A creepily potent story of a family legacy that gives terrifying shape to monsters real and imagined.
A Black Canadian private school student tries to solve a series of gruesome murders connected to her family.
Seventeen-year-old Sunny Behre is good at fooling people. After the death of her mother, Ainsley, Sunny embraces her role as the perpetually smiling golden child among the five siblings. Her family owns Behre Academy, a Toronto private high school that depends on donations to educate young people in need. With Ainsley gone, Sunny considers herself the ambassador for the school. When Dom, her younger brother, is charged with murdering his girlfriend, Ainsley’s loss feels even more pronounced. One day after school, Sunny stumbles upon the chilling sight of the mangled body of a fellow student—and of Dom, who’s been released while awaiting trial, with blood on his hands. Dom maintains his innocence, and although Sunny isn’t entirely convinced, she races to uncover the actual killer. As the campus body count ramps up, Sunny realizes that Ainsley kept secrets, including details about a violent night that changed Sunny’s parents’ young lives forever. Told through Sunny’s first-person narration, Sambury’s latest taps into the skin-prickling discomfort of a slasher film to explore the heavy inheritance of generational trauma. Identity, the intersection of race and privilege, and the nuances of class are handled with care, though the rules governing the supernatural elements are not fully explained.
A creepily potent story of a family legacy that gives terrifying shape to monsters real and imagined. (Horror. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9781665903523
Page Count: 416
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging
Audrey Rose Wadsworth, 17, would rather perform autopsies in her uncle’s dark laboratory than find a suitable husband, as is the socially acceptable rite of passage for a young, white British lady in the late 1800s.
The story immediately brings Audrey into a fractious pairing with her uncle’s young assistant, Thomas Cresswell. The two engage in predictable rounds of “I’m smarter than you are” banter, while Audrey’s older brother, Nathaniel, taunts her for being a girl out of her place. Horrific murders of prostitutes whose identities point to associations with the Wadsworth estate prompt Audrey to start her own investigation, with Thomas as her sidekick. Audrey’s narration is both ponderous and polemical, as she sees her pursuit of her goals and this investigation as part of a crusade for women. She declares that the slain aren’t merely prostitutes but “daughters and wives and mothers,” but she’s also made it a point to deny any alignment with the profiled victims: “I am not going as a prostitute. I am simply blending in.” Audrey also expresses a narrow view of her desired gender role, asserting that “I was determined to be both pretty and fierce,” as if to say that physical beauty and liking “girly” things are integral to feminism. The graphic descriptions of mutilated women don’t do much to speed the pace.
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging . (Historical thriller. 15-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-27349-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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