A fun, fast-paced thriller guaranteed to distract teens from Facebook for at least a little while.
The real-world consequences of a teenage hacker’s online exploits threaten to bring down her family business in the first book of Stewart’s (Ruination, 2012, etc.) projected teen thriller series.
You can learn a lot about someone by looking through their hard drive. Sixteen-year-old Janus Rose and her divorced mother run Assured Destruction, a business that protects personal information by destroying computer hard drives in an industrial shredder in Ottawa. But no one knows that Janus, a talented hacker, has built an entire network she calls Shadownet from some of the identities she has illicitly collected. In a social network of sorts, each of the hard drives in Shadownet has become something of an alter ego of hers, and she’s come to see Shadownet as her own group of family and friends. When Janus begins to develop a crush on the newest addition to Shadownet and questions whether what she’s doing is right, bad things start happening to the real people whose hard drives Janus stole. It seems like too much of a coincidence not to suspect the unthinkable—Shadownet has been hacked. But by whom? If it gets out that Janus has been stealing hard drives, Assured Destruction will be ruined. She can’t go to the police or even tell her mother, but as things go downhill, it becomes clear that Janus is in over her head. Stewart seamlessly incorporates the fast-paced world of social media into a unique writing style that perfectly captures the world of a modern teen. Janus’ complicated web of computer networks is intricate enough to leave readers thoroughly engrossed by her hacking acumen while remaining accessible to even the least tech-savvy readers. Many teenage girl readers will find unconventional, strong Janus to be an intriguing role model, but as a clever, talented and often slightly dark hacker, she transcends gender stereotypes and will find fans among teen boy readers as well.
A fun, fast-paced thriller guaranteed to distract teens from Facebook for at least a little while.Pub Date: March 22, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A reassuring riff on embracing imperfections.
A young rabbit frets about her upcoming violin performance in Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey’s literary debut.
Mei Mei’s dream—“to share her music with the world”—is about to come true. She’s having her very first recital, complete with an orchestra, at the H’Opera House. But the day before the concert, Mei Mei is racked with anxiety. What if she plays a bum note in front of everyone? Sure enough, the worst happens mid-performance: She hits a clinker. But by remembering her mom’s reassuring sentiments from the night before (“Feel the wind…find the notes to make it right”), Mei Mei summons the strength to soldier on, and “wrong notes become right. Dissonance becomes beautiful.” At times, it all feels more like a resilience parable than a story, and the writing can be precious (“The flutter of butterflies wakes Mei Mei from her slumber”). Still, the message is solid, bolstered by O’Hara’s pencil and watercolor illustrations, which are plush-toy soft—fitting, as even prior to this book’s publication, a stuffed Mei Mei has been for sale at Grammy winner Laufey’s website. The tale features an all-animal, all-adorable cast, and endearingly, the art betrays no hint of modern times. A standout image presents Mei Mei onstage, temporarily incapacitated by her mistake and imagining her fellow musicians and their instruments with the color-blasted menace of an expressionist painting.
A reassuring riff on embracing imperfections. (author’s note, glossary) (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217051748
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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