Only for those readers who care more about romance and the gimmick than plot and character. (Interactive fiction. 10-12)
Readers guide a middle schooler to various romance possibilities in this gentle series opener that’s similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
Tara Singh helps out at her family’s sweet shop, Mmmumbai, where famous Bollywood actress Preeti Chandran chooses to order her wedding cake and sweets. Tara, more interested in Broadway than Bollywood, plans to audition for Dorothy in the school production of The Wizard of Oz and is faced with interesting dilemmas that readers will decide: Should Tara go to the audition or to Preeti Chandran’s wedding? Should she rehearse with Hiro or go to Preeti’s movie with Rohan? The cast is diverse. Tara is of Indian origin (depicted on the cover with dark hair and brown skin), as is childhood friend Rohan (could he be more than annoying-older-brother material?). Best friend Yael Lewis is Jewish (whose bat mitzvah anchors companion title Yael and the Party of the Year). Meanwhile, is Tara’s forever crush and BMOC Hiro Nakahara (with cued Japanese heritage) really interested in Tara? Or will quiet, shy, and clever Desmond Flynn, a white boy with blue eyes and freckles, be the one with whom Tara initiates a brief kiss? The book is heavy on teen tropes, from texting and emojis to eye rolls and air quotes. Characters, however, both primary and secondary, are not well-fleshed-out, parts of the book are repetitive, and the story on the whole is not memorable.
Only for those readers who care more about romance and the gimmick than plot and character. (Interactive fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7568-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
A typical Patterson plot significantly elevated by its title character.
A precocious seventh-grader tries to turn over a new leaf and end her term as the class clown.
It’s New Jersey, 1990, and Jacky Hart is the middle child in a family with six other girls. Attention is hard to come by, but Jacky has earned her fair share by being the endlessly funny member of her large, white family. Unfortunately, Jacky’s teachers do not appreciate this goofball attitude. Jacky joins the school play to channel her talents creatively and discovers a passion for performing, but not all is well. Jacky's mother is overseas as a citizen soldier in the run-up to the first Gulf War, and her lifeguard father is spending way too much time with an attractive female fellow lifeguard. A lot of other things happen too, but this is typical for Patterson. His novels are made or broken not by their plots but by their lead characters, and Jacky is the best yet. Fun, smart, emotionally engaging, Jacky is a character that young readers will love spending time with. Sure, the novel could lose about 100 pages and still tell the same story, but Jacky and her sisters are so endearing readers won't feel the effects of the chubby second and third acts until long after finishing the book, and few will really care. Pop-culture references from the ’90s and the 2010s (for comparison) abound.
A typical Patterson plot significantly elevated by its title character. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-26249-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
An exploration of family bonds that reaches for profound themes but doesn’t always trust readers to grasp them independently.
A boy struggling with his blended family discovers a tree with the power to transform his stepbrother.
Twelve-year-old Denver feels unmoored by his 8-year-old stepbrother Harlan, who constantly breaks things and demands attention. When Denver meets Spiro, an ancient ponderosa pine with magical abilities, he accepts Spiro’s offer to temporarily transform Harlan into a tree—only to discover that everyone, including his parents, has forgotten Harlan’s very existence. Denver finds an ally in Mae, a local girl with synesthesia who perceives people through color halos and creates unusual ice cream flavors. As Denver works to reverse the transformation, he learns that Spiro became isolated from the forest’s root network after surviving a devastating fire, paralleling Denver’s own emotional disconnect from his changing family. The forest setting provides rich sensory details, and Mae’s unique perspective adds depth to the magical elements. The metaphor connecting tree root networks to human relationships occasionally feels heavy-handed, however, with characters explicitly drawing comparisons that readers might prefer to discover themselves. Denver’s character growth from resentment to acceptance feels authentic, though his transformation happens somewhat rapidly. For the most part, physical descriptors are minimal.
An exploration of family bonds that reaches for profound themes but doesn’t always trust readers to grasp them independently. (author’s note) (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9780593860304
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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