An engaging tale about family, maturation, and love.
A YA novel offers a coming-of-age story about life’s uncertainties facing a New York City teenager.
Carly Klein, a high school sophomore, is a smart Jewish girl (she “read the captions to New Yorker cartoons when she was four”) on the verge of becoming an adult in the early 1980s. Yet she is struggling at Baxter, a girls’ school on 79th Street and the East River. She lives with her parents: Gwen, a psychiatrist on staff at Mount Sinai Hospital who counsels patients in her home office, and Joel, who works in a Midtown advertising office. Carly’s best friend, Lauren Lensky, has a French mother (Tibou) and a comfortable, welcoming home—the opposite of her own home. Carly dreams of being Tibou’s daughter and secretly reads her mother’s confidential patient notebooks. Through these notebooks, Daniel Strauss becomes Carly’s favorite patient. Daniel is a “blind junior at Columbia College who majors in music and plays jazz saxophone.” Carly impulsively decides to follow Daniel one night. She also sneaks out to the Downunder Café, where Daniel is playing his saxophone one evening. At the cafe, she sees Edwin, her father’s assistant, with her dad and must face a new reality. Later, posing as a girl named Serena, she becomes a reader for Daniel, which complicates her life further. Harlan’s believable and compelling depiction of Carly’s home life includes a mother becoming absorbed in her work and a father coming out as gay. In this well-crafted tale, the turmoil between her parents results in Carly heading to a camp in Colorado. She doesn’t want to go, so she fights packing and hates the camp once there. Additionally, Harlan’s vivid portrait of Lauren’s loving family provides a rich contrast and an escape for Carly. A minor flaw surfaces in the scene in which Carly follows Daniel. Readers may question: Why isn’t Daniel or his dog aware of her presence? Wouldn’t he or his pooch eventually hear or smell her? But this minor misstep doesn’t spoil an engrossing story.
An engaging tale about family, maturation, and love.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A heavy read about the harsh realities of tragedy and their effects on those left behind.
In this companion novel to 2013’s If He Had Been With Me, three characters tell their sides of the story.
Finn’s narrative starts three days before his death. He explores the progress of his unrequited love for best friend Autumn up until the day he finally expresses his feelings. Finn’s story ends with his tragic death, which leaves his close friends devastated, unmoored, and uncertain how to go on. Jack’s section follows, offering a heartbreaking look at what it’s like to live with grief. Jack works to overcome the anger he feels toward Sylvie, the girlfriend Finn was breaking up with when he died, and Autumn, the girl he was preparing to build his life around (but whom Jack believed wasn’t good enough for Finn). But when Jack sees how Autumn’s grief matches his own, it changes their understanding of one another. Autumn’s chapters trace her life without Finn as readers follow her struggles with mental health and balancing love and loss. Those who have read the earlier book will better connect with and feel for these characters, particularly since they’ll have a more well-rounded impression of Finn. The pain and anger is well written, and the novel highlights the most troublesome aspects of young adulthood: overconfidence sprinkled with heavy insecurities, fear-fueled decisions, bad communication, and brash judgments. Characters are cued white.
A heavy read about the harsh realities of tragedy and their effects on those left behind. (author’s note, content warning) (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781728276229
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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