Coney Island native Lyric Walker has always kept her secret hidden: that she’s part Sirena on her mom’s side. When the Alpha...
The Alpha arrive on the shores of Coney Island.
Coney Island native Lyric Walker has always kept her secret hidden: that she’s part Sirena on her mom’s side. When the Alpha arrive—strangely beautiful yet violent half human/half sea creatures, of which Sirena are a variety—all of New York City erupts into confusion and intolerance. Lyric and her family fear the discovery of their secret, but all is mostly well until a troupe of Alpha teens is admitted into Lyric’s high school, and Lyric is forced to give Fathom, the hot, proud, militant prince of the Alpha, reading lessons. Sparks and bodies fly in a maelstrom of stolen kisses and fights, and all of New York seems headed toward a budding war that only Lyric can stop. The Alpha concept is initially hard to swallow, but readers will likely eventually suspend their disbelief about halfway through the novel, seduced by the Twilight-esque feelings of lust and restraint between Lyric and Fathom. This first in a trilogy isn’t without overt politics: racial intolerance runs amok, and Buckley even names the governor of New York “Bachman.” Despite all of the deliberate, silly setup, the dialogue and characterizations mostly ring true, and by the end, readers will find themselves immersed in this semi-edgy, race-against-the-clock world that’s waiting to implode .Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-34825-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story.
Is an exuberant extended family the cure for a breakup? Sophie is about to find out.
When Sophie unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend, she isn’t thrilled about spending the holidays at her grandparents’ house instead of with him. And when her grandmother forms a plan to distract Sophie from her broken heart—10 blind dates, each set up by different family members—she’s even less thrilled. Everyone gets involved with the matchmaking, even forming a betting pool on the success of each date. But will Sophie really find someone to fill the space left by her ex? Will her ex get wind of Sophie’s dating spree via social media and want them to get back together? Is that what she even wants anymore? This is a fun story of finding love, getting to know yourself, and getting to know your family. The pace is quick and light, though the characters are fairly shallow and occasionally feel interchangeable, especially with so many names involved. A Christmas tale, the plot is a fast-paced series of dinners, parties, and games, relayed in both narrative form and via texts, though the humor occasionally feels stiff and overwrought. The ending is satisfying, though largely unsurprising. Most characters default to white as members of Sophie’s Italian American extended family, although one of her cousins has a Filipina mother. One uncle is gay.
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story. (Fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-368-02749-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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
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