Remy struggles with the consequences of a bad kissing season.
Holloway girls have magic running through their veins: During their kissing seasons, they can bestow good luck on certain individuals while potentially finding true love for themselves. However, they must follow the rules in the Book of Luck: Only kiss someone who wants to be kissed, and never kiss someone who’s already in love with another. As her sister Maggie’s kissing season ends and hers begins, Remy hopes she will finally have a chance with her crush, Isaac. However, when their kiss brings him a slew of bad luck, Remy struggles to break the curse, mend the growing rift with Maggie, ignore the abuse from Isaac’s friends (who believe she cursed him), and avoid Tobin and Juliet, the charismatic and distracting twins who have moved in next door. While the kissing season’s magic leads to slightly melodramatic scenarios, Remy and Maggie are sympathetic characters with a nuanced and evolving sisterly relationship. Similarly, the discussions of family, legacy, friendship, trust, baking as a coping mechanism, and self-image and self-esteem ground the story. While the pacing meanders, it fits the mood of the summer setting. The analysis of love, in the contexts of Holloway magic, crushes, romance, and abusive relationships, adds extra depth to a romance that may feel somewhat predictable. Most of the cast is White.
An entertaining and drama-filled tale. (Fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72824-714-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression.
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After surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.
Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself; her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out; her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply; and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her—who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves—Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she "like-likes" but who had pined for Ellis instead. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a "semifamous" local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way "girls who write their pain on their bodies" scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Like most issue books, this is not an easy read, but it's poignant and transcendent as Charlie breaks more and more before piecing herself back together.
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93471-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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In the three years following Eden’s brutal rape by her brother’s best friend, Kevin, she descends into anger, isolation, and promiscuity.
Eden’s silence about the assault is cemented by both Kevin’s confident assurance that if she tells anyone, “No one will ever believe you. You know that. No one. Not ever,” and a chillingly believable death threat. For the remainder of Eden’s freshman year, she withdraws from her family and becomes increasingly full of hatred for Kevin and the world she feels failed to protect her. But when a friend mentions that she’s “reinventing” herself, Eden embarks on a hopeful plan to do the same. She begins her sophomore year with new clothes and friendly smiles for her fellow students, which attract the romantic attentions of a kind senior athlete. But, bizarrely, Kevin’s younger sister goes on a smear campaign to label Eden a “totally slutty disgusting whore,” which sends Eden back toward self-destruction. Eden narrates in a tightly focused present tense how she withdraws again from nearly everyone and attempts to find comfort (or at least oblivion) through a series of nearly anonymous sexual encounters. This self-centeredness makes her relationships with other characters feel underdeveloped and even puzzling at times. Absent ethnic and cultural markers, Eden and her family and classmates are likely default white.
Eden’s emotionally raw narration is compelling despite its solipsism. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4935-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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