A powerful, bleak, and penetrating portrait of an isolated young woman excelling in unimaginable danger
A half-Jewish girl in Nazi Germany passes up a chance to escape in favor of the opportunity to screw with Nazis.
Sarah’s mother is shot as they try to flee, but a stranger in a dark warehouse gives the bleeding, grieving Sarah good advice to avoid detection. When Sarah later sees the stranger being harassed by the police, she interrupts her own planned escape to save him. Her new ally, she learns, is a British spy, and she defies his attempt to help her to freedom. Wouldn’t it be better to stay and hurt the Nazis? Fifteen-year-old blonde Sarah looks not only Aryan but young: she’s as small as an 11-year-old. Home-schooled by her mother (who was an actress before the Nuremberg Laws left her unemployed, alcoholic, and abusive), Sarah’s skilled at playacting and languages. She’s even turned her gymnastics experience into a kind of parkour to avoid anti-Semitic violence and steal food. In other words, she’s a perfect spy. Disguised as the 13-year-old daughter of a Nazi official, she infiltrates an elite school. If she can befriend one of her classmates, the daughter of a nuclear physicist, she might save the Allies. Killeen’s thriller is cold, exciting, and well-paced, but its major plot point—the physicist’s independent development of a superweapon—is so James Bond it undercuts the real-world horror that was the Holocaust. Sarah’s coming-of-age and psychological crisis are so well-drawn, however, that the plot’s flaws are forgivable.
A powerful, bleak, and penetrating portrait of an isolated young woman excelling in unimaginable danger . (Historical thriller. 13-16)Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47873-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A sudden cliffhanger sets up this fast-paced thriller (full of blaring brass and pounding drums) for a sequel.
Cold War espionage smoothly blended with psychic romance.
It’s 1963, and 17-year-old Yulia is a starved “ration rat” in Khrushchev’s Moscow. Her family, once high-ranking Communist Party members, has been on the run since her father vanished. Yulia thinks the mysterious psychic ability she uses in the black market is a secret until the KGB arrests her family. If she wants to protect her mother and brother, Yulia must join six other teenagers training for the KGB’s “psychic operations wing,” learning to smoke out dissidents and American spies. The teens protect their thoughts from one another—though not from their KGB masters—by filling their heads with subconscious music: the symphonic cellos and tympani of Shostakovich for Yulia, jazz improvisations for beautiful but dangerous Valentin, ancient Russian balalaika for Maj. Kruzenko. Yulia narrates with prose that ably reflects the sometimes-discordant cacophony of these disparate musical styles, as she seeks the simple melody that will explain family secrets and earn her freedom. Smith strikes an inexpert contextualizing balance, teetering between unexplained Russian and giving Yulia an outsider’s view of her own culture. Still, the Soviet setting (uncannily similar to many a sci-fi dystopian future) is a flavorful backdrop for psychic espionage.
A sudden cliffhanger sets up this fast-paced thriller (full of blaring brass and pounding drums) for a sequel. (historical note) (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59643-892-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
A fat, slow-moving, sensuous fantasy for fans of watery paranormals
A 19th-century 16-year-old witch yearns to return to her birthright.
The anachronistically named Avery Roe is destined to be the next Roe witch, selling her magic to protect the whalers of her New England island. Her grandmother had been raising her as her apprentice until Avery’s magic-hating mother dragged her away to town. Four years later, Avery is still trapped by the only magic her mother is willing to use: a curse preventing Avery from fleeing or soliciting help. Forced to live without magic, dressed up in fancy clothes and trained in a Victorian young lady’s accomplishments, Avery is both self-loathing and self-harming. While she can interpret dreams for anyone who asks, Avery lacks any hint of how to unlock her magic. Her aging grandmother can no longer serve the town’s magical needs—and meanwhile, Avery’s been having prophetic dreams of her own murder. A young, tattooed Polynesian sailor named Tane needs Avery’s dream-telling assistance, and he swears he can end her mother’s curse. When Tane tattoos Avery with his magic (a regrettably exoticized moment), perhaps she’ll be stronger than her mother at last. Secrets abound in Avery’s world, and nobody’s as villainous as she suspects.
A fat, slow-moving, sensuous fantasy for fans of watery paranormals . (Fantasy. 13-15)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-40451-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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