A cute romance featuring a heroine who never before got to feel cute.
An Australian teen embarks on romance in the wake of her parents’ divorce.
Natalie never knew anything was wrong with her parents’ marriage, let alone that they were on their way to divorce. But here it is, Christmas Day, and Natalie’s parents have sat her down and told her the honest truth: Their family is no more. Dad’s moving out, Mum is selling the house, and Natalie will be on her own, off to university. She does her best to move forward, supported by best friends Zach and Lucy and buoyed by flirty exchanges with Zach’s sexy older brother, Alex. Alex and Natalie’s romantic involvement unfolds in a way that may feel familiar, but what sets this novel apart is the courage this requires on Natalie’s part. Natalie’s early adolescence involved extremely heavy periods and cystic acne on her face and body that caused physical and emotional pain and left scars. The constant anxiety this caused led her to avoid leaving the house and invited unsolicited advice from peers and harassment from strangers. Natalie’s struggles with internalized self-hatred as well as knee-jerk judgment toward girls with flawless skin mean her physical relationship with cool, popular Alex depends on genuine trust. Young people, especially those who know the pain of feeling unattractive in an age of social media, will resonate with this sympathetically told journey. All characters seem to be white.
A cute romance featuring a heroine who never before got to feel cute. (Romance. 13-16)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21926-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
At her father’s funeral during a sweltering Utah summer in the not-so-distant future, Kelsa Phillips rages against her mother, the funeral and her father’s dying in a hospice. So when she meets a shape-shifter named Raven, she (rashly) accompanies him on a road trip through Canada to release knots in the magical veins of energy under the earth to save the world from eco-disaster. But this is a different United States from ours: The authorities have put in place a grid system of movement control in which the only people who can move from state to state are those with valid identification cards. The pair joust with each other, neither trusting the other with vital information even as disaster looms. Plot drives this book from the start to the rousing climax and surprise resolution. Humor will engage readers’ interest while the ever-increasing suspense will keep it. The worldbuilding is scant; it’s a pity Bell didn’t incorporate more detail about the future United States to make it more convincing. Enough threads are left dangling at the end to ensure a sequel (Traitor’s Boy, scheduled for spring 2012), so perhaps it will be fleshed out there. (Fantasy. 13-16)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-19620-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
Fans of the series who managed to enjoy volumes four and five will be pleased to find more of the same
The Caretakers fight the mind-controlling Echthroi through a tangle of timelines.
This penultimate volume in the Imaginarium Geographica series features such a massive ensemble of dead white men that it's difficult to follow their storylines. Don Quixote, Aristophanes and a badger quest for magic armor. Charles Williams, original characters Rose and Edmund, H.G. Wells, Richard Burton and a Clash of the Titans–style mechanical owl travel in time. J.R.R. Tolkien and Jules Verne meet a secret society so packed with dead authors that six William Blake clones ("We call them Blake's Seven") fit right in. A Chinese librarian speaking pidgin English betrays the questers, Medea meets Gilgamesh, and triple agents abound. A goblin market is peopled with characters from The Last Unicorn who make jokes from Blazing Saddles; Nathaniel Hawthorne paraphrases the 1988 cult classic They Live; a future Caretaker quotes Darth Vader. "Jules Verne show[s] goats descended from the herds of Genghis Khan in a county fair in an Indian nation in America … " Confused yet? If not, perhaps you'll be able to make sense of a resolution that relies on pasts that never were and futures that might-have-been.
Fans of the series who managed to enjoy volumes four and five will be pleased to find more of the same . (Fantasy. 14-16)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-1223-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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