Laughs galore mitigate a thin storyline.
How can a girl make friends at her new school?
If young British teen Olivia can go on the class trip to New York, her social life can finally get started. The white girl’s No. 1 obstacle: lack of money. She starts a vlog to bring in the funds; surely, the ad revenue will pay for her airfare. Unfortunately, her initial attempts fail miserably. The solution: enlist shiny-haired aspiring actress Emma to be “Destiny,” fashionable vlogger extraordinaire, the girl every girl wants to be friends with. Bring on the fandom and the profits! It’s not long before the Destiny Channel goes viral, but how long before someone discovers it’s all fake? It’s not surprising when a classmate outs her, but considering Destiny’s immense fame, it’s puzzling that none of their schoolmates see the vlog and recognize popular, white Emma sooner. Guilt over dubious product placements adds an ethical dilemma to the silly story, as Olivia struggles to balance her need for cash with her morals. Is the trip worth endangering her viewers’ health? Olivia narrates the story through diary entries and vlog transcripts, complete with British colloquialisms. The book’s highlights are the vlog’s guffaw-inducing trolls. There’s the sarcastic “Evil Liam 13” and several members of the grammar police: “Pedantic Penguin,” “Ant the Pedant,” and “Grammar Leopard.” Whiteness is assumed throughout.
Laughs galore mitigate a thin storyline. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78243-617-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Michael O'Mara/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
This fast-paced urban quest wears its agenda on its sleeve, but it’s conveyed with verve and an endearing sense of justice
A 17-year-old boy and his friends just want enough to survive on in a world where the rich and powerful greedily take everything.
Sully was once "a millionaire for ten minutes, until Alex Holliday's lawyers stopped payment on the check." Sully, a white, working-poor boy from Yonkers, had been conned when only 13 by billionaire exec Holliday for his prize find: a Cherry Red. In the nine years since the brightly colored spheres blanketed the Earth, Cherry Red is still the rarest ever found. Anyone can use up a matched pair of spheres to gain skills—from Slate Gray's singing ability to Mustard's high IQ—so the rich pay millions for marbles that will enhance them in some way. McIntosh’s world is almost exactly like ours, stuffed with pop-culture familiarity (folks read BuzzFeed and watch The Late Show with Stephen Colbert), but the rich enjoy even more privilege. When Sully meets Hunter, a sometimes-homeless Puerto Rican black girl with a tragic back story, she invites him to join her hunt for a fat prize: another rare marble, one valuable enough to give them both security. But when they're on the verge of success, Holliday pops up like a contemporary robber baron. Hunter, Sully, and their friends (a white Italian-American boy and a queer Korean-American girl) road-trip across the country in a race for gold that takes an unexpected but pleasing shift to a film-ready action climax.
This fast-paced urban quest wears its agenda on its sleeve, but it’s conveyed with verve and an endearing sense of justice . (Science fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-53410-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
An upper-middle-grade winner.
Middle school bitchiness is elevated to high art in this poignant tale of a girl dealing with the aftermath of her mother’s suicide attempt.
Anna is so “been there, done that” it defies her mere 13 years on Earth. After a lifetime of dealing with her flaky mom’s emotional highs and lows and her distant dad’s remarriage to the beautiful Marnie, Anna has learned how to shut people out and shut down her own emotions. However, the loss of her one-time best friend, Danielle, to the popular set proves to be one body blow too many. Friend’s sixth novel (My Life in Black and White, 2012; Lush, 2010) and first for middle-grade readers reverberates with honest eighth-grade emotion. Anna’s first-person delivery is wry, sad, heartbreaking, in-your-face, and raw. She captures the utterly helpless feeling of a child trying to deal with the very grown-up problem of a parent’s mental illness, with a father who doesn’t communicate well and a life that isn’t going how it should. Friend balances heartache with humor, creating in Anna a memorable, funny, and genuine girl and serving up middle school angst with a teen edge. While her cast isn’t particularly diverse, they are memorable; as so many protagonists have done before, Anna learns that sitting with the weirdos is a whole lot more fun than toeing the mean-girl line.
An upper-middle-grade winner. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-374-30230-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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