On a small island called By-the-Sea, two young women discover their magical powers and resilience.
Seventeen-year-old white girl Georgina Fernweh and her twin sister, Mary, have one more summer at home helping their widowed mother, Penelope, at their family’s inn before they leave for college. Every year, bird enthusiasts flock to By-the-Sea for the arrival of Annabella’s Woodpecker, dubbed the world’s rarest bird and discovered and named by a distant Fernweh foremother about 300 years ago. Panic ensues when Annabella never appears, and the birders find her corpse in a barn, surrounded by her torn-up nest. The islanders superstitiously blame Mary, suspecting her of wielding magic, and Georgina promises Annabella that she will track down the murderer, even if it really is her sister. A tender, gentle romance between Georgina and Prue, visiting the island with her ornithologist brother (both are assumed white), accompanies the suspenseful murder mystery and is captured in lyrical prose. There is a clear distinction throughout between healthy relationships built on consent and harmful, uninvited attention. Along with romantic love, fierce bonds between family and friends play an important role in the story; Georgina’s aromantic, asexual best friend, Vira, stands by her side to the end, and Georgina’s mother supports her children by giving them the freedom to find their own ways into their magical gifts.
Equal parts fantasy, romance, and mystery, this book shimmers with an irresistible energy. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-249362-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
25
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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 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
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PROFILES
An Irish teen grapples with past misdeeds and newfound ties to magic.
When 16-year-old Maeve discovers a deck of tarot cards stashed with a mixtape of moody indie music from 1990, she starts giving readings for her classmates at her all-girls private school. Though her shame over dumping her strange friend Lily during an attempt to climb the social ladder at St. Bernadette’s is still palpable, it doesn’t stop her from trying to use the tarot in her favor to further this goal. However, after speaking harsh words to Lily during a reading, Maeve is horrified when her former friend later disappears. As she struggles to understand the forces at play within her, classmate Fiona proves to be just the friend Maeve needs. Detailed, interesting characters carry this contemporary story of competing energy and curses. Woven delicately throughout are chillingly eerie depictions of the Housekeeper, a figure who shows up on an extra card in the deck, echoing the White Lady legend from Irish folklore. Even more disturbing is an organization of young people led by a homophobic but charismatic figurehead intent on provoking backlash against Ireland’s recent civil rights victories. Most characters are White; Fiona is biracial, with a Filipina mother and White Irish father. Roe, Maeve’s love interest and Lily’s sibling, is a bisexual, genderqueer person who is a target for intolerance in their small city of Kilbeg.
An immersive tale of brave, vulnerable teens facing threats both real and fantastic. (Paranormal. 14-18)Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1394-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Walker US/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
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