Full of potential but unfortunately never quite finds its sea legs.
Seventeen-year-old Mary Reade has always longed for the sea; surviving poverty by living as a boy, she sails under the command of a cruel and tyrannical captain.
When their ship is boarded by pirates, Mary joins the pirate crew as Mark Reade, seizing a way to head toward Nassau, where her childhood best friend and crush resides. She immediately becomes smitten with Calico Jack Rackham’s partner, Anne Bonny, who is everything Mary isn’t: fiery, impetuous, and feminine. It becomes clear Anne’s also smitten, but Mary is terrified of the potentially deadly consequences of coming out. When she does reveal her secret, she discovers Anne will do whatever’s necessary to survive—including outing Mary and forcing her to make some difficult choices. Debut author McNamara doesn’t shy away from depicting the horrors of a misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic society. The third-person narration always uses feminine pronouns for the protagonist, although Mary expresses discomfort with claiming a binary gender identity. At times, Anne’s characterization leans toward the cheating bisexual, and Mary’s self-doubt and self-loathing may be difficult, rather than enlightening, for trans and nonbinary readers. Readers well-versed in the lives of the famous pirate duo may feel hornswoggled that so much of their known story has been underwhelmingly altered for this telling, and pirate fans will feel disappointed that there is relatively little swashbuckling.
Full of potential but unfortunately never quite finds its sea legs. (Historical fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2705-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Lovers of self-consciously witty nihilist profundities will be thrilled; alas that the snark is mired in the stale trope of...
Intellectual boys' boarding school story meets near-future dystopia in this end-times tale.
Like the other 600,000 American children and teenagers with Peter Pan Virus, Noah attends a school—of sorts. The "recovery centers" are a cross between internment camps and underfunded classrooms. They're badly misnamed, as well, as nearly all PPV sufferers die in adolescence. Blocked from phone calls, the Internet, and outside contact, Noah finds solace in banter and existential despair, hiding in the toilet stall–turned-library that's the best his recovery center offers. When he transfers to Westing, the sole prep school for PPV kids, Noah finds an idyllic New England haven where students read Whitman while seeking their inner Michelangelo or Sappho. The students, however, are just the same as everywhere else: dying teenagers. Noah nurses his alcoholism tenderly while exchanging droll repartee with the object of his affection. No, not with his girlfriend, Alice, but with Zach, the extremely ill and, predictably, straight boy with whom Noah's enjoyed several tender hookups. Meanwhile, a meteor’s headed for Earth. Thin worldbuilding and confusing time shifts detract only slightly; the imminent apocalypse serves primarily to accelerate the claustrophobic immediacy of boarding school angst. Noah and his friends form loving, believably complex relationships, caroming from suicidal ideation to conspiracy theory to a quest for the sacred in mundane death.
Lovers of self-consciously witty nihilist profundities will be thrilled; alas that the snark is mired in the stale trope of tragic gay romance . (Dystopia. 14-17)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-223855-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A teen road trip packed with music and drama. There’s plenty here to both love and hate.
Wes and Corey are haters. They are obsessed with music and even more obsessed with finding the reasons why everything they encounter falls short of greatness.
At jazz camp they meet fellow hater Ash, an intriguing, guitar-playing, older girl. They form a band and then proceed to make a series of dumb decisions that range in severity from bad to awful as they ditch camp to search for the perfect gig. It quickly becomes clear that this tour is a pressure cooker in which everyone’s ugliest traits will appear and start wreaking havoc. The banter among the three is often grating, laden with sexual frustration, dick jokes, and musical one-upmanship. Each of the three is pampered with privilege, yet something is awry. Ash is stupendously rich, the daughter of a Brazilian billionaire and a French model, both absentee. Wes was adopted from Venezuela by white, Buddhist parents who don’t make him the center of their universe. Corey is white and Jewish with overattentive musician parents who sometimes can’t pay all the bills. Though there are some truly hilarious scenes (such as Wes’ biting observations about the awkward ways in which well-meaning white people want to talk about race or his internal, self-scathing dialogue while high), other attempts at humor, such as casual jokes about suicide bombing and rape-y behavior, while believable as adolescent banter, strike the wrong chord.
A teen road trip packed with music and drama. There’s plenty here to both love and hate. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2078-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
