Readers caught up in the plot should brace themselves for a total lack of closure and a wait for Book 2.
Tanya’s impeccable sense of direction can’t keep her from feeling lost when her father dies.
Just over six months ago, Tanya’s father disappeared in a flash flood on a mapmaking trip through rural Cambodia. She’s left with her kindergarten-teacher stepmother, Beth, and her godfather, Harrison Worth, her father’s business partner in a tech mapping startup called MapOut. Harrison has bought Beth and Tanya out to protect them from losing everything should the company fail. Far from failing, the company has thrived, and Harrison still watches over Tanya and Beth. During a summer internship at MapOut, Tanya reunites with Harrison’s son, Connor, a childhood friend. Searching for her dad’s final emails, they crack his computer’s triple password and discover that all is not as it seems. When Connor disappears the next day, leaving a confusing text, Tanya doesn’t know what to do…and then she’s drugged and kidnapped. Escaping her kidnappers lands her in deeper trouble. Can Tanya find her father’s old friend Cleo? And will she be able to help? Craze and Bomback’s character-driven thriller is a bit slow out of the gate, but teens who stick with it will enjoy the few twists and identify with Tanya’s inability to hide in our high-tech world.
Readers caught up in the plot should brace themselves for a total lack of closure and a wait for Book 2. (Thriller. 12-17)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61695-347-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Soho Teen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play.
Garber returns to the world of bestseller Caraval (2017), this time with the focus on younger, more daring sister Donatella.
Valenda, capital of the empire, is host to the second of Legend’s magical games in a single year, and while Scarlett doesn’t want to play again, blonde Tella is eager for a chance to prove herself. She is haunted by the memory of her death in the last game and by the cursed Deck of Destiny she used as a child which foretold her loveless future. Garber has changed many of the rules of her expanding world, which now appears to be infused with magic and evil Fates. Despite a weak plot and ultraviolet prose (“He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.”), this is a tour de force of imagination. Themes of love, betrayal, and the price of magic (and desire) swirl like Caraval’s enchantments, and Dante’s sensuous kisses will thrill readers as much as they do Tella. The convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts (one of the Fates), Legend, and even the empress serve as the impetus for Tella’s story and set up future volumes which promise to go bigger. With descriptions focusing primarily on clothing, characters’ ethnicities are often indeterminate.
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09531-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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A meditation on a timely subject that never forgets to put its characters and their stories first
An Afghani-Australian teen named Mina earns a scholarship to a prestigious private school and meets Michael, whose family opposes allowing Muslim refugees and immigrants into the country.
Dual points of view are presented in this moving and intelligent contemporary novel set in Australia. Eleventh-grader Mina is smart and self-possessed—her mother and stepfather (her biological father was murdered in Afghanistan) have moved their business and home across Sydney in order for her to attend Victoria College. She’s determined to excel there, even though being surrounded by such privilege is a culture shock for her. When she meets white Michael, the two are drawn to each other even though his close-knit, activist family espouses a political viewpoint that, though they insist it is merely pragmatic, is unquestionably Islamophobic. Tackling hard topics head-on, Abdel-Fattah explores them fully and with nuance. True-to-life dialogue and realistic teen social dynamics both deepen the tension and provide levity. While Mina and Michael’s attraction seems at first unlikely, the pair’s warmth wins out, and readers will be swept up in their love story and will come away with a clearer understanding of how bias permeates the lives of those targeted by it.
A meditation on a timely subject that never forgets to put its characters and their stories first . (Fiction. 12-17)Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-11866-7
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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