Overwrought and half baked.
After a popular cheerleader plunges to her death, her younger sister forges an unexpected relationship with the boy responsible.
Brady’s sister Sabine died on the floor of their high school gym from a broken neck when she failed to complete a complicated flip. Brady and her family blame Sabine’s lift partner, Connor Christopher, for not catching her. But after Connor helps Brady with her car one wintry afternoon, she does an about-face and decides he’s not that bad a guy after all. Brady’s feelings about Connor are confirmed when Sabine’s cellphone voice mail reveals dark truths about her bright sister: Sabine was pregnant, her perfect boyfriend, Nick, verbally abused her, and Connor was the only one who knew. The question of what Brady will do with this information is complicated by the underdeveloped subplots of her parents’ deteriorating marriage, her loss of a prestigious school art prize, and her best friend Martha’s decision to date Sabine’s abusive ex. All of this leads to a bizarre climax in which Brady hurls some of Sabine’s cremains at Nick after he drugs and kidnaps Martha, obliterating any suspension of disbelief. While the initial premise is intriguing, the story is crippled by self-conscious dialogue, abrupt transitions and the fact that all relevant information is spelled out instead of shown.
Overwrought and half baked. (Fiction. 13 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-167-6
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Diversion Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Sensitive subject matter that could have benefited from a subtler, more sober touch.
A Jewish girl joins up with Polish resistance groups to fight for her people against the evils of the Holocaust.
Chaya Lindner is forcibly separated from her family when they are consigned to the Jewish ghetto in Krakow. The 16-year-old is taken in by the leaders of Akiva, a fledgling Jewish resistance group that offers her the opportunity to become a courier, using her fair coloring to pass for Polish and sneak into ghettos to smuggle in supplies and information. Chaya’s missions quickly become more dangerous, taking her on a perilous journey from a disastrous mission in Krakow to the ghastly ghetto of Lodz and eventually to Warsaw to aid the Jews there in their gathering uprising inside the walls of the ghetto. Through it all, she is partnered with a secretive young girl whom she is reluctant to trust. The trajectory of the narrative skews toward the sensational, highlighting moments of resistance via cinematic action sequences but not pausing to linger on the emotional toll of the Holocaust’s atrocities. Younger readers without sufficient historical knowledge may not appreciate the gravity of the events depicted. The principal characters lack depth, and their actions and the situations they find themselves in often require too much suspension of disbelief to pass for realism.
Sensitive subject matter that could have benefited from a subtler, more sober touch. (afterword) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-14847-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
The sudden death of her twin leaves a teenager struggling with grief and her fragile sense of self in this absorbing, inwardly focused import from Sweden, part fiction, part memoir. So close are the sisters that after Cilla is killed by a motorist Tina can still hear her voice, still see her just by looking in a mirror, still hold conversations; she even finds herself taking on some of Cilla’s character traits, seeking an inner balance that she has lost. Able to describe her experiences only by switching back and forth between third person and first, Tina observes the different ways those around her grieve, and finds temporary solace in many places: reading and writing poetry, performing on stage, playing her violin, trying a brief but intense fling at summer camp, even talking to a perceptive psychologist—but unlike many such stories, there is never any sense here that the authors are running through a catalog of coping strategies, or offering trite platitudes. A year later, Tina discovers that, in forming new friendships and moving on in life, she has passed the worst of her pain, and found ways to distance herself from Cilla without losing her completely. In a smooth, natural-sounding translation, this is a thoughtful, complex reminiscence. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: March 23, 1999
ISBN: 91-29-63935-2
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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