An unconvincing attempt at a holiday-themed thriller.
A serial killer terrorizes a group of university friends in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day.
White university student Lylah has complicated feelings about Valentine’s Day, as it marks the day her parents died two years prior. Though she has adjusted to her new life at school, where she lives with five friends and housemates, old anxieties arise when her housemates begin receiving mysterious, threatening notes a few weeks before Valentine’s Day. What is initially dismissed as a sick holiday prank becomes deadly serious when one of them is discovered brutally murdered on campus. The police become involved, providing rather ineffective security to the group of friends as they are stalked and hunted around town by an unknown murderer. Lylah and her friends jump to a hasty assumption about the killer’s identity early on and begin referring to the killer by the name of a former friend whom they suspect, improbably convinced that it must be him, excluding any other possibilities in the process. Classic slasher tropes are invoked frequently and repetitively, to highly implausible effect. The result of these unlikely plot developments, combined with flimsy dialogue and weak characterization, requires so much suspension of disbelief that it renders the story more comical than horrifying.
An unconvincing attempt at a holiday-themed thriller. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4926-5432-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Outrageous and uproariously funny.
A girl plots a takedown of the toxic Speech and Debate team that rules her school.
When Sydney starts at Eaganville School for the Arts, she immediately runs afoul of the powerful Speech and Debate kids due to her mouthy nature. She’s adopted by other misfits with Speech grudges—athletic Lakshmi; former Speech star Elijah; and gay theater aficionado Thomas. Sydney decides to avenge her friends by joining Speech and Debate and destroying it from the inside. To do this, she must become good enough to stay on the varsity team all the way to Nationals. The dissent Sydney and friends sow within the team involves inflaming rivalries, toying with hormones, and various other dirty tricks—luckily, the varsity team members are so odious that their punishments remain hilarious. The true villain is the win-at-all-costs abusive coach. Sydney also copes with her family’s new normal—incarcerated father, dramatically reduced socio-economic status, and her mother’s boyfriend, a meathead lunk played for laughs (until he blossoms into a surprisingly supportive and caring character). Humor infuses everything—Sydney’s narration, gleeful profanity, irreverence, and elaborate scheme sequences. The members of the highly diverse cast have distinctive voices and personalities (Sydney and Elijah are white, Lakshmi is Indian, and Thomas is black). The infiltrate-and-destroy storyline combined with immersion in a subculture that is taken with deadly hilarious seriousness make this read like the demented love child of Mean Girls and Pitch Perfect.
Outrageous and uproariously funny. (Fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-01007-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion/LBYR
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Intricately plotted and heart-pounding.
Everything comes full circle in this trilogy closer.
It’s not easy being Pippa Fitz-Amobi: Max Hastings, a teen rapist who was found not guilty, is suing her for defamation. She blames herself for the death of local journalist Stanley Forbes, who was revealed to be the child of a serial killer, but she also feels a kinship with his killer, Charlie Green, who is on the run. To cope with her PTSD, Pip takes Xanax purchased from drug dealer Luke Eaton, who indirectly supplied the late Andie Bell, the subject of her first case. Pip is used to online threats, but one message has been appearing again and again: “Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?” Someone is leaving dead pigeons in Pip’s front yard and mysterious chalk figures in her driveway, but Detective Hawkins doesn’t believe there’s a pattern and refuses to investigate. Research into her own stalker leads to an imprisoned serial killer who supposedly confessed, but the connections are striking, and Pip fears the police may have the wrong man. This volume centers on a psychologically traumatized Pip, whose actions inhabit morally gray areas till the very end. Her romance with Ravi Singh is a much-needed balm, but their love is tragically tested. A particular strength is the way elements in this novel connect with clues from earlier entries. Pip’s mother is cued as White and her father, as Black; Ravi is of Indian descent.
Intricately plotted and heart-pounding. (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-37985-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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