A buzzworthy eco-thriller.
Will a teen be able to find her missing sister and save a local forest from development?
Eighteen-year-old Dee Ramirez’s twin sister, Beth, is missing. For the last six years, the girls have lived separately and grown distant—Dee moved out with her police officer father, while Beth remained with their mother. With Beth’s disappearance, Dee and her father are back in the family home, and Dee is attending Beth’s school and learning as much as she can about her life. As Dee tries to piece together clues about Beth’s disappearance, she also becomes invested in a cause Beth cared deeply about: fighting against the Redline Central Gas Company, a shady corporation determined to run a pipeline through the pristine pinelands Beth loved. With her best friend, Tobi, and Beth’s boyfriend, Lucas, Dee explores the pinelands, positive that clues to her sister’s fate must be out there. In a sharp supernatural twist, Dee encounters something otherworldly in the woods that she cannot explain but feels can help. Drawing upon a mix of contemporary environmentalism and paranormal mystery and populated with a believable cast of characters, this genre-defying thrill ride will appeal to a wide audience. The resolution may leave a bit to be desired, but the journey is filled with edge-of-your-seat creepiness. O’Connor positively portrays characters of diverse body shapes and sizes; Dee and her family’s surname cues them as Latinx. Lucas appears White, and the supporting cast is multiracial.
A buzzworthy eco-thriller. (Graphic thriller. 13-17)Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12530-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House Graphic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chilling and suspenseful, with just the right number of twists.
If your friend’s dead body falls in the woods and nobody is around to see which of you pulled the trigger, what will your story be?
In an after-party haze of booze and drugs, five white, wealthy best friends go hunting in the River Point woods—only four return. With one of the boys, Grant, shot dead in an apparent accident and no one willing to admit responsibility, Logan, Henry, John Michael, and Shep vow to keep silent in order to protect their remaining group and the killer among them. But secrets have a way of burrowing through bonds, and the tightknit foursome, dubbed the River Point Boys, has already started to unravel. Meanwhile, budding photojournalist and white senior Kate Marino is interning at the district attorney’s office, where her boss is assigned the River Point case. The DA wants the case to disappear quietly, but Kate is determined see justice done. As she assists with examining the boys’ behavior during interrogations and in person, she discovers that nothing about the case, the suspects, or even her own connection to the boys is what it seems. The narration alternates between Kate’s fervent suspicions and a River Point Boy’s cold manipulation, leaving readers to wade through the many vengeful motives that spill from a wellspring of affluence, privilege, and corruption.
Chilling and suspenseful, with just the right number of twists. (Mystery. 13-17)Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4847-3089-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
An overall entertaining read.
In this sequel to The Similars (2018), tensions rise as the villains reveal a ploy to exact revenge on the Ten and their families and ultimately take over the world.
When Emma Chance returns to her elite boarding school, Darkwood Academy, for her senior year, things are different: Her best friend, Ollie Ward, is back while Levi Gravelle, Ollie’s clone and Emma’s love interest, has been imprisoned on Castor Island. More importantly, Emma is coming to terms with the contents of a letter from Gravelle which states that she is Eden, a Similar created to replace the original Emma, who died as a child. To complicate matters further, other clones—who are not Similars—infiltrate Darkwood, and Emma and her friends uncover a plot that threatens not only the lives of everyone they care about, but also the world as they know it. Hanover wastes no time delving right into the action; readers unfamiliar with the first book may get lost. This duology closer is largely predictable and often filled with loopholes, but the fast-paced narrative and one unexpected plot twist make for an engaging ride. As before, most of the primary characters read as white, and supporting characters remain underdeveloped. Despite its flaws and often implausible turns of events, the novel calls attention to larger questions of identity, selfhood, and what it means to be human.
An overall entertaining read. (Dystopia. 13-16)Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-6513-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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