An ultimately hopeful story that shows love—in all its powerful forms—can conquer the demons of the past.
A high school senior vows to solve her older brother’s cold case while warding off the growing darkness of an unseen world.
Seventeen-year-old Hylee Williams never wanted to leave Kansas. But after she literally vanished and reappeared in front of her parents and best friend during a cookout, Hylee was sent to live with her paternal grandmother in the cookie-cutter suburbs of Missouri. Hylee’s new life is less than desirable. She’s the new kid at school, her parents barely keep in touch—and she’s being pulled into another dimension, always arriving at a sinister version of her childhood home, where she’s forced to relive the night when her then-15-year-old brother, Bubba, went missing. Bubba’s body was never found, but nine years later, Hylee believes he is still alive. When Hylee meets a charmingly awkward boy called Eilam Roads at a house party, the attraction is undeniable; both feel as though they’ve met—and loved—each other before. As the frequency and duration of Hylee’s time-traveling episodes increase, she leans on Eilam to help control her ability, which may be linked to Bubba’s disappearance. Lewis’ genre-bending second novel offers equal parts star-crossed romance and spine-tingling science fiction horror. The method for time traveling is too easily explained, but the narrative is richly layered, and Hylee and Eilam’s relationship is depicted with tenderness. Main characters are Black.
An ultimately hopeful story that shows love—in all its powerful forms—can conquer the demons of the past. (Horror. 13-18)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781368077736
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
PROFILES
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