A convoluted mystery that flavors the darkness of Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity (2012) with the contrivances of Scooby...
Fire forges historical and contemporary connections among three troubled teens.
The three teen narrators could easily star in their own books. Instead, their voices and lives intertwine in an implausible plot full of coincidences and conveniently chatty villains. Rebellious white redhead Molly Mavity writes sarcastic, tense-shifting letters to her friend Pepper, who lies in a coma. Molly, whose arsonist father will soon be executed, is convinced her mother is alive—despite her suicide. Ibrahim “Pepper” Al-Yusef, a Kuwaiti immigrant with epilepsy and a comic-relief seizure pug, wryly weaves his views on everything from friendship to racism into a series of essays assigned by a long-suffering teacher as a condition of graduation. Both gradually reveal how they followed a stranger’s clues to Berlin in search of Ava Dreyman, a teen from the former East Germany who became an Anne Frank–esque symbol for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ava, whose diary of resisting the Stasi, escaping to America, and finding romance ends with her murder in 1989, connects Molly and Pepper in a far-flung way. Though Ava’s accounts of oppression are chilling, Pepper’s awkwardness is endearing, and Molly’s grief is brutal, the mastermind’s far-fetched scheme and Molly and Pepper’s improbable stunts in Berlin ultimately muffle the strong voices of all three characters.
A convoluted mystery that flavors the darkness of Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity (2012) with the contrivances of Scooby Doo. (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8037-4071-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Exhilarating, nonstop fun.
A murder on The Escape Game, a popular reality TV show, puts the next round of contestants at risk—can they all get out alive?
The previous season of the show, in which groups of teens race to get through escape rooms, ended in disaster when Sierra Angelos and her team discovered another player lying dead in a coffin—her older sister, Alicia. But the network and ruthless executive producer determine that the show will go on. Prickly, olive-skinned Sierra, whom some suspect of murder, is returning—and she’s determined to find the killer. Her new team includes math whiz Carter Kelly, who’s Black; home-schooled, white-presenting Beck Matheson, who designs his own escape rooms and is trans; and Aditya Parvesh, who’s cued South Asian, has a way with words, and was pushed into auditioning by his movie star mother. At first, Team Helsing struggles to gel, but the teens’ shared desire to prove themselves makes them a formidable powerhouse—even if they’re hiding some of their true goals from one another. As clues to the killer’s identity start appearing, the players must try to make it to the finale before someone else becomes the next victim. This thrilling whodunit moves at a page-turning pace; the occasional reveals for the main mystery are well balanced with the tighter sequences of solving the escape rooms. The narration rotates among the central cast, allowing readers to empathize with each character in turn and be privy to even more intrigue.
Exhilarating, nonstop fun. (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798217006120
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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
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