Maya lives for rock music, so when she gets the chance to shadow a country music star for career day, she isn’t impressed.
At 17, Maya is already certain that she wants to become a professional musician, but she has serious stage fright. Although she has by far the most talent, she sings backup in the band she started. When she first meets Jesse, only 18 but already a three-time Grammy winner, she finds him obnoxious. Still, she realizes that spending a day with a professional can help her learn about the music business, and Jesse actually does know a great deal about his craft. When he talks her into playing guitar for him, he spots Maya’s real talent but also sees where she can improve. Once their career day starts, they manage to break the ice and ditch the schedule and, by the end of the day, find a real attraction for one another. They appear to be heading for romance, until Maya gets the chance to compete on the television show that started Jesse’s career. All may not go as planned. Kenneally displays a reasonable expertise with popular music but an even better hand at writing an absorbing story. Although the plot at first seems clichéd with its poor-girl–meets-star theme, she creates two characters who come across as real individuals, making the plot seem plausible.
Highly enjoyable. (Romance. 12-18)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4022-8482-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE
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Passionate, impulsive Chloe and her popular older sister, Adalyn, were inseparable—until the Nazis invaded France in 1940 and Adalyn started keeping secrets.
Over half a century later, Alice, Chloe’s 16-year-old American granddaughter, has just inherited her childhood home in Paris. The fully furnished apartment has clearly been neglected for decades and raises more questions than it answers: Why didn’t Gram talk about her childhood? Who is the second girl in the photos throughout the apartment? Why didn’t Gram’s family return there after the war? Alice’s father is reluctant to discuss anything that might upset Alice’s mother, who’s still reeling from her mother’s death, so Alice decides to find answers on her own. What she eventually learns both shocks and heals her family. Chapters alternate between Alice’s and Adalyn’s voices, narrating Adalyn’s experience as a French Christian of the Nazi occupation and Alice’s attempts to understand what happened after the war. The girls’ stories parallel one another in significant ways: Each has a romance with a young Frenchman, each has a parent struggling with depression, and each must consider the lengths she would go to protect those she loves. Though at times feeling a bit rushed, Alice’s engaging contemporary perspective neatly frames Adalyn’s immersive, heartbreaking story as it slowly unfolds—providing an important history lesson as well as a framework for discussing depression. Alice and her family are white.
Gripping. (Historical fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293662-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
A dystopic thriller joins the crowded shelves but doesn't distinguish itself.
Juliette was torn from her home and thrown into an asylum by The Reestablishment, a militaristic regime in control since an environmental catastrophe left society in ruins. Juliette’s journal holds her tortured thoughts in an attempt to repress memories of the horrific act that landed her in a cell. Mysteriously, Juliette’s touch kills. After months of isolation, her captors suddenly give her a cellmate—Adam, a drop-dead gorgeous guy. Adam, it turns out, is immune to her deadly touch. Unfortunately, he’s a soldier under orders from Warner, a power-hungry 19-year-old. But Adam belongs to a resistance movement; he helps Juliette escape to their stronghold, where she finds that she’s not the only one with superhuman abilities. The ending falls flat as the plot devolves into comic-book territory. Fast-paced action scenes convey imminent danger vividly, but there’s little sense of a broader world here. Overreliance on metaphor to express Juliette’s jaw-dropping surprise wears thin: “My mouth is sitting on my kneecaps. My eyebrows are dangling from the ceiling.” For all of her independence and superpowers, Juliette never moves beyond her role as a pawn in someone else’s schemes.
Part cautionary tale, part juicy love story, this will appeal to action and adventure fans who aren't yet sick of the genre. (Science fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-208548-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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