A lukewarm family drama.
How to pretend like everything is fine according to Kyle Baker.
Divided into four parts, Zarr’s (contributor: Life Inside My Mind, 2018, etc.) latest begins with Kyle bringing his first girlfriend, Nadia, to Thanksgiving on his grandparents’ farm. Like any other family, the Bakers have their share of quirky members and nuanced relationships. But to Kyle, they are happy and normal—as normal as his family can be, at least. Then tragedy strikes in Part 2 when Kyle learns that his mother is having an affair and both of his parents instruct him not to tell anyone, including his sisters and girlfriend. Kyle emotionally shuts down, cutting class, avoiding Nadia’s attempts at confrontation, and bailing on his baseball team. The one person Kyle longs to confide in is his cousin Emily, who is asexual and/or aromantic and who doesn’t live nearby. While bearing the burden of his parents’ secret, he discovers that his grandparents plan on selling their farm. Some readers may resonate with Kyle’s difficulty at navigating frustration with his parents and loneliness within his own family, but his intense feelings of intimacy toward Emily, prompting his sister to joke about marriage between cousins, may prove off-putting, and his overall character arc is lacking in resolution. Most main characters are cued as white; some of Kyle’s relatives are Mexican American, and there is implied diversity in the supporting cast.
A lukewarm family drama. (Fiction. 13-17)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-243468-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story.
Is an exuberant extended family the cure for a breakup? Sophie is about to find out.
When Sophie unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend, she isn’t thrilled about spending the holidays at her grandparents’ house instead of with him. And when her grandmother forms a plan to distract Sophie from her broken heart—10 blind dates, each set up by different family members—she’s even less thrilled. Everyone gets involved with the matchmaking, even forming a betting pool on the success of each date. But will Sophie really find someone to fill the space left by her ex? Will her ex get wind of Sophie’s dating spree via social media and want them to get back together? Is that what she even wants anymore? This is a fun story of finding love, getting to know yourself, and getting to know your family. The pace is quick and light, though the characters are fairly shallow and occasionally feel interchangeable, especially with so many names involved. A Christmas tale, the plot is a fast-paced series of dinners, parties, and games, relayed in both narrative form and via texts, though the humor occasionally feels stiff and overwrought. The ending is satisfying, though largely unsurprising. Most characters default to white as members of Sophie’s Italian American extended family, although one of her cousins has a Filipina mother. One uncle is gay.
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story. (Fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-368-02749-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Mouths have never run so dry at the idea of thirst.
When a calamitous drought overtakes southern California, a group of teens must struggle to keep their lives and their humanity in this father-son collaboration.
When the Tap-Out hits and the state’s entire water supply runs dry, 16-year-old Alyssa Morrow and her little brother, Garrett, ration their Gatorade and try to be optimistic. That is, until their parents disappear, leaving them completely alone. Their neighbor Kelton McCracken was born into a survivalist family, but what use is that when it’s his family he has to survive? Kelton is determined to help Alyssa and Garrett, but with desperation comes danger, and he must lead them and two volatile new acquaintances on a perilous trek to safety and water. Occasionally interrupted by “snapshots” of perspectives outside the main plot, the narrative’s intensity steadily rises as self-interest turns deadly and friends turn on each other. No one does doom like Neal Shusterman (Thunderhead, 2018, etc.)—the breathtakingly jagged brink of apocalypse is only overshadowed by the sense that his dystopias lie just below the surface of readers’ fragile reality, a few thoughtless actions away. He and his debut novelist son have crafted a world of dark thirst and fiery desperation, which, despite the tendrils of hope that thread through the conclusion, feels alarmingly near to our future. There is an absence of racial markers, leaving characters’ identities open.
Mouths have never run so dry at the idea of thirst. (Thriller. 13-17)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8196-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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