An ambitious rumination that fails on several fronts.
Morgan’s world is rocked when she discovers that the grandfather whose passing she is grieving was not her biological grandfather; her mother’s long-estranged father is in fact alive in Brooklyn.
Angry at her mother’s deception and anxious about the distance she feels growing between her parents, the privileged 16-year-old becomes obsessed with this new grandfather. She surreptitiously travels from Princeton to Brooklyn, becoming friends with Clover, an old woman who mediates this newfound relationship. Both Clover and her mother hint darkly at her grandmother’s reasons for leaving her husband, and even Morgan finds herself hesitant to trust the man. Her best friends, Ansel and Sarah, also warn her about pursuing the relationship, but Morgan persists even as she finds herself falling for Ansel—who seems ready to reciprocate. McGuigan tries to pack a lot into this slim novel: class consciousness, a child’s passage into adulthood, the complexities of relationships, and the difficulty of leaving past misdeeds behind. It stutters and stops, shifting modes abruptly and never fully cohering. The temporal setting is frustratingly indistinct. Though Morgan carries a cellphone, she and her friends never text one another, and they seem quaintly dependent on landlines; the gritty Brooklyn Morgan bravely explores is a far cry from the gentrified borough it’s become. Troublingly, a subplot about the sexual past Morgan is deeply ashamed of is never resolved or even mitigated.
An ambitious rumination that fails on several fronts. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4405-8463-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Merit Press
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A timely and well-paced story of personal discovery.
Time travel brings a girl closer to someone she’s never known.
Sixteen-year-old Kiku, who is Japanese and white, only knows bits and pieces of her family history. While on a trip with her mother to San Francisco from their Seattle home, they search for her grandmother’s childhood home. While waiting for her mother, who goes inside to explore the mall now standing there, a mysterious fog envelops Kiku and displaces her to a theater in the past where a girl is playing the violin. The gifted musician is Ernestina Teranishi, who Kiku later confirms is her late grandmother. To Kiku’s dismay, the fog continues to transport her, eventually dropping her down next door to Ernestina’s family in a World War II Japanese American internment camp. The clean illustrations in soothing browns and blues convey the characters’ intense emotions. Hughes takes inspiration from her own family’s story, deftly balancing complicated national history with explorations of cultural dislocation and biracial identity. As Kiku processes her experiences, Hughes draws parallels to President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban and the incarceration of migrant children. The emotional connection between Kiku and her grandmother is underdeveloped; despite their being neighbors, Ernestina appears briefly and feels elusive to both Kiku and readers up to the very end. Despite some loose ends, readers will gain insights to the Japanese American incarceration and feel called to activism.
A timely and well-paced story of personal discovery. (photographs, author’s note, glossary, further reading) (Graphic historical fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-19353-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
A smart, timely outing.
Two teens connect through a mysterious podcast in this sophomore effort by British author Oseman (Solitaire, 2015).
Frances Janvier is a 17-year-old British-Ethiopian head girl who is so driven to get into Cambridge that she mostly forgoes friendships for schoolwork. Her only self-indulgence is listening to and creating fan art for the podcast Universe City, “a…show about a suit-wearing student detective looking for a way to escape a sci-fi, monster-infested university.” Aled Last is a quiet white boy who identifies as “partly asexual.” When Frances discovers that Aled is the secret creator of Universe City, the two embark on a passionate, platonic relationship based on their joint love of pop culture. Their bond is complicated by Aled’s controlling mother and by Frances’ previous crush on Aled’s twin sister, Carys, who ran away last year and disappeared. When Aled’s identity is accidently leaked to the Universe City fandom, he severs his relationship with Frances, leaving her questioning her Cambridge goals and determined to win back his affection, no matter what the cost. Frances’ narration is keenly intelligent; she takes mordant pleasure in using an Indian friend’s ID to get into a club despite the fact they look nothing alike: “Gotta love white people.” Though the social-media–suffused plot occasionally lags, the main characters’ realistic relationship accurately depicts current issues of gender, race, and class.
A smart, timely outing. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-233571-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
