Spy Kidsmeets White House Downin this fast-paced thriller with an overabundance of violence.
A terrorist threat to the president of the United States hits home for a teenager because the chief executive is her mom.
In Greenland’s (Scouts, 2019, etc.) latest YA thriller, Cuban American Sophie Washington will never forget her 17th birthday. It begins in the wee hours when her father wakes her with startling news: A domestic terrorist group has put a hit on her mother, the U.S. president. Her mom believes the action “is coming from someone on the inside.” Even kind-eyed Frank, the Secret Service agent who’s been with Sophie “forever,” can’t be trusted. Until today, Sophie’s biggest worry was how her parents would react to her plan to pierce her nose. Now, in addition to the credible threat to her mom, no one can locate her older “goofball brother,” Erik. When Sophie gets a call for help from Erik’s girlfriend, Britta, the first daughter evades her security detail and races to meet the girl at a designated spot. But no one is there when Sophie arrives. Do the terrorists have Erik and Britta as well as their other missing friend, Danforth? The three of them went to a party earlier, according to Erik’s best friend, Max. Sophie has her own posse: Zeke (who makes her heart “tumble”) and techno whiz kids Jackson and Callie. The group met in the CIA’s Teen Intelligence Program. Espionage training and plain, old badass ability help Sophie as she tries to find her brother and save her mom. The teen hacks into a senator’s computer, kidnaps an elderly woman, and straps a dagger to her thigh before sneaking into a construction site with Zeke. No one’s virginity gets lost in the propulsive novel, but a toe does, through torture. A surprising amount of cruelty, betrayal, and violence takes place, followed by an equally startling quick recovery from all of it. Attention from Zeke unrealistically seems to balance out all the truly bad stuff Sophie experiences. Toning down her take-charge abilities would boost the believability factor. But Greenland’s decision to make Sophie’s mom not immune to wrongdoing adds interest to the story as does having both the president and vice president ex-military. And the flashbacks in italics work well.
Spy Kidsmeets White House Downin this fast-paced thriller with an overabundance of violence.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-664-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
