In a subgenre about queer themes and musicals that’s big enough to offer choice, other options are funnier and more genuine...
Mistaken identity, misbehavior, and musical theater.
Now that she’s starting Catholic school, how will 14-year-old Marty spend time with BFF Jimmy, who’s staying in public school and has a new boyfriend distracting him? Marty likes Jimmy’s boyfriend’s friends from the Gay-Straight Alliance but misses Jimmy’s undiluted attention. At least Marty’s school is doing Into the Woods—musicals are Marty’s lifeblood. Playing Little Red Riding Hood, she falls for the wily older boy playing the Wolf; Into the Woods fans will gobble up the detailed connections between show and life. As the kids pal around and drink beer, Marty’s oblivious social assumptions exist only to set up a plot tangle of identities, jealousies, and missteps. Weak characterization strains for voice, with Marty’s campy first-person narration (“HELL no. I’m not going to be the only girl-skank in these pictures!”) sounding the same as her gay friends’ (“Sweetheart, you have no idea what a trove of secrets I keep”; “You are soooo changing out of that…arrangement of fabric”). Ongoing snark about unshaven female legs, an it’s-so-weird attitude about a Chinese name before Marty learns its pronunciation, and variations on a slur (“mah bitches,” “bee-yatch,” and the classic “bitch”) aim for humor and flavor but come off, well, bitchy.
In a subgenre about queer themes and musicals that’s big enough to offer choice, other options are funnier and more genuine than this. (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1496-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This sequel to The Dark Divine (2009) falls into the classic Twilight patterns: a blank slate of a heroine and a reliance on sexual tension and vague presentiments of danger to drive the narrative. Grace Divine is a werewolf now, bitten by her rogue-werewolf brother Jude before he ran off. Her family is falling apart, with her mother increasingly unstable at the loss of a child and her father traveling around the country seeking his lost son. Grace’s only joy is her relationship with her boyfriend Daniel, himself a former werewolf but now disturbingly standoffish. Now Grace is receiving mysterious phone calls that appear to be from her brother and that may be connected to the town’s unsolved rash of vandalism. Though the plot drags, Despain’s fans will be pleased by the introduction of a flannel-clad hottie who is more than ready to comfort Grace during Daniel’s mysterious absences. For those who find a surfeit of rippling muscles and naked pecs to be sufficient for an enjoyable romance. (Paranormal romance. 13-15)
Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60684-058-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Egmont USA
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
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
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