An engaging choice for fans of realistic fiction, simultaneously tugging at the heartstrings and uplifting the spirit.
After Elektra Kamenides’ mother packs her and her younger sister, Thalia, into the car and announces that they are leaving her father in Mississippi and moving to California, Elektra invokes her mantra: What Would Odysseus Do?
The 16-year-old daughter of Nikos, a prominent scholar of ancient Greece, and Helen, an aspiring author, Elektra is dismayed to find that the boat her mother purchased sight unseen is a roach-infested, mud-bound wreck in a forgotten town outside Silicon Valley. Always close to her father, even Thalia’s endless chipperness and her mother’s insistence that they must, like Emily Dickinson, “dwell in possibility,” cannot lift Elektra’s spirits. The little family is battered by financial troubles, a shocking revelation about Nikos, and the struggle to adapt to living on the cramped, run-down boat. However, they are embraced by the colorful locals who, united in their personal and economic struggles, offer unconditional acceptance. A rich sense of place, clever dialogue, and a charming sibling relationship make this novel stand out. Disappointingly, the book is marked by an absence of modern Greek cultural texture; although Nikos’ father was a Greek immigrant and the entire family recently returned from a sabbatical year spent living in Greece, all the Greek references relate to ancient times. The cast is Latinx and white, and one character has PTSD.
An engaging choice for fans of realistic fiction, simultaneously tugging at the heartstrings and uplifting the spirit. (Fiction. 12-adult)Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7624-6303-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
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
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
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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