An optimistic but unremarkable coming-of-age narrative.
When a hateful, viral email exposes a gay teen’s plan to ask his crush to prom, he and his friends rally together against the bigotry in their small Michigan town.
The end of senior year looms on the horizon. After Sky came out as gay over the winter holidays, his conservative Christian mother kicked him out, and he moved in with his friend Bree, a wealthy girl with a supportive family. Sky’s life explodes when someone hacks into the yearbook’s weekly email newsletter and spreads an Islamophobic, homophobic message about his private plans to ask another boy to prom. Apart from Sky’s crush, Ali, who is Iraqi American, and Sky’s best friend, Marshall, who is Black, the characters are all White. Learning to understand race and privilege plays a role in the story for Sky; early on he states that he’s among the few people close enough to Marshall to joke with him about race. Later he recognizes how many details about his friend’s life he is unaware of. A minor trans character also serves as a learning opportunity for Sky. The characterization overall lacks depth: Ali’s family’s experience living in an area filled with MAGA supporters is not developed, and Bree’s autistic 12-year-old brother, who has a neurotypical twin, is depicted in a way that feels infantilizing. However, the plot is suspenseful, the resolution is hopeful, and the story has positive moments—as with the casual, nonstigmatizing acknowledgement of porn.
An optimistic but unremarkable coming-of-age narrative. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-7785-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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