A romance with a hint of mystery, a well-developed protagonist, and excellent dialogue.
In Daly’s debut YA novel, a teenage girl engages in a battle of wills with a handsome cadet who’s trying to recruit her younger brother into an enigmatic academy.
Since losing her mother to cancer a couple of years ago, New Mexico high schooler Katie Connelly has taken care of her younger siblings, Andrew and Mikey. Their largely indifferent father, who used to be in the military, is more interested in assigning his kids chores than learning about their lives. So it’s shocking when he decides to send 8-year-old Andrew, who’s academically and athletically gifted, to the International Elite Academy in California. Katie is wary of this plan, as not much is known about the mysterious Academy. In addition, Andrew’s “mentor,” Cadet Pete Davenport, recently acted like an insolent jerk at the diner where Katie waitresses. She doesn’t trust him and sees him as a con artist using deceit to finalize Andrew’s recruitment. But it turns out that Pete can also be undeniably charming, and Katie soon fears that she’s “falling for the enemy.” She also thinks that her skepticism may be mere paranoia—a condition that some people attributed to her mother, who didn’t want her kids attending public school. In any case, Katie vows to learn more about Pete, the Academy, and its mission. There are indeed mysteries surrounding the Academy, but Daly’s story pays closer attention to the potential romance between Katie and Pete. There are numerous, prolonged scenes with the two after their initial encounter in the diner. However, these moments also deftly showcase how Katie intuitively questions nearly everything, such as the fact the Pete knows particular details about her. Moreover, Daly crafts superb dialogue in a steady but not excessive Southern dialect, with characters dropping “dadgum” and “y’all” into conversations. The supporting players also shine, from Katie’s self-centered frenemy, Ashley-Leigh Montgomery, to 4-year-old Mikey, whose childish speech is endearing: “I get to wide up fwunt…and without a boostuh!” The ending, while predictable, perfectly sets up a planned sequel.
A romance with a hint of mystery, a well-developed protagonist, and excellent dialogue.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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