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
Dogmatic themes and clunky lyrics combine for a dyspeptic ride through this futuristic bildungsroman.
Hansen chooses the ancient epic form and more or less blank verse to tell this postmodern tale of social upheaval in 21st-century Minneapolis–St. Paul.
This post-2008 world is reeling from the drying up of Earth’s oil reserves. In the face of skyrocketing gas prices, 15-year-old Clair’s father, an English teacher at her respected private school, can no longer afford their commute, forcing him to lose his job and Clair, an accomplished young writer and gifted runner, to drop out of school. With her days now open and her family’s fate uncertain, Clair attempts to overcome her fear of the unknown by embarking on an odyssey of sorts that takes her to the far reaches of the Twin Cities. En route, Clair encounters a friend whose banker father’s income has kept his family insulated from the financial chaos, a teen clique of threatening would-be vampires, a coven of witches that takes Clair into the fold and teaches her the art of letters, and a host of unsavory characters she must outwit. Providing numerous demonstrations that “[h]istory loves terrible ironies,” Hansen repeatedly and unsubtly drives home the message that “[t]he comfortable are the vulnerable.” It’s an undeniably ambitious undertaking, but the form forces an odd blend of the mundane and the elevated, an uneasy lyric alliance.
Dogmatic themes and clunky lyrics combine for a dyspeptic ride through this futuristic bildungsroman. (Dystopian epic. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9833002-6-7
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Ilium Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
Martinello’s storytelling is compelling and will engage particularly voracious readers of historical fiction, but due to the...
Selling chili on the plaza with her mother and sister at night, Lupe wonders why her family is barely getting by: The quality of their food rivals that of any competitor on the square, so why do other stands bring in crowds of customers while her family serves only a steady trickle?
Lupe has a natural entrepreneurial spirit. She learns to notice what people want and to offer it better than the competition. She takes risks and tries new ideas—some work, some flop. When she observes the other chili queens entertaining customers with stories, she does the same and excels. Twirling her exquisite rebozo for dramatic effect, she keeps customers captivated, returning each night for more stories and plates of food. Threaded through the growth of the business and the yarns that Lupe spins is the story of coming of age as a young Mexican-American woman in San Antonio in the 1880s. Lupe and her older sister, Josefa, both dip their toes into the waters of romance and find that love is fraught with consequences. Recipes for traditional Mexican dishes are interspersed throughout the book, as are superfluous replicas of historical documents and photographs—these serve to make the book look like an uncomfortable hybrid of fiction and nonfiction and detract from the story.
Martinello’s storytelling is compelling and will engage particularly voracious readers of historical fiction, but due to the essentially bland subject matter and the unfortunate design, it lacks broad appeal. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-87565-613-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Texas Christian University Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
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