A touching tale with a mature, likable role model for teens who have suffered abuse.
Based on the author’s life, this debut novel tells a harrowing story of abuse and neglect.
Seventeen-year-old Lily King dreams of escaping her small Canadian town and horrible parents, Michael King and Victoria Grace. Michael once locked a barking puppy in a car trunk and blackened Lily’s eye when she questioned why. And Victoria—who drinks and pops pills all day—constantly berates Lily. Fighting their way through a bitter divorce, Lily’s parents neglect her when they’re not yelling at her. After Michael tricks Victoria into signing away her rights to their house, she and Lily move to a poor neighborhood. Michael refuses to give Victoria money for child support (he eventually flees to avoid paying), and Lily often goes hungry. Victoria attempts suicide and is institutionalized, so Lily must move back in with her begrudging father, who forces her to attend a religious school. Thankfully, there is one ray of hope—a kind counselor wants to help the teen win scholarships for nursing school. Raising the money will be a long shot, but getting into the prestigious program will be even harder. Lily is a smart, determined survivor, but has she taken on more than she can handle? Told from Lily’s first-person perspective—with her journal entries sprinkled throughout the narrative—Gregory’s tale features fluid, conversational prose. Highly precocious, Lily’s voice sometimes sounds too much like that of an adult, as when she examines the viewpoints of divorced children: “We aren’t privy to all the history that our parents have had together, and so we only see it as it unfolds in real time.” But an uneven voice doesn’t spoil the overall story, which is poignant and memorable. Lily’s language can also be poetic, as when she speaks of her deep sadness in spring: “The trees were starting to come alive, and I still felt shriveled up like the dead winter leaves.” One inspirational theme in Lily’s saga is the importance of helping others. Turning her abuse inward, Lily begins to think she is worthless. But her counselor—who was also abused—comes to her aid, teaching the student to believe in herself.
A touching tale with a mature, likable role model for teens who have suffered abuse.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77370-414-2
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Tellwell
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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