A good introduction to Cuba’s complex history.
An emotional coming-of-age story posed against the backdrop of the Cuban revolution.
The year is 1957. Batista is struggling to maintain control of Cuba while Castro gathers his rebels in the mountains. Thirteen-year-old Adela Santiago and her family are living near Havana when the revolution comes to their front door in the form of her cousin who has just survived a bombing at the Hotel Nacional. People are disappearing, gunshots ring through the night, and life as they knew it is gone. A colorful, multiracial cast of characters fills Adela’s life and neighborhood through chapters that feel like individual vignettes. Through her journey, Adela evolves and begins to figure out what kind of person she wants to be as she learns that even those we love most can disappoint us. Although the revolution is a driving force, filling the narrative with tension and fear, Adela’s story is front and center. The conflict is presented in a way that demonstrates the complexity of the situation in Cuba, including how most people suffered and lost at the hands of both Batista and Fidel, who were two sides of the same coin. At times the book reads like a checklist of all things Cuban (Dominoes? Check. Rum? Check. Ropa vieja? Check.), and the use of imagery from Jose Martí’s “Cultiva una rosa blanca” also becomes heavy-handed.
A good introduction to Cuba’s complex history. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-9997768-2-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Papillote Press/Dufour
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come.
A heady blend of courtly double-crossing, Faerie lore, and toxic attraction swirls together in the sequel to The Cruel Prince (2018).
Five months after engineering a coup, human teen Jude is starting to feel the strain of secretly controlling King Cardan and running his Faerie kingdom. Jude’s self-loathing and anger at the traumatic events of her childhood (her Faerie “dad” killed her parents, and Faerie is not a particularly easy place even for the best-adjusted human) drive her ambition, which is tempered by her desire to make the world she loves and hates a little fairer. Much of the story revolves around plotting (the Queen of the Undersea wants the throne; Jude’s Faerie father wants power; Jude’s twin, Taryn, wants her Faerie betrothed by her side), but the underlying tension—sexual and political—between Jude and Cardan also takes some unexpected twists. Black’s writing is both contemporary and classic; her world is, at this point, intensely well-realized, so that some plot twists seem almost inevitable. Faerie is a strange place where immortal, multihued, multiformed denizens can’t lie but can twist everything; Jude—who can lie—is an outlier, and her first-person, present-tense narration reveals more than she would choose. With curly dark brown hair, Jude and Taryn are never identified by race in human terms.
A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come. (map) (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-31035-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution.
A teenage girl finds herself alone after everyone else in her town mysteriously disappears, leaving her scrambling to figure out how to find them all.
One late summer day, everybody in July Fielding’s town disappears. She is left to piece together what happened, following a series of cryptic signs she finds around town urging her to “GET THEM BACK.” The narrative moves back and forth between July’s present and the events of the summer before, when her relationship with her best friend, cross-country team co-captain Sydney, starts to fracture due to a combination of jealousy over July’s new relationship with a cute boy called Sam and sweet up-and-coming freshman Ella’s threatening to overtake Syd’s status as star of the track team. The team members participate in a ritual in which they jump off a cliff into the rocky waters below at the end of their Friday practice runs. Though Ella is reluctant, Syd pressures her to jump. Short, frenetically paced sections move the story along quickly, and there is much foreshadowing pointing to something terrible that occurred at the end of that summer, which may be the key to July’s current predicament, but there is much misdirection too. Ultimately this is a story without enough setup to make the turn the book takes in the end feel fully developed or earned. All characters read white.
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593327173
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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