A gripping mystery that succeeds due to a headstrong protagonist who’s unwilling to fail.
A teenager unwittingly puts herself in peril as she works to clear her deceased father’s name in Biel’s YA thriller.
Sixteen-year-old Chloe Cowyn’s world is turned upside down when she finds her father, Dean, dead with a needle in his arm in the Wisconsin cemetery for which he’s the caretaker. The local police are content to treat the case as an overdose by an addict. However, Chloe refuses to believe that she wouldn’t know that the only other person in her household was using drugs. A TV crime drama buff, she decides to investigate her father’s death herself, but she has two problems to overcome. First, Maggie Gill, her aunt and only living relative, is a foreign correspondent who’s undercover and unreachable for three weeks. To gain freedom from well-meaning but intrusive adults, she tells everyone that Maggie has arrived unexpectedly, which allows Chloe to move back into her home alone. After discovering that Dean’s savings have disappeared, she takes a job as a server at a retro diner. She and Jarvis Keen, her chemistry partner-turned-boyfriend, discover that her family’s criminal past has come back to haunt her. In this first book of the Maggie & Chloe Mysteries series, Biel has created a winning protagonist in Chloe; Maggie only shows up late in the proceedings, so the extent of her contribution will have to be evaluated in future volumes. Stubborn Chloe finds herself in over her head for much of the story, largely because she has difficulty trusting others, aside from Jarvis, whose time with her gives him an escape from his troubled home life. There’s also a solid cast of supporting characters, led by diner owner Molly Bell and the police chief, Barnett. Biel also effectively makes use of three different narrative perspectives—primarily Chloe’s, supplemented by third-person flashbacks featuring Dean and the first-person viewpoint of an unknown “Watcher.” One quibble is that residents of a small Wisconsin town surely would be more aware of suspicious visitors. Overall, though, this is a strong beginning to a lively hero’s adventures.
A gripping mystery that succeeds due to a headstrong protagonist who’s unwilling to fail.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780998173641
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Lost Lake Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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