These comic turns of phrase and the novel’s palpable warmth should win it some fans, particularly among readers who like...
New York City girl goes to small-town Texas. Comedy and romance ensue.
When Jordan’s crazy uncle Jacob is arrested in China for smuggling Bibles, her divinity-professor father decides to fill in at his church for the summer, dragging Jordan and her corporate-lawyer mother along with him. The town of Ashworth has the usual collection of quirky eccentrics: supertalented Latino youth-group leader and chef; little-old-lady bookkeeper and gambler; perky, blonde, hedgehog-toting wannabe superstar; hot, brooding boy librarian and bottle-washer; redneck bad boy; etc. While her father inflicts his university-level theology lectures (complete with PowerPoint) on his brother’s flock every week and her mother goes Stepford after losing her biggest client, Jordan slowly succumbs to the charms of Ashworth, particularly those of Knox, the brooding boy with tragedy in his past. While Osteen’s debut breaks no new ground in the plot department and at times struggles with characterization and language, it nevertheless has its fair share of good one-liners. As Jordan’s father lectures her about the proper use of “y’all,” she reflects that “now, rather than hanging out in Greenwich Village, I had to concern myself with incorrect country bumpkin grammar.”
These comic turns of phrase and the novel’s palpable warmth should win it some fans, particularly among readers who like their romance on the sweet, not steamy side . (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937327-07-1
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Moonshine Cove Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
Timely subject matter and an adequate romance, but nothing super.
Geeky girl with absent father and quirky hobby meets unsuitable boy, then realizes Mr. Right has been under her nose all along.
Blaze's self-centered father, a caricature, left the family to become an actor, leaving her with only her name (from Ghost Rider's Johnny Blaze) and a love for classic Marvel Comics. Now, Blaze spends her time ferrying her 13-year-old brother Josh and his farting, breast-ogling, gay-joke–making friends to and from soccer practice. She has a crush on Mark, Josh's soccer coach, but their relationship fails to progress until Blaze's friend snaps a picture of Blaze trying on lingerie and sends it to Mark's phone. After a confusing and pressure-filled sexual encounter and Mark's subsequent brushoff, Mark posts the half-naked photo on clunkily named Facebook stand-in FriendsPlace, and it goes viral. The resultant bullying is harsh but believable, and it's satisfying to see Blaze channeling her hurt and anger into making comics and redecorating her Superturd of a minivan. Less impressive, however, are some of Blaze's asides to the reader (“Stuart is one of only three black students in our school....I feel somewhat hip and urban having him here at my house”) and the frequent subtle digs at girls being high-maintenance, stalkers, actual sluts and brainwashing feminists.
Timely subject matter and an adequate romance, but nothing super. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7348-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
A change of pace from the teeming swarms of fantasy and paranormal romance but too underpowered to achieve escape velocity.
A low-wattage collection of original stories and poems, as unmemorable as it is unappealingly titled.
The collection was inspired by a perceived paucity of short science fiction for teen readers, and its production costs were covered by a Kickstarter campaign. The editors gather a dozen poems and 21 stories from a stable of contributors who, after headliners Jack McDevitt and Nancy Holder, will be largely unknown even to widely read fans of the genre. The tales place their characters aboard spacecraft or space stations, on other worlds or in future dystopias, but only rarely do the writers capture a credibly adolescent voice or sensibility. Standouts in this department are the Heinlein-esque “The Stars Beneath Our Feet,” by Stephen D. Covey & Sandra McDonald, about a first date/joyride in space gone wrong, and Camille Alexa’s portrait of a teen traumatized by a cyberspace assault (“Over It”). Along with a few attempts to craft futuristic slang, only Lavie Tidhar’s fragmentary tale of Tel Aviv invaded by successive waves of aliens, doppelgangers, zombies and carnivorous plants (“The Myriad Dangers”) effectively lightens the overall earnest tone. Aside from fictional aliens and modified humans, occasional references to dark skin (“Out of the Silent Sea,” Dale Lucas) are the only signs of ethnic diversity. Most of the free-verse poetry makes only oblique, at best, references to science-fictional themes.
A change of pace from the teeming swarms of fantasy and paranormal romance but too underpowered to achieve escape velocity. (author bios) (Science fiction/short stories. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9847824-0-8
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Underwords
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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