A winning hero confronts serious issues in this increasingly dark YA/SF saga.
Transgender teen Oliver navigates relationships and other hazards with the assistance of a shape-shifting alien in Blume’s YA SF novel.
The sequel to the author’s Caring for Your Clown: Aliens Are Real (2021) returns to the travails of 14-year-old Oliver Jariwala. Assigned female at birth (and named “Olivia”), Oliver is male. He has suffered a traumatic, abusive childhood at the hands of his conservative father, Matthew, from whom Oliver’s mother, Marie, has obtained a divorce. Subsequently, Marie, a scientist, vanished in a laboratory accident—she apparently disintegrated—while working on a “molecular transporter” device. Oliver was adopted by a Marie’s second husband, the loving, equally science-minded Jon Jariwala, whose last name Oliver is excited to take for his own (“ ‘Mom wanted me to wait until I was eighteen,’ he said, ‘But now that I'm legally his kid, I don’t have to…I wanna make sure he knows how much it means to me’ ”). Earlier, the vengeful, psychotic Matthew had pushed for legal custody. Oliver was only saved from Matthew’s brutal control by an intercession from a remarkable friend: a humanoid female alien creature named Dindet, who arrived on Earth via (apparently) the same phenomenon that dematerialized Marie. Though friendly and technologically advanced, Dindet is backwards and troublesome in many ways; bizarrely, she takes the form of a multicolored circus clown (it appears clowns are a recognized extra-terrestrial race). Disguised as a foreign exchange student living with Oliver (while trying to help Jon unravel the mystery of Marie’s disappearance on the side), Dindet experiences frequent culture shock and becomes swept up in capers with Oliver in both this and other dimensions. Oliver, losing patience with Dindet’s increasing absences and erratic nature, experiences deeper relationships with boy-next-door Douglass and a brash upperclassman, Markus, a confident and cool senior connected to the school paper. But even Markus’ own stepbrother, Cody Mulligan, warns Oliver that Markus is bad news. Meanwhile, the institute behind Marie’s fateful science experiment presses for firm answers and results.
Like the ever-morphing Dindet, a more or less an amorphous blob whose forms range from a sort of Harpo Marx–like comical character to a slavering Lovecraftian monstrosity, the plot is a real mish-mash of elements, tilting toward the shocking, confessional work of confabulated author “J.T. Leroy” in its key themes of incest, domestic violence, and gender. This is YA fiction at a rarefied level—the author has a knack for conveying how real adolescents might process the complicated feelings experienced by the characters (“The senior turned to face him, some sorry and sad frown pulling at his lips. ‘And if—if you’re not into it, that’s fine. I don't know how, uh, boy girl—girl boys work, lol’ ”). The Dindet material, which is largely relegated to a subplot here, ultimately dovetails with Oliver’s drama in very dire fashion. The two narrative strands share a painful commonality (in addition to the notion of alien-ation) in their vivid depictions of personal violation and innocents being cruelly victimized.
A winning hero confronts serious issues in this increasingly dark YA/SF saga.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2022
ISBN: 9781737946342
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Shaky Alien Publications
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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