Slightly uneven but rich and exciting throughout.
There are two sides to every story—unless there are three.
Unwilling to marry a foreign prince she’s never seen to secure a treaty between nations, Lia bolts from her father’s castle on the wedding day. She’s the king’s First Daughter, but she won’t tolerate an arranged life, no matter how old the tradition. She settles in a fishing village and works, mostly incognito, at an inn. Lia narrates in the first person, but so do two others: the jilted Prince, intrigued by and resentful at her flight, and the Assassin, sent from a third land to kill her. The boys converge on the inn and enter posing as friends, neither knowing the other’s identity, each using the ruse to his own ends. As the text shifts to labeling each boy’s chapters by name rather than noun, Pearson plants more red herrings than truthful hints about which boy is which; some readers may guess right, while others will have it wrong until the explicit reveal. Post-reveal, the novel shifts to classic fantasy fare: travels across rough terrain; death, danger, kidnapping; romanticized Romany-esque wanderers; epic love; a magical gift of “listening without ears [and] seeing without eyes.” A bold ending whets appetites for the next installment, in which, readers will hope, the assassin will become a less cryptic character.
Slightly uneven but rich and exciting throughout. (map) (Fantasy. 14-17)Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9923-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
This solid, enchanting fantasy boasts a palpable atmosphere and moves at a breakneck pace.
YA all-stars Morgan and Paige team up to present a witchy take on sorority life.
College freshman Vivi Devereaux can’t wait to go to Savannah’s Westerly College and escape the scams her mother has run to make ends meet—most involving tarot card readings—but she quickly stumbles upon a different type of magic. At a rush party for Kappa Rho Nu, she meets junior Scarlett Winter, a charismatic witch in the running to lead the sorority—which is in fact a front for a prestigious coven called the Ravens. At first hesitant, Vivi quickly warms up to the idea of being in a witch sorority, joining her fellow pledges in learning magic and forming tight bonds of friendship. But the coven has an ominous history involving dead sisters and dark magic, and Vivi and Scarlett get caught up in a dangerous, high-stakes mystery, all while balancing school, family issues, and boy trouble. This novel hits its story beats quickly and deftly, unfurling the plot through Scarlett’s and Vivi’s alternating points of view. The magic system is complex and original without being cumbersome, and it expertly conjures a supernatural, uncanny atmosphere intertwined with Greek life. Vivi is White, Scarlett is Black, and the supporting cast contains a range of diverse racial identities.
This solid, enchanting fantasy boasts a palpable atmosphere and moves at a breakneck pace. (Fantasy. 14-17)Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-09823-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Yet another bland, half-baked dystopian exercise.
A teen girl goes looking for her missing twin sister.
In the absence of their parents, Cassie and Becca, both white, are doing their best to tend to the family farm. One morning, Cassie wakes up to discover Becca is missing. Meanwhile, Becca wakens in a horrific children’s prison, in which the detained are forced to fight to the death. As Cassie searches for her sister, Becca does her best to survive the torture her captors put her through. The novel is set in a future in which populations are organized geographically into isolated cells. The government controls all the information going in and out. More lurks beneath the surface, and the book sets up further installments, but few readers will feel the need to keep reading. The world is poorly built, the characters are dreadfully thin, and the plotting is drastically uneven. When Cassie and Becca are finally reunited, readers will have little reason to celebrate: their relationship is so thinly sketched they barely feel like sisters. The torture sequences in the teen prison are gratuitous and dreary. A last-minute twist is easily predicted, making the slow, tedious burn toward the reveal and the barely distinguishable characters all the more intolerable.
Yet another bland, half-baked dystopian exercise. (Dystopian adventure. 14-17)Pub Date: May 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-43131-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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.
