An imaginative, if sobering tale of young self-discovery and the emotional power of music.
A young American woman with the power of premonition seeks answers about her father in England in Hawkins’ YA novel.
Teenage Josephine “Jo” Bryantgrieves her musician father’s death by suicide, feeling emotionally unmoored and having many questions. Therapy and medications don’t help her, and she pulls away from her mother and her friends. However, she also begins to have vivid premonitions that often come true. When she dreams of seeing her father in London, where he lived, she knows she must go there. Jo gets the opportunity to do so the summer before her senior year of high school, and there, she finds an ally in a young man named Henry who’s on his own quest to communicate with the dead, using spiritual ley lines to locate places that are “windows between the past and present.” Jo eventually finds many answers, but they’re not the ones that she was expecting. Hawkins wisely allows Jo to tell her own story, but she also includes text threads between Jo and loved ones back home, which effectively allows those characters to speak for themselves. Jo is a Beatles fan largely because her father performed in a Fab Four cover band, and Hawkins nicely weaves musical material into the story; Jo visits many fan sites, even traveling to Liverpool, and the novel and its chapters are named for relevant Beatles lyrics or song titles. The story doesn’t go down like a fizzy pop song though; its feel is more Revolver than Meet the Beatles. Although it’s unquestionably a romance, and some of the twists are humorous, much of the story hangs on betrayal and emotional abuse. Jo’s struggles to overcome and understand what’s happened in her life are moving and realistic, if a bit dark. Although many issues are deftly left unresolved, ultimately readers will feel satisfied.
An imaginative, if sobering tale of young self-discovery and the emotional power of music.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2021
ISBN: 9781945654787
Page Count: 313
Publisher: Owl Hollow Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Bound to be popular.
A suddenly trendy trope—conflict and romance between members of conquering and enslaved races—enlivened by fantasy elements loosely drawn from Arabic tradition (another trend!).
In an original, well-constructed fantasy world (barring some lazy naming), the Scholars have lived under Martial rule for 500 years, downtrodden and in many cases enslaved. Scholar Laia has spent a lifetime hiding her connection to the Resistance—her parents were its leaders—but when her grandparents are killed and her brother’s captured by Masks, the eerie, silver-faced elite soldiers of the Martial Empire, Laia must go undercover as a slave to the terrifying Commandant of Blackcliff Military Academy, where Martials are trained for battle. Meanwhile, Elias, the Commandant’s not-at-all-beloved son, wants to run away from Blackcliff, until he is named an Aspirant for the throne by the mysterious red-eyed Augurs. Predictably, action, intrigue, bloodshed and some pounding pulses follow; there’s betrayal and a potential love triangle or two as well. Sometimes-lackluster prose and a slight overreliance on certain kinds of sexual violence as a threat only slightly diminish the appeal created by familiar (but not predictable) characters and a truly engaging if not fully fleshed-out fantasy world.
Bound to be popular. (Fantasy. 13 & up)Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59514-803-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce.
Houck kicks off a new story arc in the world of the Tiger’s Curse series with new tigers who live in a northerly setting.
The death of their widowed royal mother touches off a crisis in the Kievian Empire; neither Stacia nor Verusha Stepanov, 17-year-old sword-wielding twin sisters, wants to be named tsarina. But questions of succession get put on hold when a battle with a sorcerer inexplicably turns the two into nonspeaking Siberian tigers. Hints of a cure send them, along with a growing entourage of men to provide assistance (and, perforce, do all the talking), on a long trek. Though most of the cast sticks to genre type, Houck throws in a wild card in the form of hunky, inarticulate Nikolai, who joins the quest because he is enthralled by Verusha—and who also killed his whole family in an act of revenge. Occasional anachronistic dialogue (e.g., “Are you ready, ladies?”) disrupts the tale’s generally earnest tone, as do the clumsy attempts at banter. A third tiger, snarky and blind but conveniently able to see through others’ eyes, trots in late in the story. The events in this setup volume unfold with many a flashback and change in point of view and head toward no sort of resolution—only the cave-dwelling White Shaman of the Tundra’s advice that further journeys are in the offing. The central cast in this Russian-inspired fantasy world presents white; the Indigenous population includes nomadic reindeer herders.
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce. (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798212221696
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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