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 sweet, innocent book about how love and imagination can open hearts and cure ills.
A lighthearted and nostalgic middle-school tale about the redemptive powers of imagination.
With a successful surgeon for a father and the sole heir of an old-money family for a mother, Abigail seems to have it all. But when her mother’s postpartum depression refuses to lift and World War II keeps her father away for years, it’s clear that her life is not idyllic after all. Not long before Abigail’s eighth birthday, her mother, Caroline, sinks so deeply into a depression that she requires hospitalization. As a diversion for the worried girl, Abigail’s nanny takes her for an extended visit to the Connecticut home of her maternal grandmother, a crusty, widowed blueblood who, contrary to her habitual aloofness, quickly warms to the girl. In her grandmother’s attic, Abigail discovers a beautiful dollhouse that belonged to her mother and her grandmother. To her amazement, Abigail realizes that the dollhouse family is alive and that she can shrink down to dollhouse size herself. From the dolls’ stories about her mother’s childhood, Abigail gathers that something mysterious lurks in her family’s history, something that might aid her mother’s recovery. At her diminutive friends’ urging, she sleuths around, finally uncovering a decades-old family secret that also brings her family closer. While at times a bit clumsy in its characters’ contrived emotional reactions and its forced nostalgia for 1940s New York, Bliss’s debut novel is nonetheless a heartfelt, sincere look at the importance of family, honesty and imagination. On a larger scale, this is a book about postwar urbanization and how social democratization finally overtook the American gentry. Caught between two different worlds, Caroline suffers, but the priorities of the new world–valuing family over social status, the individual over class–prove strong enough to rescue her and to redeem the old world, represented in this case by her grandmother. Make no mistake, Abigail’s privileged and dated world is not one most kids will easily relate to, and Caroline’s remarkable recovery bears little resemblance to the average trajectory of depression. Taken as a fairy tale, however, this is a recommended read.
A sweet, innocent book about how love and imagination can open hearts and cure ills.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4196-7615-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A poignant, dignified tribute to Ury who, as a Jew during World War II, was murdered by her countrymen for whom she had...
A uniquely sentimental look at World War I through the eyes of a preteen German girl.
Though still immensely popular in Germany, Ury’s ten Nesthäkchen books are virtually unknown in the United States, an omission Lehrer looks to correct with this fine translation, complete with notes and a brief but highly informative introduction. The book is an engaging tale of two years in the life of Annemarie Braun, a Berlin doctor’s daughter most often referred to by the narrator as "Nesthäkchen,” a wonderfully appropriate sobriquet reserved for spoiled children. Separated from her parents by the war, Annemarie nonetheless lives a comfortable life with her grandmother, siblings, girlfriends and even a cook. The narrative traces her often wildly extravagant, juvenile reactions to the vicissitudes of war. Mercurial by nature, youthfully innocent and self-absorbed due to her social standing, Annemarie filters her experiences of war through her personality in ways that can rarely be deeply felt by the reader, who watches as she flits from one emotion to another, despondent on one page, exultant on the next. Her most sustained behavior proves to be the cruelty she evinces toward a new girl at her school, a long campaign of ill-treatment for which she must eventually seek redemption. Her story is ultimately one of growth through sacrifice, and, not surprisingly, Annemarie matures into a generous, likable young woman by the novel’s end and receives abundant karmic reward for her goodness. Lehrer’s infrequent annotations are precise and cogent, though concerned primarily with military matters sometimes to the exclusion of cultural subjects. With its stilted diction and narrative air of bemused didacticism resembling perhaps nothing more in the American canon than the Horatio Alger books, Nesthäkchen and the World War is no longer likely to appeal to the juvenile audience for which it was originally penned, but Nesthäkchen could, and probably deserves to, find her place in the classroom alongside Ragged Dick as an important glimpse into the spirit of a long-gone age.
A poignant, dignified tribute to Ury who, as a Jew during World War II, was murdered by her countrymen for whom she had written with so much loyalty and love.Pub Date: May 22, 2006
ISBN: 978-0-595-39729-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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