A fast, ferocious thriller in which water wars, virtual violence, and murky morals collide.
In a near-future Toronto where clean water is tightly controlled, survival depends on who controls the tap.
Drinking water is managed by Hydrexo, whose head engineers are 14-year-old Wyatt Docherty’s parents. While Wyatt never worries about going thirsty, he’s bullied for being a Water Baby. So he climbs the leaderboard of Fathom Fall, a virtual reality game that involves hunting down Bluddites—slimy, bloodthirsty monsters with gills. Armed with VR goggles and a controller, Wyatt is an elite Bluddite-killer—until a real one appears in his apartment, changing everything. Wyatt’s notoriety earns him a spot in a live, nationally televised Fathom Fall competition with nine other teens under 16, but he soon begins to suspect that there’s more to the contest than video game glory. Using cutting-edge augmented reality, the players enter a brutally gory, hyper-realistic version of the game, where rivalries, alliances, and bloodshed determine who survives. As Wyatt fights to prove he’s more than a Water Baby, he realizes that the game—and the organizer’s motives—aren’t as clean as they seem. Attentive readers may regard some elements of the story as illogical, but the breakneck pace, eerie future setting of environmental devastation, and surprise twist at the end make this a compulsive read with room for a sequel. Wyatt is cued white, and his competitors (only one of whom is a girl) are racially diverse.
A fast, ferocious thriller in which water wars, virtual violence, and murky morals collide. (Dystopian. 12-17)Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781547616527
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Filled with plenty of volleyball action and lots of heart, too.
Tragedy leads to upheaval, but also growth and new connections, for a teen athlete from Kentucky.
Catherine Griffin has lived in the small town of Danbury for all of her 16 years, and it’s just been her and her mom—no dad in sight. So she’s left reeling when the sudden loss of her mother to a heart attack forces her to move across the country to live with Knox Carter—the father whose last name she never even knew. Cat arrives in Silver Beach, California, clinging to the one thing that provides a feeling of normality: volleyball. It seems that Silver Beach High is well equipped to fill this need in her life, but unfortunately, the sport also seems to attract the popular mean girls, and they have it out for Cat from day one. Her home life isn’t easy either, with restaurant manager Knox, who never married, working late and at times seeming to forget her existence. But she makes a new friend in quirky, artistic June Hoang, who also plays volleyball. This fun and engaging series opener has solid volleyball competition scenes, an appealing underdog plotline around beach volleyball training (Knox was a pro player), a light love interest in the form of surfer Miles, and a likeable protagonist. Most characters present white, and June is Vietnamese American.
Filled with plenty of volleyball action and lots of heart, too. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268458
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale.
A reissue of the 2016 novel published as Consider.
Alexandra Lucas and her boyfriend, Dominick, are about to start their senior year of high school when 500 vertexes—each one a doorway-shaped “hole into the fabric of the universe”—appear across the world, accompanied by holographic messages communicating news of Earth’s impending doom. The only escape is a one-way trip through the portals to a parallel future Earth. As people leave through the vertexes and the extinction event draws nearer, the world becomes increasingly unfamiliar. A lot has changed in the past several years, including expectations of mental health depictions in young adult literature; Alex’s struggle with anxiety and reliance on Ativan, which she calls her “little white savior” while initially discounting therapy as an intervention, make for a trite after-school special–level treatment of a complex situation; a short stint of effective therapy does finally occur but is so limited in duration that it contributes to the oversimplification of the topic. Alex also has unresolved issues with her Gulf War veteran father (who possibly grapples with PTSD). The slow pace of the plot as it depicts a crumbling society, along with stilted writing and insubstantial secondary characterization, limits the appeal of such a small-scale, personal story. Characters are minimally described and largely racially ambiguous; Alex has golden skin and curly brown hair.
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale. (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-72826-839-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 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.
