An immersive teen adventure as big and eclectic as a Staten Island landfill.
A group of teens stumbles across a criminal enterprise centered around their neighborhood dump in Gupta’s debut YA novel.
Staten Island, 1998: The neighborhood of Travis is home to Fresh Kills Landfill, the main dumping ground for New York City’s trash—among other things. For kids like Raj Patel, it’s a spot to be avoided, a place “of luminescent rivers, dog-sized rats, and rabid turkey vultures,” to say nothing of its connections to the local mafia family. Raj has enough on his plate without worrying about Fresh Kills—the high schooler runs his own lucrative business burning bootleg CDs for his classmates. He uses the money to help out his Polish American mom, who’s been forced to pull double shifts as a nurse’s aide at an eldercare facility ever since his Indian father split for Florida two years ago. On the night following his final day of freshman year, Raj, a new Mississippi transplant named Georgia, and Raj’s friends—known throughout the neighborhood as the Victory Boys—accidentally stumble across a murder-in-progress in the middle of the landfill. They manage to disrupt the proceedings (sort of), but now they have mobsters on their tails. If they want to get out of this quagmire with their lives, Raj and his buddies will have to confront the long-ignored garbage rotting in the heart of their town. Gupta evokes the time and place with sharp details and plenty of wit, particularly regarding the dump itself. “My science teacher never tired of reminding us that the only man-made structures visible from space were the Great Wall of China and the Fresh Kills landfill,” narrates Raj. “As far as we were concerned, those two were comparable—monuments to humanity’s limitless potential.” While the premise of a group of teens uncovering a mystery is well-trod territory, Gupta delivers on both sides of the equation: Raj and his friends—who include a pair of stoners called Deadbolt and Cheetah—are charmingly specific and memorably rendered, as is Travis’s multiethnic underworld.
An immersive teen adventure as big and eclectic as a Staten Island landfill.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9798886453133
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A treat for mystery readers who enjoy being kept in suspense.
Everyone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago—except Pippa Fitz-Amobi.
Pip has known and liked Sal since childhood; he’d supported her when she was being bullied in middle school. For her senior capstone project, Pip researches the disappearance of former Fairview High student Andie, last seen on April 18, 2014, by her younger sister, Becca. The original investigation concluded with most of the evidence pointing to Sal, who was found dead in the woods, apparently by suicide. Andie’s body was never recovered, and Sal was assumed by most to be guilty of abduction and murder. Unable to ignore the gaps in the case, Pip sets out to prove Sal’s innocence, beginning with interviewing his younger brother, Ravi. With his help, Pip digs deeper, unveiling unsavory facts about Andie and the real reason Sal’s friends couldn’t provide him with an alibi. But someone is watching, and Pip may be in more danger than she realizes. Pip’s sleuthing is both impressive and accessible. Online articles about the case and interview transcripts are provided throughout, and Pip’s capstone logs offer insights into her thought processes as new evidence and suspects arise. Jackson’s debut is well-executed and surprises readers with a connective web of interesting characters and motives. Pip and Andie are white, and Sal is of Indian descent.
A treat for mystery readers who enjoy being kept in suspense. (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-9636-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Crowd-pleasing fun laced with political fire: a winner.
Bestselling author Faizal returns to the universe of We Hunt the Flame (2019) with a stand-alone duology opener.
Orphaned Arthie, brown-skinned with mauve hair, has created a criminal empire out of sheer pluck despite being Ceylani in Ettenia, where laws favor white people. She pulled legendary pistol Calibore from a stone plinth (though the prophecy that doing so would make her the nation’s leader turned out to be a hoax). She’s also built Spindrift, a teahouse-cum-bloodhouse, where she gathers secrets from wealthy humans and vampires, amassing power and security. Now Arthie has her sights set on vengeance—and the Ram, Ettenia’s masked monarch. When she and Jin, her brother-by-choice (who’s cued East Asian), are drawn into a heist, they assemble a diverse crew of immigrants whose roles riff on genre archetypes. The lush prose pulses with feeling as revelations are dropped and the tension ratchets up, keeping the pages turning as the motley gang plans to infiltrate a vampire society, retrieve a stolen ledger, and double-cross one of the Ram’s guards (who might be planning to double-cross them). Their ultimate goal: taking down the colonizing Ettenians and the exploitative East Jeevant Company. It’s all very exciting right up to the action-packed finale, which promises more conspiracy and (hopefully) justice to come. This compelling read offers interesting commentary on our society while feeling entirely real within the context of its own worldbuilding.
Crowd-pleasing fun laced with political fire: a winner. (map) (Fantasy. 13-18)Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780374389406
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
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