In this conclusion, coarseness is used as a substitute for realism, despair as a substitute for character growth: skip
The Blood of the Lamb trilogy concludes.
After her near-fatal illness in Into the Wilderness (2014), Maryam prepares to leave the refugee camp and return to Onewēre. Though Onewēre and its white religious zealots are dangerous, she must return, armed as she is with a cure for the plague Te Matee Iai. Her dearest friend, Ruth—now pregnant following a rape—is determined to stay and teach her fellow refugees, leaving Maryam to tough out the return journey alone. Maryam’s shocked when her former enemy, Lazarus, follows her home, as she’s oblivious to his developing affections. The escape from the camp, sea journey and island survival adventure are well-enough-paced, but once Maryam and Lazarus arrive back home, momentum grinds to a halt. For more than half the novel, Maryam and Lazarus are caught in an endless, bleak cycle: distrustful arguments with each other, gushing bodily fluids of all sorts, shared capture, sexual violence, degradation by their enemies, brief hope. Lather, rinse, repeat. Without any further development, the trilogy’s every weakness is accentuated, not least the inexplicable primitive naïveté of Maryam’s people, as vulnerable to pseudo-Christian trickery as if their pre-apocalypse society had never been part of the industrial world.
In this conclusion, coarseness is used as a substitute for realism, despair as a substitute for character growth: skip . (Post-apocalyptic romance. 15-17)Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-909-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pyr/Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Best leave it at maybe so.
Two 17-year-olds from the northern suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, work together on a campaign for a progressive state senate candidate in an unlikely love story.
Co-authors Albertalli (Leah on the Offbeat, 2018, etc.) and Saeed (Bilal Cooks Daal, 2019, etc.) present Jamie Goldberg, a white Ashkenazi Jewish boy who suffers from being “painfully bad at anything girl-related,” and Maya Rehman, a Pakistani American Muslim girl struggling with her parents’ sudden separation. Former childhood best friends, they find themselves volunteered as a team by their mothers during a Ramadan “campaign iftar.” One canvassing adventure at a time, they grow closer despite Maya’s no-dating policy. Chapters alternate between Maya’s and Jamie’s first-person voices. The endearing, if somewhat clichéd, teens sweetly connect over similarities like divorced parents, and their activism will resonate with many. Jamie is sensitive, clumsy, and insecure; Maya is determined, sassy, a dash spoiled, and she swears freely. The novel covers timeless themes of teen activism and love-conquers-all along with election highs and lows, messy divorces, teen angst, bat mitzvah stress, social media gaffes, right-wing haters, friendship drama, and cultural misunderstandings, but the explicit advocacy at times interferes with an immersive reading experience and the text often feels repetitious. Maya’s mother is hijabi, and while Maya advocates against a hijab ban, she chooses not to wear hijab and actively wrestles with what it means to be an observant Muslim.
Best leave it at maybe so. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293704-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Eerie, painful and beautifully spine-chilling
The intertwined stories of two teenage girls: a convicted killer and a Juilliard-bound ballerina.
Amber's an inmate at Aurora Hills Secure Juvenile Detention Center, with a story to tell about the night the doors all opened at the prison. Violet's a dancer bound for New York City and artistic success. The girls have secrets, and each takes the chance to let tidbits of truth slip into her narrative, each using her own unique and identifiable voice in alternating chapters. Amber rarely speaks only for herself, identifying almost exclusively with the other prisoners. "Some of us knew for sure," she solemnly explains, speaking collectively. "Some of us kept track of days." Violet, on the other hand, is deeply self-absorbed, worried over the three-years-past death of her incarcerated best friend but only for how it affects her and her chance at Juilliard. As the girls' stories unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that Amber's and Violet's musings occur three years apart—yet are nonetheless intimately connected. The wholly realistic view of adolescents meeting the criminal justice system (with a heartbreaking contrast portrayed between the treatment of a wealthy girl and that of her poor multiracial friend) is touched at first with the slimmest twist of an otherworldly creepiness, escalating finally to the truly hair-raising and macabre.
Eerie, painful and beautifully spine-chilling . (Supernatural suspense. 15-17)Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61620-372-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
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