A political features writer at the Washington Post turns to teen fiction and delivers the goods.
World War II Amsterdam, the world of Anne Frank: because most readers know it through that lens, it’s imagined as a claustrophobic, invisible world. Hesse’s debut novel turns the story around: “Aryan poster girl” Hanneke spends her days cycling through her occupied city, using the ration cards of the dead to play the black market for her undertaker boss. Hanneke knows things are bad, but her own guilty grief—her boyfriend died in the futile fight against the Nazis, and Hanneke blames herself for pushing him to fight—blinds her. When one of her clients asks her to find a missing Jewish girl, 15 and vanished from Mrs. Janssen’s hidden room, Hanneke stumbles into a pocket of the resistance and begins to understand the depths of the horror facing her country and the immensity of the Nazi evil. Hesse’s impeccable research meshes almost seamlessly with Hanneke’s present-tense narration, bringing the time and place to life. Rich in content and emotion, this is a first-rate companion to the historical tales of the onderduikers, the hidden Jews of Holland, and a compelling read despite its mildly rose-tinted resolution.
Shelve this one beside resistance tales like Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity (2012) and read next to a box of tissues. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-26060-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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PROFILES
Testing the strength of family bonds is never easy—and lies make it even harder.
Daunis is trying to balance her two communities: The Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, teen is constantly adapting, whether she is with her Anishinaabe father’s side of the family, the Firekeepers, or the Fontaines, her White mother’s wealthy relatives. She has grand plans for her future, as she wants to become a doctor, but has decided to defer her plans to go away for college because her maternal grandmother is recovering from a stroke. Daunis spends her free time playing hockey with her Firekeeper half brother, Levi, but tragedy strikes, and she discovers someone is selling a dangerous new form of meth—and the bodies are piling up. While trying to figure out who is behind this, Daunis pulls away from her family, covering up where she has been and what she has been doing. While dealing with tough topics like rape, drugs, racism, and death, this book balances the darkness with Ojibwe cultural texture and well-crafted characters. Daunis is a three-dimensional, realistically imperfect girl trying her best to handle everything happening around her. The first-person narration reveals her internal monologue, allowing readers to learn what’s going on in her head as she encounters anti-Indian bias and deals with grief.
A suspenseful tale filled with Ojibwe knowledge, hockey, and the politics of status. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-76656-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
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Adolescent criminals seek the haul of a lifetime in a fantasyland at the beginning of its industrial age.
The dangerous city of Ketterdam is governed by the Merchant Council, but in reality, large sectors of the city are given over to gangs who run the gambling dens and brothels. The underworld's rising star is 17-year-old Kaz Brekker, known as Dirtyhands for his brutal amorality. Kaz walks with chronic pain from an old injury, but that doesn't stop him from utterly destroying any rivals. When a councilman offers him an unimaginable reward to rescue a kidnapped foreign chemist—30 million kruge!—Kaz knows just the team he needs to assemble. There's Inej, an itinerant acrobat captured by slavers and sold to a brothel, now a spy for Kaz; the Grisha Nina, with the magical ability to calm and heal; Matthias the zealot, hunter of Grishas and caught in a hopeless spiral of love and vengeance with Nina; Wylan, the privileged boy with an engineer's skills; and Jesper, a sharpshooter who keeps flirting with Wylan. Bardugo broadens the universe she created in the Grisha Trilogy, sending her protagonists around countries that resemble post-Renaissance northern Europe, where technology develops in concert with the magic that's both coveted and despised. It’s a highly successful venture, leaving enough open questions to cause readers to eagerly await Volume 2.
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell into a family . (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-212-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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