For fans of romantic thrillers and adventure with looming bad guys.
A plainspoken hero stars in Dupeyron’s debut, a crime thriller/romance.
“I took one last peek inside the box. As horrible as it was, I couldn’t stop looking,” says Ellie Fox, who speaks and thinks clearly and doesn’t spare her own feelings. She narrates with no extraneous details or poetic musings. By introducing Ellie’s crisis immediately, but not sharing too many details, Dupeyron jump-starts her novel. Ellie’s a sympathetic but tough character, a teenage runaway whose path takes her into some dark places. She smuggles drugs and journeys into increasingly serious criminal activity. She’s honest about being a criminal and acknowledges that her lifestyle has its risks, but she’s somebody whom readers will probably like since she isn’t a bad person, just a law-breaking one. After running away from home, she was raised by her mentor, who just happened to be a thug. She learns to smuggle drugs and is very good at it too. Along the way, she meets Max Cameron—a fellow protégé of Ellie’s mentor—with whom she easily falls in love. Unfortunately, his plan to steal something very valuable from a crime lord backfires, and the two of them must go on the run. The antagonist, Hashimoto, is the sort of villain that sends packages with gruesome contents, and he stays off-screen for a large portion of the book. This shows good judgment on the part of the author, and Hashimoto becomes a scarier monster since nobody knows whom he might be. The lesson of not messing with ruthless people might be an old one, but Dupeyron keeps it lively with the romance and banter between Max and Ellie. There are a few small typos, but these aren’t enough to distract.
For fans of romantic thrillers and adventure with looming bad guys.Pub Date: June 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477476253
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A simple ABC book whose vibrant photographs will grab kids’ attention.
Debut authors Pi and Pi offer a debut picture-book alphabet of occupations, featuring photos of children playing dress-up.
Each of the 26 pages of this book features a photo, with illustrated details, of a child in the midst of a game of dress-up and imagination. The first shows a cheerful girl, costumed as a doctor, imagining, “What can I be today?” For “A,” a young artist paints on an easel; then, in a transition sentence, she decides to do ballet. The next page shows a ballerina who, when she gets hungry, visits a chef—and so on. Most transitions make sense, and the photos of children with occupation props, set against mostly white backgrounds, offer plenty of smiles. The simple sentences make this book easy to read aloud to its early childhood target audience. However, a few job titles may be a stretch for them to understand, such as “geologist,” “horticulturalist,” and “optician.” The jobs are varied and include artistic positions (illustrator, knitter, musician), service professions (firefighter, judge, librarian, soldier), and science jobs (engineer, X-ray technician). Surprisingly, the only sports-related position is an umpire, but a leading question at the end, about other jobs that one may discover, leaves room for young listeners to create their own.
A simple ABC book whose vibrant photographs will grab kids’ attention.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4808-5453-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.
Diehl’s debut poetry collection showcases the arduous search for human connection and self-understanding.
In free verse poems that combine strong metaphors with prosaic passages, the poet wanders along a lifelong path of self-knowledge. She first describes it as a “pilgrimage…to accept what’s been deemed unworthy inside us,” and the trail leads to important insights. In a plainly stated yet necessary reminder, the author asserts that being human, despite the loneliness one may encounter, “is not a solitary pursuit.” Above all else, the book voices a desire for transparency in the self and in others. In “Clear Stream,” moving water illuminates objects within it, even as mystery waits at the bottom, and the water’s clarity corresponds to the speaker’s offering of his- or herself to view: “Here I am. // Come see me if you want.” Sometimes the tumble of words in these short stanzas suggests a pouring forth of injury: “It’s the show-stopping blow of loss upending a heart pain over pain till capacity for love regulates its beating.” Readers will understand a back story involving love and loss, difficulty in communication, sadness, and acceptance of children growing up. The poems gain strength from well-chosen accompanying images, including sketches and paintings by Dimenichi and colorful works by Jamaican-born painter Powell that enrich the verbal landscape. Several full-page images by each artist appear, suggesting a thematic connection or amplifying an emotion in a given poem. A richly textured, grand illustration of a tree by Dimenichi, for example, appears alongside a poem that celebrates the inspiration of such towering entities. A poem concerned with self-reflection joins a Powell painting of floating, twinned female forms. The figures seem to both depict and satisfy the speaker’s need to be seen, with their emphasis on mirror images, body doubles, and echoes of shapes. Even the windshield of a car can be a “two way mirror” behind which the driver is “invisible to life outside.” An explicitly female body is glimpsed in the sketches, and the warm, dreamlike compositions give it substance.
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-304-13091-4
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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