Accomplished plotting teams up with a winsome narrator to give readers a bewitching story.
An inexperienced 15-year-old witch struggles to establish her ethics as she fights to save fellow high school students from the predations of older wicked witches.
When Camellia’s witch mother, Sarmine, (both white) invites three racially diverse witch friends over, ostensibly as a reunion of an old college Do-Badders Club, Cam is horrified when they decide to resume their antics and select Cam’s fellow high school students as victims. The challenge? The witch who makes her victim the most miserable over the course of a week is the winner. To thwart them, Cam bets the witches she can undo their work, but there are problems: she doesn’t know which students are the victims, she barely knows any spells, and she refuses to use any spells that contain animal ingredients—which, unfortunately, are most of them. If that weren’t bad enough, the ante gets upped considerably when Cam discovers the real reason most-evil-witch Malkin suggested the challenge in the first place. Cam’s flippant first-person narrative rises above teen boilerplate due to the intelligence, vulnerability, and self-deprecating humor she displays. Connolly’s first-rate plotting delivers a clever story that empathizes with the self-conscious teen world even as it pokes a tiny bit of well-meaning fun.
Accomplished plotting teams up with a winsome narrator to give readers a bewitching story. (appendix) (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8375-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Despite some missteps, this will appeal to readers who enjoy a fresh and realistic teen voice.
A teenage, not-so-lonely loner endures the wilds of high school in Austin, Texas.
Norris Kaplan, the protagonist of Philippe’s debut novel, is a hypersweaty, uber-snarky black, Haitian, French-Canadian pushing to survive life in his new school. His professor mom’s new tenure-track job transplants Norris mid–school year, and his biting wit and sarcasm are exposed through his cataloging of his new world in a field guide–style burn book. He’s greeted in his new life by an assortment of acquaintances, Liam, who is white and struggling with depression; Maddie, a self-sacrificing white cheerleader with a heart of gold; and Aarti, his Indian-American love interest who offers connection. Norris’ ego, fueled by his insecurities, often gets in the way of meaningful character development. The scenes showcasing his emotional growth are too brief and, despite foreshadowing, the climax falls flat because he still gets incredible personal access to people he’s hurt. A scene where Norris is confronted by his mother for getting drunk and belligerent with a white cop is diluted by his refusal or inability to grasp the severity of the situation and the resultant minor consequences. The humor is spot-on, as is the representation of the black diaspora; the opportunity for broader conversations about other topics is there, however, the uneven buildup of detailed, meaningful exchanges and the glibness of Norris’ voice detract.
Despite some missteps, this will appeal to readers who enjoy a fresh and realistic teen voice. (Fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-282411-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce.
Houck kicks off a new story arc in the world of the Tiger’s Curse series with new tigers who live in a northerly setting.
The death of their widowed royal mother touches off a crisis in the Kievian Empire; neither Stacia nor Verusha Stepanov, 17-year-old sword-wielding twin sisters, wants to be named tsarina. But questions of succession get put on hold when a battle with a sorcerer inexplicably turns the two into nonspeaking Siberian tigers. Hints of a cure send them, along with a growing entourage of men to provide assistance (and, perforce, do all the talking), on a long trek. Though most of the cast sticks to genre type, Houck throws in a wild card in the form of hunky, inarticulate Nikolai, who joins the quest because he is enthralled by Verusha—and who also killed his whole family in an act of revenge. Occasional anachronistic dialogue (e.g., “Are you ready, ladies?”) disrupts the tale’s generally earnest tone, as do the clumsy attempts at banter. A third tiger, snarky and blind but conveniently able to see through others’ eyes, trots in late in the story. The events in this setup volume unfold with many a flashback and change in point of view and head toward no sort of resolution—only the cave-dwelling White Shaman of the Tundra’s advice that further journeys are in the offing. The central cast in this Russian-inspired fantasy world presents white; the Indigenous population includes nomadic reindeer herders.
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce. (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798212221696
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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