A tender, heartfelt, and intelligent coming-of-age story that celebrates quiet strength and trusting your instincts.
Balancing multiple expectations is never easy—and sometimes doing it all feels impossible.
Lexie, a gifted Canadian 10th grader, is caught in a whirlwind of competing demands: striving for a sports scholarship to prestigious Sunridge High’s Fine Arts and Music program, grieving a beloved mentor, juggling swim team obligations, and navigating her parents’ post-divorce tension. While her mother and friends are supportive, her father—who’s charming but controlling—undermines her plans. He launches a renovation business and demands help from Lexie and her brother; he gets Lexie a dog she never asked for as a birthday gift and then complains she doesn’t care for it when she’s at her mom’s house. Lexie, who’s volunteering at a retirement home, dating lifeguard boyfriend Rhys, and dealing with anxiety (with help from a therapist), feels the pressure building until something has to give. Told with clear-eyed emotional insight and a sharp ear for teen voices, Azzam’s posthumously published novel gently but powerfully explores the costs of people-pleasing, the subtleties of emotional manipulation, and the strength required to set boundaries. Lexie’s journey toward recognizing healthy love and support is as rewarding as it is resonant. The lyrical prose, tight pacing, and strong supporting cast shine, and amid the emotional tension, many scenes show warmth and nurturing from those around Lexie. Most characters are cued white.
A tender, heartfelt, and intelligent coming-of-age story that celebrates quiet strength and trusting your instincts. (editor’s note, relationship red flags, resource) (Fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781770868069
Page Count: 240
Publisher: DCB Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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
PROFILES
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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