A taut, emotionally arresting fantasy.
By day, Aissa and Zandria are hardworking citizens of the Technocrat city of Palinor; by night, they are Magi spies and assassins-in-training.
The twins scour the city for any remnants of their people’s former power. Their mission: to find and kill the Technocrat heir, a hidden child who is one of the Heartless—people born without a heart. Aro, an attractive young Technocrat researcher, tasks Aissa with helping find a cure for the Heartless, but not everything is as it seems: Old friends cannot be trusted, new emotions cannot be ignored. When Zandria is captured by the Technocrats, Aissa must weigh loyalty to her mission against her sister’s life and her own burgeoning love in the ultimate moral quandary. Each side views the other as unequivocally evil. Connolly, however, undermines these perceptions, depicting both underhanded Magi ploys and Technocrat compassion: a subtle take on the current expectation of moral ambiguity in fantasy. The book’s strengths lie in its well-crafted prose, worldbuilding, and richly drawn supporting characters; the leads, however, feel a bit more inaccessible. Emotionally repressed Aissa’s confidence in her intelligence and abilities approaches arrogance; the better-humored Zandria plays a much smaller role, and her absence in the latter half of the book goes almost unnoticed. The stakes, too, sometimes feel too low to drive the depth of the twins’ hatred. Main characters default to White; there is some diversity of skin tone in secondary characters.
A taut, emotionally arresting fantasy. (Fantasy. 13-18)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-310-76814-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Blink
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining and atmospheric, though sometimes clumsy, exploration of the true cost of beauty.
In this retelling of a classic, a drama student’s obsession with beauty leads her down a dark—and possibly deadly—path.
Eighteen-year-old Penny Paxton is beginning her first year at Dorian Drama Academy in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she hopes to follow in her starlet mother’s footsteps—and earn the love that her mother has never seemed to offer. At Dorian, Penny is mentored by Royal Shakespeare Company legend Orlagh Camran, who makes her the compelling offer of a portrait by the Masked Painter, a mysterious artist with the ability to gift his subjects everlasting youth and beauty. But shortly after Penny’s portrait is complete, several of the Masked Painter’s subjects are found murdered. Fearing that she’s made a terrible mistake and may become the next victim, Penny, who’s gay, begins to investigate the murders with the help of an unlikely ally. As she attempts to uncover the truth surrounding the Masked Painter and the murders, she’s forced to reckon with her own toxic obsession with beauty. This chilling, atmospheric novel, inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, is entertaining and full of twists, though some of the reveals feel contrived and some questions are left unanswered. The plot unravels at a leisurely pace but eventually builds to an action-packed (if somewhat convoluted) conclusion. Most characters are cued white.
An entertaining and atmospheric, though sometimes clumsy, exploration of the true cost of beauty. (content note, author’s note, bonus scene) (Fantasy thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250346797
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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