No new literary ground is broken here, but readers seeking a sweet story of first love will sigh appreciatively.
Love blossoms between a summer boy and a local girl in a chaste romance set on the foggy coast of Maine.
Goofy out-of-towner Oliver sweeps the virginal, insecure Mandy off her feet with his warm smile and sketch pad. What follows is a whirlwind of blueberry hand pies, stolen kisses, and crafty high jinks to save the local lighthouse. Dalton's light prose sidesteps the current vogue for overwrought darkness in teen fiction; the only shadow cast on the romance is the inevitability of summer’s end, and the dramatic tension in their innocent attachment centers on Oliver’s wish for Mandy to find her voice and use it. Employing simple tropes—the misunderstood loner, the anxious-harridan mom, the beauty-queen best friend—Dalton imparts simple wisdom about being true to oneself and seeing beyond surface impressions of other people. The mildness of the story harkens back to an earlier era of teen romance, belying the ubiquity of cellphones and Internet connections. Readers titillated by the butt-groping clinch on the front cover may well be disappointed by the innocence within.
No new literary ground is broken here, but readers seeking a sweet story of first love will sigh appreciatively. (Romance. 11-14)Pub Date: May 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3609-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Despite some unfamiliar language, this bubbly piece of middle-grade Irish chick-lit will have no trouble crossing the pond. The lightly humorous and good-spirited tale—even the villains are only mildly mean—centers on a 13-year-old girl named Amy who is beset with a million persnickety problems and one awesome asset. Her problems include two complex stepfamilies, the desertion of her best friend to a higher-status crowd and her awakening feelings for an outsider boy. Her asset is Clover, her 17-year-old can-do aunt with a mission, which includes helping Amy with all of her difficulties even if it means creating some new ones. That mission derives from Clover's job as an "agony aunt" at a teen magazine, and with Amy firmly in tow, she goes out into the real world and attempts to solve her readers' problems, which frequently involves revenge. The story starts off slow and initially feels familiar, but as the characters and situations develop, it builds momentum, interest and fizz. Good fun. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5006-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
Nineteenth-century tomboy Louisa Cosgrove wants to study medicine, but after her indulgent father's death, that dream seems impossibly distant. Her mother dispatches her to family friends, but Louisa never arrives. Instead, she is taken to Wildthorn Hall, an insane asylum. The staff insist her name is Lucy Childs, and her treatment ranges from the relatively benign (tranquilizers) to the horrific (sensory deprivation). The mystery of Louisa's incarceration is revealed through alternating chapters of her present and childhood: Like many of her fellow "patients," Louisa's been committed for being a troublesome woman. Luckily, her family doesn't know of those tendencies that would make her utterly irredeemable—her overly fond feelings for her beautiful cousin Grace. Unlike many of the other inmates, who seem to develop mental illness from the cruelty of their surroundings, Louisa is determined to escape, perhaps with the help of a lovely asylum employee, Eliza. Despite a too-pat ending, Louisa and Eliza provide a window into a shameful history of mental health care and women's incarceration that only ended in living memory. (Historical fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-37017-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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