A competent but unremarkable addition to a “nevertheless, she persisted” display.
To prove herself and seize a chance for her mother, a girl enters a competition traditionally reserved for boys—one that could turn deadly.
Every year, the mysterious Holm offers a contest for “all gentlepersons of university age” to compete for a prestigious scholarship. Tensions are running high in the patriarchal society of Pinsbury Port, which is physically divided into the haves and the have-nots, with the emergence of an unidentified disease that slowly kills its victims. Rhen Tellur seeks a cure for her infected mother: Desperate for access to better resources, she enters Holm’s competition disguised as a boy. Weber (Reclaiming Shilo Snow, 2018, etc.) creates a high-fantasy world that evokes Victorian England but keeps the supernatural creatures, such as ghouls and sirens, roaming the margins. Tan-skinned 17-year-old Rhen is justifiably distraught over her mother’s sickness but cool and calculating when engaged with science. She’s also infatuated with Lute, an attractive, brown-skinned, lower-class boy. “The strangest woman” Lute’s ever met, she prefers spending time in her father’s lab examining blood samples from fresh cadavers over prancing around an upper-crust party. The plot and character development proceed in a predictable manner, making emotional investment in the story difficult for readers. Rhen is dyslexic and Lute’s younger brother has Down syndrome. Racial markers are ambiguous, and the cast seemingly defaults to white.
A competent but unremarkable addition to a “nevertheless, she persisted” display. (author’s note, discussion questions, recipe) (Fantasy. 14-17)Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7180-8096-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2019
There’s a built-in audience for the London sisters’ adventures, but beneath all the glitter is a bunch of blah.
Hardworking sisters face glamorous romantic and professional challenges in Los Angeles.
Approachable fashionista-next-door video bloggers Sophia and Ava London have built an impressive reputation as savvy guides to fashion, accessories and personal grooming and are thrilled to be moving up in their shared career. An award naming the tightknit sisters Best Webstars of the Year leads to a licensing deal for their own makeup line—London Calling—with LuxeLife Cosmetics, and now the hottest men in Los Angeles are falling at their feet. Ava begins dating paparazzi-bait–turned–doting boyfriend Liam Carlson (but she continues to enjoy flirtatious banter with Dalton, a fellow volunteer at the local animal shelter). Meanwhile, Sophia, “boytoxing” after being blindsided by a terrible breakup, finds herself torn between wealthy smoothie Hunter Ralston and gorgeous Italian bartender-sculptor Giovanni. The Fowlers—who, like their protagonists, are beauty-and-fashion video bloggers—let their otherwise-effervescent modern fairy tale of sisterly love and self-actualization get bogged down in a dreary subplot of sibling separation anxiety and jealousy, basing it on the flimsiest of serial miscommunications and resolving it in a single paragraph. A last-chapter twist threatens the sisters’ reputation (and sets up a potential sequel), making the novel simply stop, rather than resolve.
There’s a built-in audience for the London sisters’ adventures, but beneath all the glitter is a bunch of blah. (Chick lit. 14-16)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-00618-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
In his first novel translated into English, Herrndorf sits squarely and triumphantly at the intersection of literary tall...
Social misfits hit the Autobahn.
Mike Klingenberg has just finished another boring, socially awkward year in middle school and is staring down a solitary two-week stint at home, thanks to his mother’s latest round of rehab and his father’s “business trip” with a suspiciously attractive personal assistant. Just as he’s watering the lawn, imagining himself lord of a very small manor in suburban Berlin, class reject Tschick shows up in a “borrowed” old Soviet-era car, and the boys hatch a plan to hit the road. Mike’s rich interior life—he meditates on beauty and the meaning of life and spins self-mocking fantasies of himself as a great essayist—hasn’t translated well to the flirtatious physical swagger required by eighth grade. Tschick, meanwhile, is a badly dressed Russian immigrant who often shows up to school reeking of alcohol and who is also given to profound leaps of psychological insight. Their road trip (destination: Wallachia, a German euphemism for “the middle of nowhere”; also a region of Romania) is peopled by unexpected, often bizarre, largely benign characters who deepen Mike’s appreciation for humanity and life. Each episode in the boys’ journey grows more outrageous, leading readers to wonder how far they’ll go before coming to a literal screeching (and squealing) halt.
In his first novel translated into English, Herrndorf sits squarely and triumphantly at the intersection of literary tall tale and coming-of-age picaresque. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-48180-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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