Spy Kidsmeets White House Downin this fast-paced thriller with an overabundance of violence.
A terrorist threat to the president of the United States hits home for a teenager because the chief executive is her mom.
In Greenland’s (Scouts, 2019, etc.) latest YA thriller, Cuban American Sophie Washington will never forget her 17th birthday. It begins in the wee hours when her father wakes her with startling news: A domestic terrorist group has put a hit on her mother, the U.S. president. Her mom believes the action “is coming from someone on the inside.” Even kind-eyed Frank, the Secret Service agent who’s been with Sophie “forever,” can’t be trusted. Until today, Sophie’s biggest worry was how her parents would react to her plan to pierce her nose. Now, in addition to the credible threat to her mom, no one can locate her older “goofball brother,” Erik. When Sophie gets a call for help from Erik’s girlfriend, Britta, the first daughter evades her security detail and races to meet the girl at a designated spot. But no one is there when Sophie arrives. Do the terrorists have Erik and Britta as well as their other missing friend, Danforth? The three of them went to a party earlier, according to Erik’s best friend, Max. Sophie has her own posse: Zeke (who makes her heart “tumble”) and techno whiz kids Jackson and Callie. The group met in the CIA’s Teen Intelligence Program. Espionage training and plain, old badass ability help Sophie as she tries to find her brother and save her mom. The teen hacks into a senator’s computer, kidnaps an elderly woman, and straps a dagger to her thigh before sneaking into a construction site with Zeke. No one’s virginity gets lost in the propulsive novel, but a toe does, through torture. A surprising amount of cruelty, betrayal, and violence takes place, followed by an equally startling quick recovery from all of it. Attention from Zeke unrealistically seems to balance out all the truly bad stuff Sophie experiences. Toning down her take-charge abilities would boost the believability factor. But Greenland’s decision to make Sophie’s mom not immune to wrongdoing adds interest to the story as does having both the president and vice president ex-military. And the flashbacks in italics work well.
Spy Kidsmeets White House Downin this fast-paced thriller with an overabundance of violence.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-664-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
A delightfully captivating swatch of autobiography from the author of Kiss. Kiss, Switch Bitch and many others. Schoolboy Dahl wanted adventure. Classes bored him, there was work to be had in Africa, and war clouds loomed on the world's horizons. He finds himself with a trainee's job with Shell Oil of East Africa and winds up in what is now Tanzania. Then war comes in 1939 and Dahl's adventures truly begin. At the war's outbreak, Dahl volunteers for the RAF, signing on to be a fighter pilot. Wounded in the Libyan desert, he spends six months recuperating in a military hospital, then rejoins his unit in Greece, only to be driven back by the advancing Germans. On April 20, 1941, he goes head on against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens. On-target bio installment with, one hopes, lots more of this engrossing life to come.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0142413836
Page Count: 209
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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