Shimmering suspense and atmosphere highlight Bowler’s trademark mysteriousness. Dusty answers the phone late at night and hears a stranger announce, “I’m dying.” He isn’t (though he wants to be), and he knows intimate details about her that no one should know. Furthermore, he implies knowledge of Dusty’s brother, who vanished two years ago. When she realizes he’s calling from a nearby park, she tracks him through the snow until his footsteps disappear. People across the country have seen this boy, and vigilantes pursue him for alleged rape; he may be made of snow or fire, and he knows everyone’s secrets. Dusty searches for the entrancing boy despite the townspeople’s fury, her father’s distress and her own instinctive feelings of peril. A dangerous, gleaming brightness (possibly the same metaphysical matter as the boy) threatens to transform Dusty into frigid fire. The enigmatic whirl of events ends with a blend of closure and persevering questions; readers who liked Firmament (2004) but found Apocalypse (2005) too cryptic will want to return to Bowler for this one. (Fantasy. YA)
Pub Date: June 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-25053-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
A charming cozy fantasy about defying expectations and finding love.
The lives of two Los Angeles girls inhabiting different universes intersect, proving that love knows no bounds.
Brenda Nguyen has a 19-step plan to save the world. Kat Woo is haunted by her legacy as the chosen one, a role she has no interest in. Brenda, working on an environmental science college scholarship application, stumbles into Sammy’s Coffee and Pick-Me-Ups, which Kat’s family owns. As the girls get to know each other, Brenda at last finds someone who’ll listen to her detailed plans, while Kat discovers she has something to look forward to. The girls, who alternate narrating the story, must defy the odds as their worlds begin to collide. As well as being a love story, this is an exploration of familial expectations: Kat is trying to outrun them, while Brenda is driven to fulfill hers. The girls, who are of Chinese and Vietnamese descent, respectively, complement each other: Brenda learns to live in the present, and Kat begins to look to the future. While there are pixie swarms and mana surges, the action takes a back seat to characterization. Lee’s fully developed parallel worlds are alike in many ways, although in Kat’s, you can buy teleportation spells at Target. The cast is rounded out by solid portrayals of the girls’ friends and family, who are important to the plot.
A charming cozy fantasy about defying expectations and finding love. (author’s note, recommended reading) (Fantasy romance. 14-18)Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250778024
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Timely and timeless.
Printz Award winner King returns with another surrealist masterpiece.
On June 23, 2020, the world became caught in “a fold in time and space.” For the past nine months, the United States has enacted Solution Time and been using N3WCLOCK to keep some semblance of normality. High school javelin star Truda Becker isn’t satisfied with these patched-together efforts, though, and she is determined to use psychology to find the “Real Solution.” While she puzzles over the irregularities of time and their grander meaning, Truda is also weighed down by irregularities in her home life. Her father, an immigrant from an unspecified country, spends his days obsessively building and rebuilding room-sized plywood boxes, making a disorienting warren of their family home. Her “clairvoyant” mother comes and goes, her brother is acting jumpy and suspicious, and the shadow of Truda’s abusive sister casts a pall over them all. Truda is determined: “By the end of the month, I will figure out how to make people give a shit about other people. I still have no idea how I’ll do this because I live in a house where emergencies are cubed like snack cheese and giving an actual shit has been put on hold.” Intentionally perplexing, the book carefully doles out reveals as it steadily weaves together seemingly disparate threads with precision. This otherwise stellar title unfortunately is marred by the repeated use of deaf to describe emotional evasion and dishonesty. Main characters read as White by default.
Timely and timeless. (Speculative fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-55551-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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