Fans may be better served by stopping with the penultimate installment, Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise (2013).
Sammy Keyes has helped to put countless bad guys away during her short sleuthing career. Now, one of those bad guys wants revenge in this 18th and final story.
When 14-year-old Sammy sneaks into the Senior Highrise in an attempt to catch the long-elusive Nightie-Napper, someone pushes her from the third-floor fire escape. Fortunately, she lands in the bushes; unfortunately, she’s unconscious and unable to tell what happened. The author inserts herself as narrator in Sammy’s stead, directly addressing readers through a mobile point of view that flows easily from character to character, with bits of back story woven seamlessly throughout. Snappy dialogue, fast-paced narration and glimpses inside the minds of major secondary characters like best friend Marissa McKenze, former nemesis Heather Acosta, and Sammy’s melodramatic and self-absorbed mother keep readers glued to the action as friends, family and a mob of high-top–wearing teens band together to solve the biggest mystery of all: Who tried to kill Sammy Keyes? It’s bad enough that this is Sammy’s last outing; Van Draanen’s departure from her proven, winning formula backfires. Without Sammy’s endearingly wisecracking personality leading the way, the series’ end falls flat.
Fans may be better served by stopping with the penultimate installment, Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise (2013). (Mystery. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-375-87055-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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