Two love stories for the price of one fun, but predictable, story.
Texan best friends Willa and Flor both break “girl code” as they deal with personal crises, heartache, and love.
Sweet, loyal Willa Evans knows how to pretend. She has secretly loved her football-player neighbor Zach Tucker for so long even her bestie, popular, athletic beauty Flor Hidalgo, has no clue. Zach and Flor broke up nine days earlier, and Willa doesn’t want her relief to show. Instead, Willa, Flor, and their rebellious friend Jenna decide to start an “official girl-code manual.” Almost immediately, Willa breaks rule No. 1, “never date a friend’s ex,” when she ends up in a dark closet with Zach, while Flor keeps secrets about her increasingly chaotic home life (her mother abandoned the family, and her single father has started dating someone barely older than she) and her developing feelings for her smart and sexy new math tutor, Grayson O’Malley. While the book will please fans of “friends to more” and “opposites attract” romances, it barely passes the Bechdel test. Willa, who’s white and middle class, and Flor, who’s half-white, half-Mexican and conspicuously rich, talk more about boys and dating than anything substantive. Both love interests are white. The dual perspective may be necessary, but Flor’s narrative is more nuanced and the chemistry in her banter-filled romance more exciting; Willa’s gets steamy too quickly to offer much tension.
Two love stories for the price of one fun, but predictable, story. (Fiction.14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-97706-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Raw, delicate, and deeply caring.
When Death-Cast doesn’t call, fate intertwines the lives of two boys, both haunted by their pasts and with futures they can’t escape.
In this third installment of the series that opened with 2017’s They Both Die at the End, Paz Dario waits every night for Death-Cast to call—as it should have for his father nearly 10 years ago, when Paz shot him to save his mother’s life. But the call never comes. Death-Cast killed Paz’s dreams of an acting career: No one will hire him now because the world sees him as a villain. When Paz tries (not for the first time) to put an end to his suffering, an unexpected encounter with Alano Rosa, the heir of Death-Cast, stops him. Both in a place of desperation, Alano and Paz sign a contract to live for Begin Days instead of waiting for their End Days. As suspenseful and emotionally wrenching as the previous titles in the series, this new installment explores heavy themes of abuse, mental health, self-harm, and suicide. Paz grapples with a recent diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Silvera surrounds Alano and Paz with a web of complex relationships. Although the protagonists fall fast for one another and form a deep connection over Alano’s desire to support Paz, Silvera emphasizes the importance of professional help. Both Alano and Paz have Puerto Rican heritage. The cliffhanger ending promises more to come.
Raw, delicate, and deeply caring. (content warning, resources) (Speculative fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780063240858
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A thrilling, high-tech page-turner with deep roots.
A teen navigates different worlds: real and virtual, colonized and Indigenous.
In the near-future real world, Bugz’s family has clout in the community—her mom is their first modern-day woman chief, her father’s a highly admired man, and her older brother is handsome and accomplished. Socially awkward Bugz, by contrast, feels more successful in the virtual gaming world of the Floraverse, where she has amassed tremendous power. Yes, her ’Versona has a slimmed-down figure—but Bugz harnesses her passion for the natural world and her Anishinaabe heritage to build seemingly unbeatable defenses, especially her devoted, lovingly crafted Thunderbird and snake/panther Mishi-pizhiw. Cheered on by legions of fans, she battles against Clan:LESS, a group of angry, misogynistic male gamers. One of them, Feng, ends up leaving China under a cloud of government suspicion and moving to her reservation to live with his aunt, the new doctor; they are Muslim Uighurs who have their own history of forced reeducation and cultural erasure. Feng and Bugz experience mutual attraction—and mistrust—and their relationship in and out of the Floraverse develops hesitantly under a shadow of suspected betrayal. Kinew (Anishinaabe) has crafted a story that balances heart-pounding action scenes with textured family and community relationships, all seamlessly undergirded by storytelling that conveys an Indigenous community’s past—and the vibrant future that follows from young people’s active, creative engagement with their culture.
A thrilling, high-tech page-turner with deep roots. (glossary, resources) (Science fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7352-6900-2
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Penguin Teen
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
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