Engaging, if not essential.
Eight teens’ fates intertwine and recombine in the aftermath of a prank gone very wrong.
The constellation of characters is best imagined as a nucleus of two—the beautiful, domineering and troubled athletic couple Brendan and Emma—surrounded by an outer ring of friends, then two farther-off characters. The outer ring comprises sad stoner Felix and camera-toting Maxie, back in Illinois after four years in Colorado, along with golden girl Chloe and her earnest boyfriend, Anil. It is then connected more loosely to Emma’s thoughtful younger sister, Faith, and Walter, whose isolation and tenuous grasp on reality plays a pivotal role. After an unsatisfying, awkward stop at an alcohol-soaked end-of-summer bash, Chloe suggests a visit to the local “ghost house,” a seemingly abandoned property on the edge of the local cemetery. Chloe and Emma creep up on the porch, knocking over rose bushes as they go. The girls’ act of trespassing combines with Brendan’s drunkenness and bravado to set off a chain reaction that leads to multiple shootings and other serious injuries, which in turn lead to varying degrees of recovery and, ultimately, reflection. A novel in verse with a large cast of rather two-dimensional characters facing the consequences of their actions is nothing new, but Pattou keeps the pacing brisk enough to make this a decent page-turner.
Engaging, if not essential. (Verse/fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4778-4774-9
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Skyscape
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
The author leaves Alice and friends posing for graduation pictures and looking forward to pre-college summer jobs aboard a...
The newest entry in a series that sits proudly in second place on the ALA’s list of Most Banned/Challenged titles of the 21st century (behind Harry) takes its insecure but sensible 17-year-old narrator through her final semester of high school.
Alice navigates past such fixed points as Senior Prom, Prank Day and graduation as well as more personal triumphs and tribulations, from getting one of those flat business envelopes from her first-choice college to finding out that her boyfriend Patrick will be spending the next year in Spain. As ever, Naylor-as-Alice fills the interstices with teachable moments including (but not limited to) the short-lived appearance of a “Restricted Reading” shelf in the school library, watching an older co-worker and her loving husband with their new baby, coping with stress-related insomnia, attending a pregnant classmate’s baby shower and wedding and reacting to a friend’s admission that she’s saving up for a labiaplasty. It's all embedded in a milieu of quotidian detail, familiar characters and memories from previous episodes that add both continuity and a matter-of-fact credibility to the advice and insight.
The author leaves Alice and friends posing for graduation pictures and looking forward to pre-college summer jobs aboard a cruise ship that will frame the next few volumes in this richly entertaining, reliable and informative guide to growing up. (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7553-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lightweight fluff in the Chris Lynch/Chris Crutcher mode, if that's possible
Fraud pays.
“Pohi” seems like a great last name for a fictional high-school applicant invented in an International House of Pancakes: IHOP, Pohi, see? It's a a lark for Bobby and his friends, sitting there surrounded by all those privileged Whitestone Prep kids, to fill out a Whitestone application for "Rowan Pohi," Boy Scout, National Honor Society inductee, soup-kitchen volunteer and football player. But when "Rowan" gets accepted to Whitestone, Bobby takes a good hard look at his wrong-side-of-the-tracks life and realizes this could be the opportunity of a lifetime. Whitestone's teachers and facilities are miles away from those of Bobby's crappy public high school, and of course there's the girls. Bobby almost immediately falls for Heather, "a study in whiteness: white T-shirt, white shorts, white teeth, blonde hair. And long legs." Bobby has antagonists both in and out of school, but his ultimate success at Whitestone seems undeserved; the class inequities of the system are less important to the Whitestone decision-makers than the fact that Bobby’s a nice guy with a tragic back story. A recurring evocation of faux–Native American stories, culminating in a 5-year-old's assertion that "[b]eing Spider-Man is way cooler than being an Indian," will insult Native (and other) readers.
Lightweight fluff in the Chris Lynch/Chris Crutcher mode, if that's possible . (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-57208-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
