A nuanced story of first romance that stays true to its characters.
In Nilsen’s middle-grade novel, a seventh grade girl crushes hard on a fellow classmate.
Millie Jackson may have (mostly) moved on from her deep-seated infatuation with pop star Rory Calhoun, the object of her desire in Nilsen’s previous novel, Worldwide Crush (2023), but that doesn’t mean she’s given up on love entirely. Now, in seventh grade social studies, she has a new target: brown-eyed, floppy-haired Scott Fenwick. “Never have I ever dared to consider that someone—a very cute someone—might actually like me. As in like me like me. Until now.” They pass notes in class and even salvage a sweet moment out of a very embarrassing trip to Target with Millie’s mom and kooky great-grandma Phyllis, but Millie is never quite sure how Scott feels. She takes notes in the titular Scott Fenwick Diary, often consulting her best friend, Shauna, who is simultaneously dealing with her own family drama. Meanwhile, pressure to participate in activities like grandma-sitting and an intensely awkward family talent show performance piles on. But Millie perseveres in keeping her crush active, inserting herself into Scott’s life by befriending his neighbor Tibbs and procuring an invitation to his bar mitzvah. After a missed kiss at the big event, Millie is fully engrossed in her devastation until her beloved dog, Pringles, suffers an accident that makes her re-evaluate her relationships and herself. In this sequel, Nilsen nails the nuances of being a young teenager with feelings so big they overexamine even the smallest moments. Millie’s anxieties and concerns over things like how to kiss may make readers cringe, but only because they are so real and relatable. Her PG-rated swearword substitutes like “Gob!” and “Holy Christmas” are annoying, but they contribute to her overall characterization. Yet despite Millie’s personal devotion to Scott, Nilsen makes it clear that rather than a “will-they, won’t-they” narrative, this is a story of self-discovery.
A nuanced story of first romance that stays true to its characters.Pub Date: July 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781684633265
Page Count: 272
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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