Sure to leave romantics with an afterglow.
Fans will be thrilled with this third installment in the Bookish Boyfriends series that focuses on brainy Eliza and her intellectual equal.
In the first two books, it was the Campbell girls who fell under the spell of Ms. Gregoire’s English class and found romance. But Eliza has absorbed the evidence her scientist parents provided demonstrating that dating is detrimental for adolescents. Or is it as she fears: that she is not lovable? Her parents are always off on research expeditions, monitor her actions from afar, and do not prioritize emotions. Eliza knows rationally they must care about her, but the lack of warmth and affection she feels becomes painfully clear when Eliza begins to identify with Frankenstein’s monster, an outcome Ms. Gregoire may have feared when she tried to steer Eliza away from using the book for the class project. Eliza switches to another book, Anne of Green Gables. As Eliza relates to Anne, she wonders if class clown Curtis is her Gilbert. Readers will be charmed by Curtis’ gentle consistency and Eliza’s confusion as her feelings change from combative to happy. As Eliza develops in confidence, her relationship with her parents improves, too, allowing her to finally feel settled. Eliza and most main characters are white; Curtis is biracial (white/Egyptian).
Sure to leave romantics with an afterglow. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4010-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A little slow to start, but once it does, readers won’t want it to end.
Just when Ethan Chase thinks he’s done with Faery, he’s pulled back in.
Fresh from his adventures in The Lost Prince (2012), Ethan thinks his biggest concern is his new girlfriend Kenzie’s father, who reasonably objects to his leukemia-stricken teenage daughter disappearing and running off to New York with Ethan. But then Ethan’s half sister, Meghan, the Iron Queen, comes to him because her son (Ethan’s nephew), Keirran, has gone missing. Soon after, Keirran’s beloved, the exiled Summer fey Annwyl, seeks Ethan’s help—she too can’t find Keirran, and as the Fade is quickly claiming her, she wishes to see him once more before dying. The search for Keirran brings Annwyl and Ethan, who’s trying unsuccessfully to protect Kenzie from the fey world (a forced, predictable moment), to the New Orleans goblin market and right into the thick of things. The plot picks up, sweeping the heroes through temporary, dark-magic solutions, various otherworlds and encounters with familiar characters. Ethan and Keirran face parallel romantic storylines, each in love with someone facing imminent death, though Keirran’s takes center stage as they struggle to save Annwyl. Additionally, a prophecy that’s been hinted at finally comes into play at the climax, bringing major implications for characters and worlds alike—a major cliffhanger.
A little slow to start, but once it does, readers won’t want it to end. (Fantasy. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-373-21091-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
Likely headed for the best-seller lists—but not on its merits.
“Lore” (aka James Frey) moves his ponderous, jumbled science-fiction epic forward an inch by dropping a traitor into the band of superpowered refugees charged with saving Earth from evil aliens.
The tale has already become so complicated that even confirmed series fans may welcome the long, sluggish stretches of hanging out, fretting, flirting, bickering and undisguised recaps. These are packed in between the paltry number of violent but widely spaced encounters with brutish Mogadorian invaders. Here, the already indigestibly large cast of teenage Loriens and their human helpers gains three and loses one as two chancy new allies, multiple gems with mystical properties, prophetic visions of terrifying doom, ravening monsters, mysterious scars and hints of new powers arrive to add more flimsy trinkets to the literary flea market. Confusingly, three of the Loriens switch off as first-person narrators but are given (whether from authorial inertia or incompetence) indistinguishable voices. Following the climactic denouement, the young heroes end up more or less where they were in the previous episode: split up and on the run. Sample chapters, not labeled as such, from three spinoff novellas are appended.
Likely headed for the best-seller lists—but not on its merits. (Science fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-197461-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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