Engrossing for fans of high school drama.
It’s Cleo’s birthday, and someone has arranged a scavenger hunt for her—but it turns out that Cleo is the one being hunted.
The first clue appears in Cleo’s bathroom while she is showering, immediately ratcheting up the creepiness factor. Cleo can’t guess who snuck in; her brother and her friends deny being the culprit. And all of the clues are leading Cleo to revisit key private moments she shared with her former boyfriend Declan, who drowned under shadowy circumstances during a river rafting trip on her last birthday. It is slowly revealed that there was more to their relationship and the events of that fateful day on the river. Tensions climb as the clues turn into threats against Cleo and her brother. The clock is ticking. Did someone witness what happened on the day Declan drowned? Is it possible that Declan himself is orchestrating the hunt? After all, his body was never found. Red herrings abound, and troubling memories have Cleo realistically waffling between strength and self-doubt, but secondary characters are not as well developed. Readers invested in the relationship drama will devour the chaotic, action-packed climax, while serious mystery fans may find that the culprit’s motives stretch belief. Cleo and most other significant characters are White; brown-skinned, biracial Connor has a different father from Cleo.
Engrossing for fans of high school drama. (Mystery. 14-16)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-72821-578-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
It’s hard to get invested in a love story when one of the partners is an unknowable black hole
Two teens are set on a collision course with sexy results.
Nicolette Holland is on the run. She’s changed her name and her hair and fully intends to disappear as fast as possible. Jack Manx, son of a mob big shot, is blackmailed into finding Nicolette and making sure no one else does. The circumstances revolving around Nicolette’s importance are a bit blurry: Jack is told she murdered a girl connected to a powerful crime boss, but Nicolette doesn’t act like a murderer, and the police aren’t on her tail. The story unfolds with alternating chapters switching between Jack’s and Nicolette’s present-tense accounts, but the different perspectives offer little to the narrative. There are no tense cat-and-mouse sequences here; Jack just finds his mark with little trouble. When the pair cross paths there’s a sexual attraction that promises to give emotional texture to the mob drama, but each character is so guarded that little genuine heat arises. Jack and Nicolette are manic in their moods, going from loving to hating and back to loving each other, sometimes within the span of one or two pages. Neither character is particularly engaging: Jack is a stereotypical bad boy with a heart of gold, and the mysterious nature of Nicolette’s past crime keeps her at arm’s length.
It’s hard to get invested in a love story when one of the partners is an unknowable black hole . (Thriller. 14-16)Pub Date: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4393-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Thrills without depth, purpose, or satisfaction.
A teen solves a mystery using information from paranormal seizures.
After Cassie’s father drowned in a boating accident, she had seizures, but she hasn’t had one in years—until her school bus crashes. Then they return, but they’re not really seizures: she appears to be unconscious, but her mind jumps into somebody else’s mind. She can’t control those she jumps into and doesn’t know their thoughts, but she sees and hears what they do from inside their heads. Separately, on an astral plane, she sees symbolic clues to two mysteries she’s trying to link and solve: who committed a recent hit-and-run in her Connecticut town and whether her former BFF, Amanda—in a coma from the bus wreck—has any connection to it. Terrifying scenes include being inside a skydiver’s mind as his parachute fails; being inside a rock star’s mind as she shoots heroin; and being inside a possible murderer’s mind while he’s trying to murder Cassie herself. Her narrative voice is breathless and saucy (“a skirt so short you can almost see Texas”); her casual appropriation, as a white American character, of “switshetshela,” the Xitsongan word for epilepsy (because “it sounds exotic. Okay, maybe not exotic. Just not so gross”), goes entirely unexamined. Moreover, the disability-as-magic trope is tired. Emotional healing supposedly happens, but it rings shallow.
Thrills without depth, purpose, or satisfaction. (Supernatural mystery. 14-16)Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-929345-26-7
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Poisoned Pencil
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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