A sometimes-wooden but mostly entertaining friendship tale with elements of horror and suspense.
Three high schoolers attempt to understand the death of their friend in this YA paranormal thriller.
Jared Smith was popular among his classmates, from the moment he moved to town in the second grade right up until the summer before his senior year. Then things changed: “On the first day back to school, Jared was noticeably different from his usual friendly, outgoing self. He was moody and withdrawn. He shunned people and avoided the social circle he’d once been a prominent member of. In fact, he acted as if he didn’t want friends at all.” It is those unwanted friends—especially the trio of Conner Preston, Adam Wheeler, and Trevor Helms—who are most thrown when they learn, a few months into the school year, that the recently expelled Jared is dead. Their confusion is deepened when they learn that Jared’s family, which has just left town, believes he died as a result of being possessed by the devil. The story quickly spreads, and soon competing teams of paranormal investigators arrive in town to cover the possession. The three boys are anxious to clear Jared’s name and get to the bottom of his mysterious death, but to do so, they’ll have to confront the week they spent with their pal in a lakeside cabin the previous summer. In other words, the week they stopped being friends. The novel’s premise is a strong one, and Renna’s depiction of the teenage characters—particularly the ways they bristle against the perceived expectations of adults—is well executed. Unfortunately, there’s a stiffness to the prose that often flattens the players and their dialogue: “Hailey Brooks headed their direction with her constant companion, Jasmine, and another friend of theirs, Miguel. All smiles and shining, shoulder-length blonde hair, she was one of the prettiest girls in the senior class. Sitting, Hailey purred, ‘Hey, boys.’ ” The tale marries classic tropes of the exorcism genre with heartfelt issues of adolescence, which provide the story with an unexpected emotional depth. There are clichéd or saccharine moments that temporarily break the spell, but overall the book delivers on the promises of the setup.
A sometimes-wooden but mostly entertaining friendship tale with elements of horror and suspense.Pub Date: April 15, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-73-859799-2
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.
Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.
When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593809860
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes.
The Plague has left a population divided between Elites and Ordinaries—those who have powers and those who don’t; now, an Ordinary teen fights for her life.
Paedyn Gray witnessed the king kill her father five years ago, and she’s been thieving and sleeping rough ever since, all while faking Psychic abilities. When she inadvertently saves the life of Prince Kai, she becomes embroiled in the Purging Trials, a competition to commemorate the sickness that killed most of the kingdom’s Ordinaries. Kai’s duties as the future Enforcer include eradicating any remaining Ordinaries, and these Trials are his chance to prove that he’s internalized his brutal training. But Kai can’t help but find Pae’s blue eyes, silver hair, and unabashed attitude enchanting. She likewise struggles to resist his stormy gray eyes, dark hair, and rakish behavior, even as they’re pitted against each other in the Trials and by the king himself. Scenes and concepts that are strongly reminiscent of the Hunger Games fall flat: They aren’t bolstered by the original’s heart or worldbuilding logic that would have justified a few extreme story elements. Illogical leaps and inconsistent characterizations abound, with lighthearted romantic interludes juxtaposed against genocide, child abuse, and sadism. These elements, which are not sufficiently addressed, combined with the use of ableist language, cannot be erased by any amount of romantic banter. Main characters are cued white; the supporting cast has some brown-skinned characters.
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798987380406
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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