This sometimes grossly funny, always absorbing gut-wrenching thriller tells the slippery-slope story of how a few (granted large) ethical missteps can send a character sliding down a moral mineshaft. After a sharply etched set-up that neatly lays out the grim life of 15-year-old Martyn Pig, the novel explodes into noir when the protagonist, a passionate mystery buff, shoves his angry, alcoholic father, who is coming at him, “with his fist raised above his head and drunken madness burning in his eyes.” Martyn’s father, who is too intoxicated to maintain his footing, accidentally falls, fatally cracking his head in the process. When Martyn finds out that his now-dead father is due to come into a substantial inheritance, greed takes over, and soon Martyn is plotting with his slightly older neighbor and best friend, a pretty, talented aspiring actress named Alex. As the determined amateurs orchestrate the grizzly disposal of the increasingly ripe corpse, Brooks piles on obstacles followed by complications. Just when the suspense becomes close to unbearable, he unleashes a completely unsuspected yet perfectly credible plot twist that will make readers smack their heads in disbelief, wondering how they could have missed something so obvious. Brooks does a good job of making his protagonist sympathetic and understandable without being likable, though he spends a little too much time on his internal ramblings, which slows the action without significantly adding to the reader’s insight. Still, a minor complaint in an otherwise provocative and engrossing debut. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-439-29595-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss.
It’s 1983, and 13-year-old Indian American Reha feels caught between two worlds.
Monday through Friday, she goes to a school where she stands out for not being White but where she has a weekday best friend, Rachel, and does English projects with potential crush Pete. On the weekends, she’s with her other best friend, Sunita (Sunny for short), at gatherings hosted by her Indian community. Reha feels frustrated that her parents refuse to acknowledge her Americanness and insist on raising her with Indian values and habits. Then, on the night of the middle school dance, her mother is admitted to the hospital, and Reha’s world is split in two again: this time, between hospital and home. Suddenly she must learn not just how to be both Indian and American, but also how to live with her mother’s leukemia diagnosis. The sections dealing with Reha’s immigrant identity rely on oft-told themes about the overprotectiveness of immigrant parents and lack the nuance found in later pages. Reha’s story of her evolving relationships with her parents, however, feels layered and real, and the scenes in which Reha must grapple with the possible loss of a parent are beautifully and sensitively rendered. The sophistication of the text makes it a valuable and thought-provoking read even for those older than the protagonist.
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss. (Verse novel. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304742-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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