Highlights bonds between unforgettable female characters.
Ginny Rose Gilley’s family struggled to survive as migrant farm workers after losing their Oklahoma farm to the Dust Bowl.
On her birthday, Ginny Rose had to do something no newly 6-year-old should ever have to do: help her father bury her two younger brothers who died of dysentery. Now it’s 1947, and her father is working at a railway station, 16-year-old Ginny Rose has a job at a cannery, and the family is finally putting down roots in a town in California’s Central Valley they know well from their migrant farming days. However, their improving circumstances do little to ease her mother’s all-consuming grief that makes life difficult for Ginny Rose and her three younger sisters. Working gives Ginny Rose new freedom, and a rekindled childhood friendship with peach farmer’s daughter Peggy Simmons allows her to be a carefree teenager for the first time. Peggy’s wealthy best friend threatens to get in the way of the friendship, but an out-of-the-ordinary adventure unexpectedly brings the girls together. Themes of class and wealth are handled with a light but impactful touch, and the presumed White main characters resist the gender and economic inequalities they face with courage and grit. Unfortunately, racial themes are less well developed: Mexican fieldworkers’ lives are presented without nuance, and Japanese American farming families, a significant population in this region until their recent wartime incarceration, are not mentioned at all.
Highlights bonds between unforgettable female characters. (Historical fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-37856-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A uniquely arranged bouquet of terrors, as disturbing as it is beautiful.
A family’s secrets rise to the surface as a young man investigates a suspected murder.
Evander, who’s 17 and lonely, never leaves his room in the manor on Hazelthorn Estate. He’s told he’s too fragile and is locked away “for his safety” while an elderly butler feeds him brain-addling “medicine.” But one night changes Evander’s life—and the manor’s future—forever. Byron Lennox-Hall, Evander’s billionaire guardian and the family’s patriarch, dies unexpectedly. Relatives descend upon Hazelthorn like vultures as a shocking twist reveals that Byron left everything to Evander alone. Without Byron around to keep his only grandchild and presumed heir, Laurence “Laurie” Lennox-Hall, away from his ward, Laurie and Evander become the unlikeliest of allies. When they were boys, Laurie attempted to kill Evander—but, maddeningly, Evander can’t stop thinking about him. He also suspects that someone murdered Byron. Drews’ latest starts off as a straightforward whodunit and turns into something that’s far more sinister—and delicious. From descriptions of moth-eaten decay to vivid floral imagery, Drews luxuriates in atmospheric prose. Their literary green thumb nurtures intertwining themes of monstrosity and abuse alongside yearning, first love, queerness, and mystery. The slow-burn romance at the root of this blend of gothic and body horror is as tender as it is unforgettable. Evander is cued as autistic, and main characters present white.
A uniquely arranged bouquet of terrors, as disturbing as it is beautiful. (author’s note) (Horror. 13-18)Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250376299
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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