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PLANK'S LAW

The backdrop of disease can be elementary fodder for drama, but the story offers fine comedic vignettes and playful...

Terminally ill with Huntington’s at 16, Trevor has nothing to lose and dares to live life at the brink.

Plank is 93 when he pulls young Trevor Marshall from a morbid reverie at the edge of a cliff and thus begins a mentorship to “stop trying to make sense of things and bloody well live your life.” With only a year to live, Trevor abandons religion for Plank’s philosophy and finds the courage to track down a stunningly beautiful cancer patient with an unforgettable smile. Sara turns out to be a wig-tossing survivor who is brazen enough to embrace Plank’s law and convinces Trevor to reach out to his childhood mate, “crazy Brit” Antonio Watson, whose last known antics involved hacking computers and becoming a millionaire in New Zealand. Antonio arrives bringing fast cars, reckless energy, and a tortured spirit. Plank teaches Trevor that “the best parts of your life are the ones you share with someone else,” but with each attachment comes ever greater risk of loss. Plank’s age, Sara’s chemo, and Antonio’s daredevil lifestyle all dance at the edge of mortality. With Trevor’s story, Choyce reminds readers that death is its own storyteller and there are always surprises along the way. The absence of racial and ethnic markers implies a white default.

The backdrop of disease can be elementary fodder for drama, but the story offers fine comedic vignettes and playful dialogue, raising this well above standard illness fare. (Fiction. 14-18)

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-4598-1249-9

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Orca

Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017

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INDIVISIBLE

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

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WE WERE LIARS

From the We Were Liars series

Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.

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A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.

Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.

Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Pub Date: May 13, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014

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