Seventeen-year-old Zuri Benitez deals with gentrification in her Brooklyn neighborhood and her own bias in this Pride and Prejudice remix.
Zuri, or ZZ from the Block, loves her big, loud Haitian-Dominican family. She loves her Bushwick neighborhood. She doesn’t love the gentrification changing her hood, “like my face and body when I was in middle school—familiar but changing right before my eyes.” So when the rich Darcy family moves into the expensive renovated house across the street, she’s skeptical even though they’re also black. The Darcy brothers are handsome, but Zuri thinks Darius Darcy’s a snob. She opts instead for Warren, the brothers’ classmate and a boy who feels familiar. Austen fans will guess his true colors. When poet Zuri unexpectedly runs into Darius at an open mic, she begins to rethink her assessment of him, and the two, as expected, fall for each other. While Darius’ attraction to Zuri makes sense, Zuri’s doesn’t seem to move beyond his physical attractiveness—odd for a character who’s otherwise thoughtful and complex. The ending, both realistic and bittersweet, is a culmination of the book’s examination of the costs of gentrification. The plot moves too fast for substantial character growth on Zuri’s part, and some elements feel contrived, but these flaws don’t spoil a book which is not only a retelling, but an examination of timely issues, including class, blackness, and intraracial prejudice.
Legit. (Fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-256404-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning.
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Two teens train to be society-sanctioned killers in an otherwise immortal world.
On post-mortal Earth, humans live long (if not particularly passionate) lives without fear of disease, aging, or accidents. Operating independently of the governing AI (called the Thunderhead since it evolved from the cloud), scythes rely on 10 commandments, quotas, and their own moral codes to glean the population. After challenging Hon. Scythe Faraday, 16-year-olds Rowan Damisch and Citra Terranova reluctantly become his apprentices. Subjected to killcraft training, exposed to numerous executions, and discouraged from becoming allies or lovers, the two find themselves engaged in a fatal competition but equally determined to fight corruption and cruelty. The vivid and often violent action unfolds slowly, anchored in complex worldbuilding and propelled by political machinations and existential musings. Scythes’ journal entries accompany Rowan’s and Citra’s dual and dueling narratives, revealing both personal struggles and societal problems. The futuristic post–2042 MidMerican world is both dystopia and utopia, free of fear, unexpected death, and blatant racism—multiracial main characters discuss their diverse ethnic percentages rather than purity—but also lacking creativity, emotion, and purpose. Elegant and elegiac, brooding but imbued with gallows humor, Shusterman’s dark tale thrusts realistic, likable teens into a surreal situation and raises deep philosophic questions.
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning. (Science fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4424-7242-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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Many teen novels touch on similar themes, but few do it so memorably.
14
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Two struggling teens develop an unlikely relationship in a moving exploration of grief, suicide and young love.
Violet, a writer and member of the popular crowd, has withdrawn from her friends and from school activities since her sister died in a car accident nine months earlier. Finch, known to his classmates as "Theodore Freak," is famously impulsive and eccentric. Following their meeting in the school bell tower, Finch makes it his mission to re-engage Violet with the world, partially through a school project that sends them to offbeat Indiana landmarks and partially through simple persistence. (Violet and Finch live, fortunately for all involved, in the sort of romantic universe where his throwing rocks at her window in the middle of the night comes off more charming than stalker-esque.) The teens alternate narration chapter by chapter, each in a unique and well-realized voice. Finch's self-destructive streak and suicidal impulses are never far from the surface, and the chapters he narrates are interspersed with facts about suicide methods and quotations from Virginia Woolf and poet Cesare Pavese. When the story inevitably turns tragic, a cast of carefully drawn side characters brings to life both the pain of loss and the possibility of moving forward, though some notes of hope are more believable than others.
Many teen novels touch on similar themes, but few do it so memorably. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-75588-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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