This ambitious debut shows a skillful hand with prose in its depiction of the pivotal role sports can play in the life of an adolescent boy, but it fails to convey the complexities of incest, its other major plot element. Twelve-year-old “Tex” Donleavy initially dislikes Farley, his new stepfather, a high school baseball coach. But over the summer, Farley and his daughter Jack, named for Jackie Robinson, help Tex to master baseball, despite his deformed hand, and to feel socially at ease on Farley’s Little League team. On the last page, Tex reflects that Farley and Jack “not only made him a ballplayer, they’d made him whole.” He then regrets having revealed to his father that he saw Farley sexually abusing Jack, incest that had been going on for years. Tex’s misgivings, voiced the day after witnessing Farley masturbate as he stroked his 12-year-old daughter, show an emotional distancing from the incest characteristic of everyone involved. By keeping close to Tex’s confused view, the narrative largely ignores the painful psychological impact of incest on Jack. Tex’s father, an upright small-town lawyer, intervenes in the situation with a muddled discourse on sexual abuse laws and a tidy plan to help Farley avoid criminal consequences and keep his daughter. Earlier scenes in which Tex takes Jack to watch his father defend a man accused of “date rape,” Jack lets schoolmates feel her breasts, and Tex lusts after his father’s girlfriend seem contrived to emphasize Tex’s confusion about sexual matters and morality. Readers who are emotionally equipped to fill in the gaps about incest and its effects are probably unlikely to pick up a book about a 12-year-old baseball player. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-35509-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance.
A Connecticut girl and her best friend devise a series of plans in order to achieve their goals: following a dream and winning back an ex.
Eighteen-year-old Audrey Barbour has a Master Plan: attend Blue Ridge Glass School in North Carolina and someday turn her Etsy shop, Golightly Glass, into a thriving business. But her uber-wealthy parents insist that she instead follow in their footsteps and go to business school. So Audrey decides to go find the tuition money she needs with help from her best friend, Henry Chen. Henry needs a favor, too: He hopes that fake dating Audrey will help him win back his ex-girlfriend, and he points out to a reluctant Audrey that this could make her crush, Griffin, notice her. While Audrey’s parents vacation in France for three weeks, the pair rent out the Barbour mansion on the Long Island Sound. Soon romantic chemistry grows alongside their business partnership. Despite the pair’s great preparation and an abundance of secondary characters with connections and talents to help pull off their increasingly ambitious ideas, plans go awry, leaving Audrey and Henry scrambling and second-guessing their choices. The pacing is even, but the characters often take a back seat to the whirlwind of activity that drives the plot, with the emphasis falling on each person’s practical skills and their role in keeping the action moving over their emotional bonds. Audrey is white, and Henry’s surname cues him as Chinese American.
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593904794
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte Romance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A character-focused entry that will satisfy fans.
Romantic complications between a trained killer and one of her captors drive this sequel to Watch Me (2025).
Appealing to readers who prefer their romantic dramas to be light on action and heavy on long passages of banter, bitter sibling arguments, and tortured reflections, Mafi continues the tale of Rosabelle Wolff, the flaxen-haired assassin from the dystopic Reestablishment, and magnetic, “impossibly stunning” James Anderson, her nemesis-turned-lover who’s still trying to take down the regime. Now desperate to accomplish several secret missions, Rosa easily escapes from one of The New Republic’s prisons, where she was left in the series opener, and, dressed in “a little kid’s cat onesie,” eludes all pursuers except for James, who can seemingly find her at will. Enigmatic Rosa responds unpredictably to many human contacts—including with violence, temporary death (one of her abilities), or a sudden panic attack. Along with the central pair of rivals and lovers, James’ older brother, Aaron, shares the narration. Bestseller Mafi tucks in several subplots, including, notably, a cameo from Juliette Ferrars, the protagonist of the original Shatter Me series, who’s undergoing a scarily difficult pregnancy. Amid the slowly simmering rising action, the author delivers a revelation and a twist that set up a potential series climax. Some ethnic diversity is present in the supporting cast.
A character-focused entry that will satisfy fans. (Dystopian. 14-adult)Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063419056
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Storytide/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
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