by Rick Just ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 24, 2015
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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