A charming, at times brutally funny peek inside a slacker’s mind.
A pot-smoking slacker with a habit of writing half-songs meets his long-lost father in this droll, moving novel.
“I’m lazy, and I’m a coward, but I’ll do pretty much anything if a girl is watching.” So proclaims Austin Methune, a white 16-year-old with an energetic narrative voice. During a disastrous attempt to woo a group of girls, he manages to get his mother’s boyfriend’s expensive mandolin destroyed by a bitter bully. Austin receives an ultimatum: either go to military school or attend summer school and tutoring sessions to pass algebra and join the boyfriend’s lawn-care business to pay off the remaining debt. Distractions come in the form of Shane Tyler, Austin’s musical idol and, it turns out, longtime absent father. Austin chooses to reconnect with his father while keeping it a secret from his mother. “I have a mission! I have a goal, something to focus on!” Rubens writes with a deft comic hand. Though Austin appears a shirker, his self-deprecating remarks and melodramatic wit will hook readers. As he neglects his mother, friends, and obligations for his father, music, and loving his tutor, Austin finds it hard to abandon his carefree new lifestyle. The further Austin messes up, the harder he falls. Still, Austin’s struggle to do good makes for a fun time.
A charming, at times brutally funny peek inside a slacker’s mind. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-09667-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For fans, a finale that satisfies.
Picking up just after the end of Legendary (2018), Garber continues to build the world of Caraval with a final installment, this time focusing equally on both Dragna sisters’ perspectives.
After they released their long-missing mother from the Deck of Destiny, Scarlett and Donatella hoped to rebuild their relationship and gain a new sense of family. However, Legend also released the rest of the Fates, and, much to their dismay, the Fallen Star—essentially the ur-Fate—is only gaining in power. As the Fates begin to throw Valenda into chaos and disarray, the sisters must decide whom him to trust, whom to love, and how to set themselves free. Scar’s and Tella’s passionate will-they-or-won’t-they relationships with love interests are still (at times, inexplicably) compelling, taking up a good half of the plot and balancing out the large-scale power games with more domestic ones. Much like the previous two, this third book in the series is overwritten, with overly convenient worldbuilding that struggles nearly as much as the overwrought prose and convoluted plot. While those who aren’t Garber’s fans are unlikely to pick up this volume, new (or forgetful) readers will find the text repetitious enough to be able to follow along.
For fans, a finale that satisfies. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-15766-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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