An emotionally mature YA thriller that gives hope to troubled teens.
A newly adopted hacker becomes the target of a well-hidden stalker in this sequel.
It’s eight months after the graphic finale of Olivia Twisted (2013), and 17-year-old hacker Liv is now under the care of her wealthy grandfather Carlton Brownlow in Norfolk, Virginia. She’s trying to forget Jack, also known as Z, the fellow orphan and hacker she fell for while staying with the Monroe Street family. On the morning of Valentine’s Day, she wakes to find a white rose on her pillow and, later, a diamond bracelet in her car. She assumes her doting grandfather is responsible for both, but he denies it. Meanwhile, in Richmond, Jack lives with his hacking crew and their guardian, Nancy, at the Briarcreek House. Nancy institutes a no hacking rule so the teens can prepare for college and normal adult lives. Jack, however, has known hacking his whole life and refuses to trade ripping off banks and corporations for eventually working for them. When the Briarcreek emergency bank account is charged for expensive jewelry, Nancy suspects Jack. Hesitantly, Liv and Jack re-enter each other’s lives to find out who is stalking her and framing him. In the author’s second YA thriller, readers benefit once more from deft pacing and intricate plotting. The romance, which sees the protagonists drift fatefully back together, is emboldened by chapters that alternate between Jack’s and Liv’s perspectives. Lovely moments are frequent, like when he notices “the little line between her eyes creasing as she thinks...I remember kissing that crease.” A large cast—including Emerson, Liv’s best friend, and Frank Jones, a driver connected with the villainous Bill Sykes—helps Barnes (Paper or Plastic, 2015, etc.) sprinkle red herrings far and wide. Most impressive, though, is the growth these characters experience. Once bent on humiliating the rich father who abandoned him, Jack realizes that his “anger still boils under my skin, but it feels old, an ache that I can’t cure.” This likable pair of hackers deserves as many more outings as Barnes can conceive.
An emotionally mature YA thriller that gives hope to troubled teens.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63375-490-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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
A familiar but heartfelt romance for easygoing readers.
In O’Gorman’s YA debut, two best friends try to fool people into thinking that they’re in love—and then discover a new facet of their relationship.
Sally Spitz is a frizzy-haired 17-year-old girl with a charming zeal for three things: Harry Potter (she’s a Gryffindor), Star Wars, and getting into Duke University. During her senior year of high school, she goes on a slew of miserable dates, set up by her mother and her own second-best–friend–turned-matchmaker, Lillian Hooker. Sally refuses to admit to anyone that she’s actually head over Converses in love with her longtime best friend, a boy named Baldwin Eugene Charles Kent, aka “Becks.” After a particularly awkward date, Sally devises a plan to end Lillian’s matchmaking attempts; specifically, she plans to hire someone to act as her fake boyfriend, or “F.B.F.” But before Sally can put her plan into action, a rumor circulates that Sally and Becks are already dating. Becks agrees to act as Sally’s F.B.F. in exchange for a box of Goobers and Sally’s doing his calculus homework for a month. Later, as they hold hands in the hall and “practice” make-out sessions in Becks’ bedroom, their friendship heads into unfamiliar territory. Over the course of this novel, O’Gorman presents an inviting and enjoyable account of lifelong friendship transforming into young love. Though the author’s reliance on familiar tropes may be comforting to a casual reader, it may frustrate those who may be looking for a more substantial and less predictable plot. A number of ancillary characters lack very much complexity, and the story, overall, would have benefited from an added twist or two. Even so, however, this remains a largely engaging and often endearing debut.
A familiar but heartfelt romance for easygoing readers.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-759-7
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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