An entertaining, well-told love story/drama.
Complications arise in this YA novel when a brilliant teenage coder’s anonymous sex education blog goes viral and a friendship becomes romantic.
Amber Henderson is a senior at private Wilmont Academy—possibly “the last non-religious school on the planet still operating under the abstinence only policy.” Because plenty of kids are having sex anyway, they really need some good advice, such as how to obtain reliable birth control. Amber can rely on her sex-positive parents, but she’d love to help the less fortunate. She and Dean Winters vie for the title of the school’s most talented coder, so when he proposes a bet (for bragging rights and a deadmau5 T-shirt) to get under Principal Tanner’s skin via hacking, Amber has a perfect idea. She’ll set up an untraceable sex advice blog on the darknet, making sure everyone knows it’s written by a Wilmont student, and help information-starved students while riling Tanner. Though Amber and Dean are both hot as well as gifted and share much in common, she considers him out of her league; she’s also tormented by memories of a bad encounter with her ex-boyfriend. The coders’ growing relationship is put sorely to the test when Tanner blackmails Dean into uncovering who’s behind the increasingly popular blog. Lee (Love Beyond Opposites, 2018, etc.) sets up a classic confrontation between cool kids and an uptight administrator: They’re smart, funny, and gorgeous while he’s venal, underhanded, and vindictive. The point of view alternates between Amber and Dean, each voice distinctive but both capturing a true teenage feel. Their developing romance is sweet and sizzling, with a lot of sensitivity toward Amber’s fears. That Dean can’t figure out the identity of the advice-giver is somewhat contrived as an obstacle given that he and Amber are the only two members of the Code Club. Another tip-off is that Amber’s mother writes erotica and her father is a teen psychologist. The emotions can become melodramatically overwrought, and both main characters are altogether a bit too flawless, especially in looks. Still, it’s an engaging novel that nicely illuminates the coder subculture and deals honestly with teenage sexuality.
An entertaining, well-told love story/drama.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-658-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The riveting true story of a 13-year-old boy living on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, as do thousands of children, without shelter or hope. Holtwijk submerses readers into Alex’s reality, his diminishing dreams, and his fears. His stepfather drives him from his home when his mother dies; on the streets he meets a few kind people, but ends up living with a gang whose members survive by theft and find solace sniffing glue. Alex knows the dangers of glue and wants to remain honest, hoping only for “a bed and a mother,” but his terror increases daily as he learns to steal. He reluctantly makes one drug run, and uses his pay to buy a real dinner and one night in a hotel. He’s eventually rescued, but many others are not. Holtwijk constructs Alex’s world, conjures the terrors of his nights, makes specific his stolen and begged food, his filthy clothes and matted hair, and his attempts to cling to innocence. Readers will inhabit Alex’s life, for a time, and they will understand and admire him, deeply. (Nonfiction. 14+)
Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1999
ISBN: 1-886910-24-3
Page Count: 183
Publisher: Lemniscaat/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
During WWII in the Philippines, American citizens trapped in the war zone were imprisoned for years by the Japanese, events that provide the context for Hertenstein’s first novel, which focuses on one 14-year-old, Louise. Louise’s minister father is captured in Manila, leaving her and her weak-willed mother to face life alone with other Baptist missionaries on an outlying island. The colony escapes into the hills for a time, but is discovered and interned in a concentration camp. Eventually they are moved to Manila, and later to the notorious camp, Los Banos. One of Louise’s friends is discovered with a radio and executed; food is scarce; people are dying. Hertenstein writes with sensitivity, although the story is often disjointed, e.g., the news that the colony has been taken prisoner comes in a letter Louise writes to her sister, instead of through Louise’s natural-sounding first-person narration, which filled the first 60 pages. When the Japanese disappear from the camp, Louise, now almost 18, rejoices that finally there will be “No bowing, no bayonets,” yet bowing and bayonets, major features of Japanese concentration camps, have hardly been mentioned. A first work that is shakily compelling, often uplifting, and certainly promising. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 25, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-16381-5
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
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