will Sophie really find someone to fill the space left by her ex? Will her ex get wind of Sophie’s dating spree via social media and want them to get back together? Is that what she even wants anymore? This is a fun story of finding love, getting to know yourself, and getting to know your family. The pace is quick and light, though the characters are fairly shallow and occasionally feel interchangeable, especially with so many names involved. A Christmas tale, the plot is a fast-paced series of dinners, parties, and games, relayed in both narrative form and via texts, though the humor occasionally feels stiff and overwrought. The ending is satisfying, though largely unsurprising. Most characters default to white as members of Sophie’s Italian American extended family, although one of her cousins has a Filipina mother. One uncle is gay.
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story. (Fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-368-02749-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Chilling and suspenseful, with just the right number of twists.
If your friend’s dead body falls in the woods and nobody is around to see which of you pulled the trigger, what will your story be?
In an after-party haze of booze and drugs, five white, wealthy best friends go hunting in the River Point woods—only four return. With one of the boys, Grant, shot dead in an apparent accident and no one willing to admit responsibility, Logan, Henry, John Michael, and Shep vow to keep silent in order to protect their remaining group and the killer among them. But secrets have a way of burrowing through bonds, and the tightknit foursome, dubbed the River Point Boys, has already started to unravel. Meanwhile, budding photojournalist and white senior Kate Marino is interning at the district attorney’s office, where her boss is assigned the River Point case. The DA wants the case to disappear quietly, but Kate is determined see justice done. As she assists with examining the boys’ behavior during interrogations and in person, she discovers that nothing about the case, the suspects, or even her own connection to the boys is what it seems. The narration alternates between Kate’s fervent suspicions and a River Point Boy’s cold manipulation, leaving readers to wade through the many vengeful motives that spill from a wellspring of affluence, privilege, and corruption.
Chilling and suspenseful, with just the right number of twists. (Mystery. 13-17)Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4847-3089-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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