A predictable and morally suspect love story.
Best friends clash as love is in the air.
Penelope has been best friends with Audrey and Ephraim since primary school, but things are getting complicated for these three amigos. Audrey has a new friend, Cherisse, who seems to exist solely to make Penelope miserable. And Eph is becoming increasingly withdrawn and distant. When Penelope starts dating moody pretty-boy Keats, things get really interesting—assuming it’s the first novel about teens readers have encountered. Events unfold from self-absorbed Penelope’s point of view, and readers will quickly grow tired of her “What about me?” attitude. Her lack of awareness is astounding, and the novel isn’t very self-aware either. When it’s revealed that Keats is manipulating Penelope, we’re meant to boo him, but when Eph does the same thing with another girl to deal with his feelings for Penelope, this John Hughes–worshipping white girl doesn’t even bat an eye. Keats is the most interesting character in the book, a brooding faux-intellectual with a self-worth complex and some serious issues with women, but readers are trapped inside Penelope’s head. These contemporary, apparently white teenagers rely oddly on pop-culture references from the mid-2000s. Mentions of bygone sci-fi fandoms like Buffy and Battlestar Galactica make the novel feel desperate, like a mom trying way too hard to talk like the cool kids.
A predictable and morally suspect love story. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3210-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
A smart, timely outing.
Two teens connect through a mysterious podcast in this sophomore effort by British author Oseman (Solitaire, 2015).
Frances Janvier is a 17-year-old British-Ethiopian head girl who is so driven to get into Cambridge that she mostly forgoes friendships for schoolwork. Her only self-indulgence is listening to and creating fan art for the podcast Universe City, “a…show about a suit-wearing student detective looking for a way to escape a sci-fi, monster-infested university.” Aled Last is a quiet white boy who identifies as “partly asexual.” When Frances discovers that Aled is the secret creator of Universe City, the two embark on a passionate, platonic relationship based on their joint love of pop culture. Their bond is complicated by Aled’s controlling mother and by Frances’ previous crush on Aled’s twin sister, Carys, who ran away last year and disappeared. When Aled’s identity is accidently leaked to the Universe City fandom, he severs his relationship with Frances, leaving her questioning her Cambridge goals and determined to win back his affection, no matter what the cost. Frances’ narration is keenly intelligent; she takes mordant pleasure in using an Indian friend’s ID to get into a club despite the fact they look nothing alike: “Gotta love white people.” Though the social-media–suffused plot occasionally lags, the main characters’ realistic relationship accurately depicts current issues of gender, race, and class.
A smart, timely outing. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-233571-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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