An unevenly executed story of two girls who are separated by a century.
In Just’s (Anjel, 2018, etc.) YA fantasy novel, a teenager’s seemingly boring birthday gift becomes a window to the past.
Sam Reed was expecting an iPhone for her 14th birthday—not an old, blank journal that her father found in the house that he’s restoring. She writes a throwaway entry, just to appease him, before tossing it aside. But when she opens the journal again later, there are additional passages, written in very elegant handwriting. The entries are for the same date as hers, but in the year 1914, not 2014, and they’re signed “Emma Rose Reed.” At first, Sam believes that her father is trying to play some kind of trick on her, so she sets up a webcam. But instead of catching her dad writing in the diary, she sees words spontaneously appear on its pages—as if an invisible person is composing them. Soon, Sam and her best friend, Hailey, begin exchanging messages with a mysterious girl from 100 years ago. After an unfortunate accident leaves Sam without a phone, she devises a way to make some quick cash—specifically, by having her friend from the past hide some 1914 stamps, so that Sam can recover them and sell them to collectors. But the plan may have unexpected and possibly deadly consequences. Later on, Sam figures out when her new acquaintance is destined to die. Author Just offers an intriguing speculative-fiction novel that features elements of time-travel tales. Overall, the teenage characters feel authentic to their age, whether they exist in the present or in the past. The story itself is paced well, but it lacks the emotional depth that’s necessary to really draw the reader into it. Even later in the novel, when multiple characters face potential mortal danger, the story never manages to make the characters’ feelings seem real. Also, the story spends a bit too much time on unnecessary subplots involving side characters, instead of deepening the characterizations of the main players.
An unevenly executed story of two girls who are separated by a century.Pub Date: June 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9910790-5-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Cedar Creek Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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