A searing, fast-paced whodunit that addresses sexual assault head-on.
A teen loner grapples with buried demons as she stumbles on someone else’s secret in the woods.
In her latest novel, Mitchell (The Prom, 2019, etc.) again explores the sexual awakening of adolescent identities—this time against the backdrop of childhood sexual assault. Though hesitant to open up to anyone apart from her best friend, Syd, 17-year-old Ava Parkhurst reveals early on that she was raped at age 9 and visibly scarred for life when her attacker traced “a razor blade finger” down her cheek. As if Ava, a good student who strives to live in the present and not fixate on past trauma, doesn’t have enough challenges—Syd is keeping secrets from her; her father has moved out, leaving her and her mother on their own; and, for the first time, she’s finding herself physically attracted to the daughter of the policeman who, years before, handled her assault case—a walk in the woods one snowy Maine night leads to a harrowing discovery that dangerously tests the confines of Ava’s carefully guarded world. Mitchell’s roller-coaster confessional narrative runs the gamut from teen melodrama between friends and the throes of first love to reckoning with guarded secrets and the psychological fallout from astoundingly brutal acts. Most characters default to white; Ava's love interest is biracial (white Jewish and Korean).
A searing, fast-paced whodunit that addresses sexual assault head-on. (author’s note, resources) (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285259-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
A lukewarm thriller.
In England, a group of teenagers tries to stay alive when a long weekend in an abandoned castle goes wrong.
When Bessie and her friends decide to join a party their classmate Allegra is throwing in her family’s abandoned castle before it’s converted into apartments, they think the biggest issues they’ll face are making it there before a big storm hits and keeping their plans secret from their parents and teachers. Once they arrive at the castle, however, Bessie and best friend Kashvi discover menacing graffiti and evidence that someone has been staying in the cellar. They also learn that protestors from the nearby village are angry about the development plans for the castle—one of them even argues that it would be better to burn it down. A handful of classmates manage to get there before the storm gets too severe. But when the teens wake up the next day to discover one of their own dead, and the storm makes it impossible for them to leave, they quickly realize that they’re in danger. But is the killer one of the members of the Facebook protestors’ group…or one of their own? Despite the book’s intriguing setup, the prose is dominated by repetitive conversations that convey little substance. Still, readers may still find themselves propelled forward by a need to discover the identity of the murderer. The central cast is racially diverse.
A lukewarm thriller. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593704080
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
Enticing and original.
Abandoned by her sisters, Io Ora must trust Bianca—former mob queen, now dying wraith—to help her find the hidden gods and end them forever in this duology closer that follows Threads That Bind (2023).
Io and Bianca cross mudflats that harbor deadly chimerini and dodge the violent, unpredictable tides that flood the Wastelands, where humans have struggled to survive ever since the Collapse shattered the moon into three pieces. The youngest of the Moirae-born (sisters with Fates-like powers), Io is able to see the threads governing every human fate in the Quilt. She can end a life simply by cutting another’s life-thread, but the cost is high: Each time, she must sever one of her own 35 threads. As Bianca traverses anarchic wastes and dangerous urban slums ruled by powerful gangs on the way to their destination, the teeming city-nation of Nanzy, she weakens but pushes on. Despite setbacks and betrayals, the two discover unexpected allies willing to risk their lives to confront the gods. Io’s personal evolution, like the Moirae’s silver threads, is woven seamlessly into the complicated plot. While her romance with Edei is satisfying, the story’s emotional driver is the sisters’ difficult history of loss, longing, pain, and betrayal; each bears scars from their old, set-in-stone rivalries. Io’s world has an epic thematic scope and an intricately imagined setting. The characters are diverse in appearance, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
Enticing and original. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780593528747
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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