Adolescents going through similar ups and downs will find plenty here to love.
Hearts, friendships, and bags of Ritalin go flying in Leslie’s fast-paced YA coming-of-age novel.
Iconic rocker The Blade has banished his 16-year-old son Blair Matthews to live with his mother as a Trudeau High transfer student, hoping that a change of pace to the Canuck way of life will help the boy kick the cocaine habit he picked up in Los Angeles. Blair, beloved by everyone’s grandma as the star of a “Tim Horton’s Christmas commercial they play every year in French and English that makes everyone cry,” soon establishes himself as the leader of the high-school band the Bad Luck Nickel, joining starstruck classmates Marco, Randy, and Tank. Blair’s new girlfriend—Marco’s twin sister, Jules—is even more smitten, even if she has some reservations about Blair’s past. Things begin to fall apart one chaotic, booze-fueled night when Marco, Randy, and Tank find the father of Marco’s ex-girlfriend Bianca passed out from a heart attack in a snowbank. Meanwhile, Jules meets up with her best friend, Vicky, and snorts her first of many bumps of crushed-up Ritalin. The girls run afoul of local “shit disturbers” Yannis and Andre, who chase them to the secret spot they share with the Bad Luck Nickel boys. As Blair’s LA past closes in on him, the consequences of that night have a (literally) explosive impact on the Bad Luck Nickel’s rise to the top of the local scene. Leslie’s prose is fast-paced and strewn with appropriate intrusions of bravado-fueled expletives and Quebecois slang (“Va chier, you fuckin’ psycho”). The novel could use tightening up; the sheer volume of exclamation marks is overwhelming, and some of the more compelling subplots, like Randy’s grief over his older sister Nicole’s relatively recent death, get lost in the noise. But the narrative is effective at capturing the earnest angst and furious posturing of teenage life. The characters’ thoughts read like uncut diary entries: “I bet he knows that I’ll take the less and less because I am pathetic and stupid and blindly in love with him.” Tabarnak, c’est difficile to be a teen.
Adolescents going through similar ups and downs will find plenty here to love.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781068864001
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Ausable Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression.
After surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.
Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself; her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out; her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply; and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her—who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves—Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she "like-likes" but who had pined for Ellis instead. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a "semifamous" local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way "girls who write their pain on their bodies" scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Like most issue books, this is not an easy read, but it's poignant and transcendent as Charlie breaks more and more before piecing herself back together.
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93471-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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