A well-executed book featuring complex, diverse characters we rarely meet—a real winner for its heartbeat, compassion, and...
Basketball provides the backdrop for a friendship pushed to its limits in this tale told from the alternating perspectives of two teen boys growing up in a tough inner-city neighborhood reminiscent of Camden, New Jersey.
Biracial Nasir and African-American Bunny had been best of friends until last summer, when Bunny, Whitman High’s star basketball player, is recruited away to private, suburban St. Sebastian’s and its high-powered basketball program. The once-prideful reputation that he garnered winning for the home team, à la real-life Camden legend Dajuan Wagner, turns to insult, rage, and anger as his former classmates question whether Bunny is preparing to leave them and the neighborhood behind for good. After losing Bunny, Nasir begins to build a relationship with his perennially troubled black cousin Wallace, a wayward child who needs much more support than the world has afforded him and who lashes out frequently in numerous exhausting ways. Meanwhile, the lightning-smart Keyona, Bunny’s girlfriend and biggest remaining Whitman fan, hopes to rekindle the friendship between Bunny and Nasir. By and large avoiding upfront race talk, Ribay makes his point by drawing characters of color full of complexity and contradiction. A genuine touch of Filipino flavor—Nasir’s mom grew up in the Philippines—demonstrates that one can step beyond reductive black/white–only portrayals of inner-city neighborhood life.
A well-executed book featuring complex, diverse characters we rarely meet—a real winner for its heartbeat, compassion, and integrity. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-70227-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-crafted slow-burn romance with plenty of depth.
An agender 16-year-old from the Bay Area is torn between love and their Cupid duties.
Jude recently made the biggest mistake of their Cupid career: They fell in love with a human boy. Worse, they kissed him. Broken-hearted Jude, who is white and trans, was placed on probation, and they are determined not to make the same mistake twice: Kiss a human again, and they’ll lose their powers and their memories of ever having been a Cupid. When Jude’s latest assignment goes off the rails, senior Cupids consider imposing more consequences but instead give them a challenging test as a second chance. Their assignment: restore the broken relationship between a girl named Alice Tran and a trans boy called Huy Trinh, who are both Vietnamese American. Posing as regular high school student Jude Ricci, befriending the pair, and then engineering a reconciliation should be child’s play. At first, everything seems to be going smoothly, but the situation gets hairy when Jude grows closer to Huy, raising the stakes with both their memories now on the line. Jude and Huy’s budding romance is both tender and heartbreaking, given that readers are constantly aware of potential tragedy looming over every sweet moment. The romantic tension between the two will move even the most stonehearted readers. A deep look at the expectations of family and society and how they can negatively affect teenagers’ lives fills out the narrative.
A well-crafted slow-burn romance with plenty of depth. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781338777697
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PUSH/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wildly ambitious and wholly empathetic, devastatingly raw, and impossibly gentle; a must-read in this moment.
Two teens find each other (and themselves) with a little help from their friends in this story of survival, perseverance, and hope.
In alternating first-person narration, two familiar character types—loose-cannon May McGintee and awkward try-hard Zach Teller—are quickly defamiliarized. May is the sole survivor of a massacre that robbed her twin brother, favorite teacher, and five peers of their lives. She’s struggled with survivor’s guilt and PTSD ever since, and her best friend, Lucy, is the only person who keeps her going. Zach has been taking care of his family, especially younger sister Gwen, since his father fell into a deep depression five years ago. When his attorney mother defends the shooter, almost everybody he knows—except his best friend, Conor—abandons him. When Lucy auditions for Conor’s band, May and Zach meet cute. As May begins putting herself back together, Zach learns what being there truly entails. Lawson’s extraordinary knack for navigating typical teenage-rule predicaments—parent problems, friend frustration, budding desire—and the most searing circumstances—loss, terror, rage, fault—keeps the plot at a boil. Though shaped like a romance, Lawson’s remarkable debut celebrates love’s many forms, from friends who refuse to be pushed away to families slowly closing years of distance. Lucy is Haitian; Conor, Zach, and May are White.
Wildly ambitious and wholly empathetic, devastatingly raw, and impossibly gentle; a must-read in this moment. (author’s note, resources) (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11849-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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