Like cotton candy, this is fun even if it isn’t filling.
A pact with the Devil leads to trouble for one teenage demon.
A teenager’s life is full of trials: staying on top of the latest fashions and avoiding nasty skin breakouts, not to mention dealing with curfews and parental rules on dating. If that’s not tough enough, when you’re the scholarship demon at Pitchfork Prep and the Devil informs you that you’re his latest secret weapon, pressure reaches new heights. Morgan Skully is madly infatuated with Derek, who is everything she isn’t: affluent, popular, well-connected, and such a hottie she can’t focus. But she’d better get her act together and find out who’s leaking secrets to the Siberian Werewolf Council, or there will be hell to pay…literally. Even though the Devil is willing to rescue her from one crisis after another, and her BFFs, the Demon Divas, are always there to support her, it’s time for Morgan to step up and grow up if she’s ever going to survive to attend the Brimstone Ball. In a breezy, sassy and snappy first-person narration, Morgan moves from one implausible scenario to the next. The plot is superficial, but Morgan is so appealing that readers can’t stop turning pages to find out what she’ll do next.
Like cotton candy, this is fun even if it isn’t filling. (Paranormal chick lit. 14 & up)Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61603-013-1
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Leap Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
Two Rio Grande Valley high schoolers flirt with cutting out early but find reasons to finish school in this purposeful but intense tale. For Beto, it’s a combination of pride, disinterest in school and a clash with his caring but harsh father that sends him stalking away to spend the night in a Dumpster. For Beto's longtime friend Jessy, it’s a strong desire to be an artist, plus the strain of hearing her father beating her mother and knowing that her turn will be coming up one of these nights, that drives her to head for the bus to San Antonio. Using a mix of tenses and all three persons, Saldaña lays out his characters’ thoughts and emotional landscapes in broad strokes—creating a third angle of view by adding Beto’s little brother Roelito, who works his nalgas off in school but shows early signs of an ominous anger, as another narrative voice. The action takes place over the course of a little more than 12 hours, neatly capturing the spontaneity of teen impulses. Teen readers chafing at the domestic bit will find food for thought here. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55885-607-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
“Death is a period / at the end of a sentence,” concludes Annaleah, the 16-year-old protagonist of Schutz’s captivating fictional follow-up to her verse memoir (I Don’t Want To Be Crazy, 2006). And much like the resolute finality fixed in that tiny dot, Annaleah spends a great deal of this free-verse novel stuck contemplating the harsh reality that her sometime boyfriend, Brian—a seemingly healthy, dark-haired, cloudy-blue–eyed 17-year-old—has just dropped dead on the basketball court. Reeling from both physical loss and lack of closure to the meaning of their clandestine relationship, Annaleah finds herself routinely visiting and addressing the deceased Brian, until a chance graveside encounter yields advice that finally begins to hit home: “Nothing grows here,” says Brian’s grandmother, “besides grass.” At first blush appearing to pull out all the melodramatic stops in classic teen fashion, these refreshingly spare lines tackle tough relational issues—intimacy, risk, abandonment—with aplomb, making for a moving tale that also effectively shows teens how life can go on. (Fiction/poetry. 14 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 970-0-545-16911-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PUSH/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
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