An offbeat tear-jerker with a sense of humor and a call to action.
Stewart’s latest YA novel follows a dying teenager as he navigates his final days during his senior year at an elite private boarding school.
As the new school year begins, everyone keeps asking Tremendous “Tremmy” Sinclair what he did over the summer. It turns out that during the school break, he was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer, went through chemotherapy, and broke up with his girlfriend via text. His parents want to pay for expensive experimental and alternative treatments, but he’s given up on the possibility of “miracles.” They offer to take him on a trip around the world during his last months of life, but Tremmy just wants to go to school, be with his friends, and try to “die well”—although he’s not yet sure what the latter would entail. Initially, Tremmy, who’s wealthy and White, doesn’t think about his privilege, but when his best friend, Jenkins, shoots a crossbow in the direction of a party crasher, he starts to question everything he’s ever known. The young man has surprising misadventures and gets into all sorts of juvenile (and not-so-juvenile) trouble with a new group of rebellious pals. Stewart’s rendition of high school life is so honest and realistic, and his characters so complex, that readers are sure to see aspects of themselves in these pages. The book offers a unique, well-paced, and darkly comedic coming-of-age story with a sometimes-unlikable narrator at its center. Along the way, Stewart even explores the option of assisted suicide for people with terminal illnesses with no chance of survival. Indeed, there’s no shying away from themes of death in this story; Tremmy even has a habit of writing obituaries for everyone he knows. In this way, the book asks an intriguing question: Is thinking about one’s mortality unhealthy and morbid––or just a part of becoming an adult?
An offbeat tear-jerker with a sense of humor and a call to action.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 261
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
A teen questions the world his father has created and finds some shocking answers. Fifteen-year-old Eli and his family live in the Compound, a state-of-the-art underground shelter designed by their billionaire father to withstand a nuclear attack and protect them for the “next fifteen years in luxurious comfort.” After six years of isolation, Eli still thinks about his twin brother Eddy and his grandmother, who were “accidentally” left behind the fateful night his father herded everyone else into the Compound and locked the door. Eli wonders why his mother keeps producing children, why his father stays in his locked study and why certain supplies are running out. When Eli unexpectedly connects to the Internet, he discovers his father has sealed them away from the real world. As his awareness of reality grows, Eli matures from a callow kid into a caring person who knows it’s up to him to save his family. Suspenseful and riveting, this debut novel raises serious issues about what it means to survive. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-37015-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2008
Although some of Link’s work appears in other YA and adult short-story anthologies, this is her first collection wholly aimed at a young-adult audience. Weirdly wonderful and a touch macabre, the nine short stories take readers into worlds with elements of reality but also supply a fantastic twist. The opening story, “The Wrong Grave,” plays into the current trend of books featuring the dead and the undead; in it, a boy whose girlfriend dies wants to dig her up to retrieve the poems he put in her coffin. “Magic for Beginners” centers on a boy whose closest friendships form around a TV show with a loyal following but no set broadcast time or channel. Erudite, economical word choices give readers a strong sense of setting without drowning them in adjectives. The humor is dry and the characters are easy to relate to, even in alien (literally and figuratively) settings. Fantasy readers used to long, single tomes may hesitate at the short-story format, but once they see these, they will want more. (Fantasy/short stories. 14 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-670-01090-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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