Skip this one for more seaworthy tales.
Two sisters find themselves and each other on the high seas.
Sixteen-year-old Ophelia Young has never felt at home on the island of Peu Jolie, where she lives with her father, stepmother, and anxious half sister, Betsy. She’s ostracized because of her resemblance to her absent birth mother, the “cursed” pirate queen Ophelia Cray. After witnessing Cray’s hanging, Ophelia steals her sister’s identity and joins the Imperial Navy, hoping to make a new life for herself. When their father dies while Ophelia is away, Betsy vows to find her and bring her home. The chapters, told in the third person, alternate between following Betsy and Ophelia as they chart their own courses of self-discovery, and the story is filled with sadistic pirates, mutinous crews, and newfound friendships. The clunky, unpolished prose is frequently cringeworthy, however, filled with awkward similes, self-conscious dialogue, and excessive telling rather than showing. Ophelia, who has “wild curls” and “light olive” skin, is coded as aromantic and asexual; Betsy, who has “blond hair,” “rosy cheeks,” and “an appealing roundness,” is agoraphobic. Betsy’s male love interest is this fictional world’s equivalent of South Asian. While it’s exciting to see characters with these underrepresented identities having high-seas adventures, the weak prose undermines this strength. Readers looking for diverse stories of swashbuckling ladies should pick up Mackenzi Lee’s The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy or C.B. Lee’s A Clash of Steel instead.
Skip this one for more seaworthy tales. (note to readers) (Adventure. 14-18)Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781645678724
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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