This lambent, indelible cast outshines any gold they might find.
A teen’s participation on a reality show is an opportunity to search for an island treasure, a legendary fortune others are also hunting, in Brooks’ debut YA thriller.
Eighteen-year-old Riley Ozaki’s involvement in friend Izzy’s misdeed at school is minor. Regardless, students are unhappy Riley received the lighter sentence. Her online-essay response only sparks additional ire, most writing her off as a spoiled rich kid. Redemption may lie in Reality Gold, a Survivor-esque series in which 20 teenagers compete for a million dollars. Riley, however, is interested in the filming location, Black Rock Island, where she can covertly track down a long-rumored treasure of stolen Inca gold (for the imagined accolades, not the wealth). A last-minute twist ups the ante: any contestant who finds the treasure or a substantial clue wins an extra quarter million. Riley has an advantage. She smuggled in a Wi-Fi satellite receiver; she’ll possibly be the only one with internet access. But fellow contestants may have their own hidden advantages, and there’s the reputed island curse and the murder of the last treasure hunter (Riley’s godfather). Indications of another searching party, unrelated to the show, could further impede discovery, while Riley fights simply to avoid getting voted off the island. Rather than the promise of treasure, it’s Brooks’ riveting, multidimensional characters who drive the story. For one, Riley unsurprisingly has trust issues, and the contestants—her rivals—hardly seem reliable, making them much more fun to watch in action. “Cute” Porter alternates between flirtatious and sexist, while Maren’s potential as ally is countered by her unabashed cynicism and indifference. The search for gold is less engaging, though. Riley’s progress in uncovering clues is believable as she forms alliances and gets online-community assistance. Danger on the island is muted but unquestionably present: An accident may be attempted murder. And humor brightens the story, especially discourteous but unforgettable Maren’s personality-defining shirts (“Good morning. I see the assassins have failed,” one reads).
This lambent, indelible cast outshines any gold they might find.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9984997-6-5
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Dunemere Books
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A celebratory song of the sea.
A shrimpy 13-year-old with a super-sized passion for marine life comes of age during a summer of discovery on the tidal flats of Puget Sound.
Miles O’Malley—Squid Boy to his friends—doesn’t mind being short. It’s other things that keep him awake at night, like his parents’ talk of divorce and his increasingly lustful thoughts about the girl next door. Mostly, though, it’s the ocean’s siren call that steals his sleep. During one of his moonlit kayak excursions, Miles comes across the rarest sighting ever documented in the northern Pacific: the last gasp of a Giant Squid. Scientists are stunned. The media descend. As Miles continues to stumble across other oddball findings, including two invasive species that threaten the eco-balance of Puget Sound, a nearby new-age cult’s interest in Miles prompts a headline in USA Today: Kid Messiah? Soon tourists are flocking to the tidal flats, crushing crustaceans underfoot and painting their bodies with black mud. Dodging disingenuous journalists, deluded disciples and the death-throes of his parents’ marriage, Miles tries to recapture some semblance of normality. He reads up on the G-spot and the Kama Sutra to keep pace with his pals’ bull sessions about sex (hilariously contributing “advanced” details that gross the other boys out). But Miles’s aquatic observations cannot be undone, and as summer draws to a close, inhabitants of Puget Sound prepare for a national blitzkrieg of media and scientific attention and the highest tide in 40 years, all of which threatens everything Miles holds dear. On land, the rickety plot could have used some shoring up. Miles is just too resourceful for the reader to believe his happiness—or that of those he loves—is ever at stake. But when Miles is on the water, Lynch’s first novel becomes a stunning light show, both literal, during phosphorescent plankton blooms, and metaphorical, in the poetic fireworks Lynch’s prose sets off as he describes his clearly beloved Puget Sound.
A celebratory song of the sea.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2005
ISBN: 1-58234-605-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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