Anderson creates a spellbinding landscape but then leaves it achingly underexplored.
Reality blurs into nightmare when a dream-walking girl breaks all the rules to help the boy she loves.
Dea and her mother never stay in one place for very long. The sleepy town of Fielding, Indiana, they live in now doesn’t offer anything noteworthy other than their own existence within it. Dea and her mother can walk through other people’s dreams. In fact, not walking for long periods of time can cause their health to decline radically. Her mother has only three rules: never intervene in another person’s dream, never walk the same person’s dream more than once, and never, ever be seen. If she disobeys, her mother warns, monsters will find her. Dea plays along until the arrival of an attractive new neighbor, Connor; and she becomes obsessed with walking his dreams as often as she can. But Connor harbors his own monsters he’s been hiding from, monsters Dea quickly realizes are now her problem as well. Their relationship builds at a steady but slow clip. The story soars only when tensions rise and Dea must exit reality to walk deeper into the unknown, dark realm of dreams. The sights and secrets she finds there are breathtaking to behold and more inspiring than the romance. Readers will wish she’d dived down the rabbit hole sooner.
Anderson creates a spellbinding landscape but then leaves it achingly underexplored. (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-233867-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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