Debut author Faegen’s paranormal romance impels a celestial girl toward a dark paramour who embodies a purpose and a partner for all eternity.
Seeking her father’s killer, Sasha entertains the notion of joining a cultish secret society that mysteriously grants the wishes of initiates. It turns out renouncing God and pledging fealty to Eryx, a relation of the devil, is not in store for Sasha. In some inventive takes on the eternal good-versus-evil dichotomy, Sasha is part-angel, and Eryx has a troupe of brothers who nobly seek to thwart him, though they are also sons of Hell. Big, strong, long-haired and immortal, Jax is the brother who is fated to shack up with Sasha, should she forsake her mortality and enlist with the brothers in their mission. Much of what drives the story comes across as just plain arbitrary. Early on, Sasha’s mother is deported to Russia, and Sasha has to move to Colorado, where Jax lives, to reside with evil relations. It turns out Sasha is an adopted child with no clue who her real parents are, and by the time she agrees to sacrifice normalcy to join Jax forever, she has nothing to lose and no one to fall back on anyway. The dialogue partakes of an aggressively teen vernacular—"… major bummer that her aunt isn't just a lost soul, but a crazy-bitch lost soul"—but the narration seems to have a hard time finding its rhythm.
The back story may not sink in but the romantic tension captivates . (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-60684-170-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Egmont USA
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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Witch queen Poppy Hawkweed returns in this sequel to The Hawkweed Prophecy (2016).
After the events of the last book, Poppy attempts to escape her new life as a witch queen by transforming into a swallow and migrating to Africa, though to what part of the vast continent is unclear. There, white Poppy’s taken in by a medicine maker, Mma, and her dark-skinned great-grandson, Teko. Though Mma and Teko are initially portrayed as likable characters, they eventually imprison Poppy, ostensibly for her own good, as they’ve seen a vision that she will be killed if she returns to England. Back in England, the third-person narrative perspective shifts among characters and times. There’s Poppy’s birth mother, Charlock, both in the present and when she was younger, as well as Leo, Ember, and Betony, Leo’s mother. Through the many lenses and back stories readers learn of Leo’s conception and what became of Betony, who left the witches to have her son. Teko eventually allows Poppy to escape, and once back in England, she’s bullied into taking up her queendom. But there are many twists and turns and painful betrayals to be hashed out before there’s a chance of happily ever after. Though themes of sisterhood are strong, most female relationships are interrupted, if not broken, by male intrusion. The real unbreakable bond in these stories is that between mother and child.
Interesting and well written but problematic in its conceptualization of a generic Africa and Africans. (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60286-314-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Weinstein Books
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
A middle-aged woman sidelined by a horrific accident finds even sharper pains waiting on the other side of her recuperation in this expert nightmare by Hardy, familiar to many readers as Megan Hart, author of All the Secrets We Keep (2017), etc.
Five months ago, while she was on her way to the hospital with an ailing gallbladder, Diana Sparrow’s car hit a deer on a rural Pennsylvania road. When she awoke, she was minus her gallbladder, two working collarbones (and therefore two functioning arms), and her memory. During a recovery that would’ve been impossible without the constant ministrations of Harriett Richmond, the mother-in-law who’s the real reason Diana married her husband, Jonathan, Diana’s discovered that Jonathan has been cheating on her with her childhood friend Valerie Delagatti. Divorce is out of the question: Diana’s grown used to the pampered lifestyle the prenup she’d signed would snatch away from her. Every day is filled with torments. She slips and falls in a pool of wine on her kitchen floor she’s sure she didn’t spill herself. At the emergency room, her credit card and debit card are declined. She feels that she hates oppressively solicitous Harriett but has no idea why. Her sessions with her psychiatrist fail to heal her rage at her adoptive mother, an addict who abandoned her then returned only to disappear again and die an ugly death. Even worse, her attempts to recover her lost memory lead to an excruciatingly paced series of revelations. Val says Diana asked her to seduce Jonathan. Diana realizes that Cole, a fellow student in her watercolor class, isn’t the stranger she’d thought he was. Where can this maze of deceptions possibly end?
One of those rare thrillers whose answers are even more scarifying than its mysteries.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64385-470-0
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE
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Boxed in by societal prejudices, a young Chicano struggles to find his identity.
Split into two separate periods, Chacón’s insightful novel portrays the trials of Victor Reyes, a death metal–loving, artistic teen who’s seemingly ill-fated in life. In the book’s first half, 14-year-old Victor recovers from a shooting—he was dead for a hair over 2 minutes—that leaves him with a fuzzy memory. Almost everyone, including his mom, believes he’s a cholo, a gangbanger destined for trouble. Though Victor tries his best to mend his relationship with his mom, he frequently ends up in incriminating situations. Meanwhile, Victor meets and falls for a feisty part-Mexican, part-Indian girl. The story moves at a meandering pace, which Chacón uses to sketch in disjointed details. Victor’s first-person narration doesn’t stand out in any particular way, but each of the diverse supporting characters features a distinct, if stereotypical, voice to fill in that void. The novel’s second half focuses on 17-year-old Victor, a senior succeeding in school and love. A supportive teacher helps him refine his artistic goals, pushing him to apply for art school. But Victor’s anger and past won’t let him go, and soon he’s knee-deep in the cholo life. Overall, the author employs a well-worn redemption arc, and the often clunky, self-conscious narration doesn’t really help to make it feel fresh: “They looked sort of geeky cool, like journalism students, the kind of kids that YA novels are written about.”
A well-meaning, awkward cautionary tale. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55885-840-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arté Público
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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