Creepy and suspenseful but ultimately dissatisfying.
Mysterious small-town lore haunts an ailing teen’s relocation to the mountains.
Lola Boyd is devastated to leave her small Michigan hometown as well as her best friend, Bryn, who’s nonbinary, for a new start in Claret Creek, Colorado. Her mom has remarried the unlikable Kurt (“my new step-dick’s superpower is the ability to make me feel invisible—even when the conversation is about me”), and at his urging the three are pursuing a new adventure. They’re moving into Boyd Manor, Lola’s late father’s childhood home, which she’s set to inherit when she turns 25. Lola’s battle with a debilitating and hard-to-explain chronic illness worsens when she arrives in Claret Creek, and she starts to experience otherworldly hallucinations that seem to be channeling people’s memories and revealing moments from the town’s past. New friends Clare, Sage, Emory, and Fletcher offer Lola help in understanding her mysterious family connection to Claret Creek’s history, which involves revered local physician Dr. Clarett and an alleged witch who had a connection to Boyd Manor. Although the cliffhanger chapter endings build suspense throughout, inconsistent characterization hinders the believability of the cast members’ motives. The complex events of the past, which are explored by the contemporary characters, lead to a neatly wrapped up conclusion that strains credulity. Most characters present white, and siblings Sage and Clare are Latine.
Creepy and suspenseful but ultimately dissatisfying. (Paranormal thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780593621431
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell...
Adolescent criminals seek the haul of a lifetime in a fantasyland at the beginning of its industrial age.
The dangerous city of Ketterdam is governed by the Merchant Council, but in reality, large sectors of the city are given over to gangs who run the gambling dens and brothels. The underworld's rising star is 17-year-old Kaz Brekker, known as Dirtyhands for his brutal amorality. Kaz walks with chronic pain from an old injury, but that doesn't stop him from utterly destroying any rivals. When a councilman offers him an unimaginable reward to rescue a kidnapped foreign chemist—30 million kruge!—Kaz knows just the team he needs to assemble. There's Inej, an itinerant acrobat captured by slavers and sold to a brothel, now a spy for Kaz; the Grisha Nina, with the magical ability to calm and heal; Matthias the zealot, hunter of Grishas and caught in a hopeless spiral of love and vengeance with Nina; Wylan, the privileged boy with an engineer's skills; and Jesper, a sharpshooter who keeps flirting with Wylan. Bardugo broadens the universe she created in the Grisha Trilogy, sending her protagonists around countries that resemble post-Renaissance northern Europe, where technology develops in concert with the magic that's both coveted and despised. It’s a highly successful venture, leaving enough open questions to cause readers to eagerly await Volume 2.
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell into a family . (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-212-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK TO SCREEN
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