As leading-edge baby boomers turn 65, this novel in verse tracks their coming of age in 1965, a year marked by social and political unrest, racial violence and the official onset of the second-longest war in U.S. history. Readers’ guides are six white, working-class, suburban Los Angeles teens—Ziggy, Cheryl and Nancy, paired with Mickey, Don and Phil—fearing and longing for change to rock their world. Soon Phil receives his draft notice and joins the Marine Corps; Mickey joins the Navy to escape an alcoholic single dad and dead-end future; opportunist Don watches from the sidelines. Left adrift and dissatisfied, the girls start to break free of the passive role assigned to them. A kind English teacher (readers will notice parallels to Nikki Grimes’s Bronx Masquerade, 2001) helps Ziggy find her footing; Nancy discovers the anti-war and feminist movements. Interspersed with historical tidbits and individuals—recent Vietnam history, civil rights struggles, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr.—this loosely chronological collage is most effective in the letters Phil, mired in Vietnam, sends to Cheryl. Because they don’t affect the characters directly, other historical events depicted—civil rights especially—have little impact. Nonetheless, a valuable, vivid snapshot of how Vietnam shaped a generation. (historical timeline) (Historical fiction. 14 & up)
Pub Date: March 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7624-4071-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Running Press Teens
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging
Audrey Rose Wadsworth, 17, would rather perform autopsies in her uncle’s dark laboratory than find a suitable husband, as is the socially acceptable rite of passage for a young, white British lady in the late 1800s.
The story immediately brings Audrey into a fractious pairing with her uncle’s young assistant, Thomas Cresswell. The two engage in predictable rounds of “I’m smarter than you are” banter, while Audrey’s older brother, Nathaniel, taunts her for being a girl out of her place. Horrific murders of prostitutes whose identities point to associations with the Wadsworth estate prompt Audrey to start her own investigation, with Thomas as her sidekick. Audrey’s narration is both ponderous and polemical, as she sees her pursuit of her goals and this investigation as part of a crusade for women. She declares that the slain aren’t merely prostitutes but “daughters and wives and mothers,” but she’s also made it a point to deny any alignment with the profiled victims: “I am not going as a prostitute. I am simply blending in.” Audrey also expresses a narrow view of her desired gender role, asserting that “I was determined to be both pretty and fierce,” as if to say that physical beauty and liking “girly” things are integral to feminism. The graphic descriptions of mutilated women don’t do much to speed the pace.
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging . (Historical thriller. 15-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-27349-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly balanced mix of history, intrigue, and romance.
Against the backdrop of World War II, four young women codebreakers put their minds together to find a serial killer.
It’s early 1943, and Arlington Hall, a one-time girls’ school in Virginia, is now the site of a covert intelligence facility where an 18-year-old former maid secretly assumes the new identity Kit Sutherland and becomes a codebreaker. A night out turns deadly when one of their own is murdered, and Kit stumbles across her body in the bathroom. Kit, roommate Dottie, and Moya, the supervisor of their floor, work alongside Violet, one of the Black girls from the segregated codebreaking unit, to bring the culprit to justice. As the budding friends turn their sharp minds and analytical abilities to covertly investigating what turns out to be a series of murders, Kit struggles to keep her own dangerous secret—and her attraction to Moya—under wraps. Meanwhile, Moya will do everything in her power to help her girls while trying not to fall in love with Kit. The novel deftly addresses questions of inequality across class, race, and sexuality in a story that combines well-researched historical background with a nifty whodunit, a strong focus on friendship, and an empowering queer romance. The narrative follows Kit and Moya, making them the better developed characters in the largely White cast. An author’s note includes many resources about the real women whose behind-the-scenes espionage work informed this story.
A deftly balanced mix of history, intrigue, and romance. (Historical thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-33958-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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