Everything Doherty writes is fresh and enchanting: exquisite language, brimming with love, telling stories all readers want to hear. Fourteen-year-old Holly’s life is full of stories not quite finished, and she longs to find their completion. Her beautiful mother is a British TV personality and her sweet, heroic stepfather Henry is the producer; Holly loves her twin siblings and baby Zoë almost to distraction. But she knows she had another life, one with her father, in the country, with horses and another set of grandparents. She hasn’t seen her father since she was six, when her mother took her away to live with Henry. Additionally, Holly exchanges e-mail with someone named Zed. She doesn’t know anything about Zed, except e-mails that encourage her to think, to ask questions, and to ponder. When Holly’s father finally tracks her down, the two go on a dizzying journey: the car breaks down, Holly’s mother calls the police, and charges of kidnapping hit the news. The duo have a fraught couple of days while Holly’s father fills in the blanks with tales of Holly’s birth, of his parents’ childhood, and of the farm Holly dimly remembers and loved. In the end, Holly has to choose. There are no villains, only people trying to do their best with what they have. Holly’s love of the cello turns out to have a family link—and Zed? Well, Zed’s identity turns out to be the best of the disclosures. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-001341-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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