A worthwhile, chilling novel that makes demands of its audience and rewards them richly in return.
Alternating narrators tell the story of a day in April when school shootings coordinated in an internet forum occur in various locations across the country.
Distinctive voices slowly piece together the details of a variety of characters' stories, rather like 18-year-old April's Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, which enables her to remember with photographic precision her childhood friendship with a boy named Lincoln before he moved away after his father died in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, teenage Lincoln also takes a turn, relating his odd relationship with Laura Echols, beautiful but remote, and how their fates intertwine with their thoughtful, Glass Menagerie–assigning English teacher, who fears one of her students may be planning an act of violence. Both the emotionally awkward mastermind of the shooting plot and those hiding from active shooters at their schools also share their perspectives in accounts that are poignant and realistic. The sheer number of narrators means that readers will need to pay close attention in order to understand how the various strands link together, but lovely writing, replete with literary references, will spur them on. There is some ethnic diversity—while characters such as Phoebe, Laura, and Adrian appear to be white, Gavin is described as having brown skin and green eyes, Gina's last name is Morales, and Pal is Indian-American.
A worthwhile, chilling novel that makes demands of its audience and rewards them richly in return. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7851-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Whether you came for the lore or the love, perfection.
Broken people, complicated families, magic, and Faerie politics: Black’s back.
After the tumultuous ending to the last volume (marriage, exile, and the seeming collapse of all her plots), Jude finds herself in the human world, which lacks appeal despite a childhood spent longing to go back. The price of her upbringing becomes clear: A human raised in the multihued, multiformed, always capricious Faerie High Court by the man who killed her parents, trained for intrigue and combat, recruited to a spy organization, and ultimately the power behind the coup and the latest High King, Jude no longer understands how to exist happily in a world that isn’t full of magic and danger. A plea from her estranged twin sends her secretly back to Faerie, where things immediately come to a boil with Cardan (king, nemesis, love interest) and all the many political strands Jude has tugged on for the past two volumes. New readers will need to go back to The Cruel Prince (2018) to follow the complexities—political and personal side plots abound—but the legions of established fans will love every minute of this lushly described, tightly plotted trilogy closer. Jude might be traumatized and emotionally unhealthy, but she’s an antihero worth cheering on. There are few physical descriptions of humans and some queer representation.
Whether you came for the lore or the love, perfection. (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-31042-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
A dark and gripping feminist tale.
A young woman faces her past to discover the truth about one of her nation’s heroes.
When Effy Sayre, the only female architecture student at her university in Llyr, wins the competition to design Hiraeth Manor for the estate of the late Emrys Myrddin, national literary figure and her favorite author, it is the perfect opportunity to leave behind a recent trauma. She arrives to find the cliffside estate is literally crumbling into the ocean, and she quickly realizes things may not be as they seem. Preston, an arrogant literature student, is also working at the estate, gathering materials for the university’s archives and questioning everything Effy knows about Myrddin. When Preston offers to include her name on his thesis—which may allow her to pursue the dream of studying literature that was frustrated by the university’s refusal to admit women literature students—Effy agrees to help him. He’s on a quest for answers about the source of Myrddin’s most famous work, Angharad, a romance about a cruel Fairy King who marries a mortal woman. Meanwhile, Myrddin’s son has secrets of his own. Preston and Effy start to suspect that Myrddin’s fairy tales may hold more truth than they realize. The Welsh-inspired setting is impressively atmospheric, and while some of the mythology ends up feeling extraneous, the worldbuilding is immersive and thoughtfully addresses misogyny and its effects on how history is written. Main characters are cued white.
A dark and gripping feminist tale. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780063211506
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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