Danger romance at its most digestible, ready to be gobbled and forgotten.
If someone’s your true love, just stay devoted while he slams you into the wall and crushes your best friend’s hands until she passes out.
Clea and Sage are soul mates forever’n’ever—literally: They reincarnate as lovers lifetime after lifetime. When Sage’s body recently died, his soul leaped into the newly dead body of friend Nico and reanimated it. However, bodies can reject a new soul just as in organ transplantation (!), and Sage-in-Nico’s-body descends into “[m]adness and violence.” Is part of Nico’s soul still there, restless? Clea, Ben and Rayna travel to a charlatan’s clinic that might nonetheless hold information about “soul rejection.” Sage is portrayed as a tragic hero; Clea and Duff define love as unquestioningly sitting bedside with one’s lover even if he might awaken and kill you. Differing from the series opener (Elixir, 2010), this prose is plainspoken, with contemporary references (“a body that makes Ryan Gosling look like pre-diet Jonah Hill”) and vernacular (“so gross I can’t even deal”), but the very metaphysics are purple. Obviously it’s Sage’s soul operating Nico’s body because “[t]he eyes really are the windows to the soul,” and this live boy has brown eyes (like Sage, unlike Nico). Can a New-Age crystal ceremony permanently break the pattern of Ben’s betrayal and Clea’s bloody murder?
Danger romance at its most digestible, ready to be gobbled and forgotten. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0857-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
A treat for mystery readers who enjoy being kept in suspense.
Everyone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago—except Pippa Fitz-Amobi.
Pip has known and liked Sal since childhood; he’d supported her when she was being bullied in middle school. For her senior capstone project, Pip researches the disappearance of former Fairview High student Andie, last seen on April 18, 2014, by her younger sister, Becca. The original investigation concluded with most of the evidence pointing to Sal, who was found dead in the woods, apparently by suicide. Andie’s body was never recovered, and Sal was assumed by most to be guilty of abduction and murder. Unable to ignore the gaps in the case, Pip sets out to prove Sal’s innocence, beginning with interviewing his younger brother, Ravi. With his help, Pip digs deeper, unveiling unsavory facts about Andie and the real reason Sal’s friends couldn’t provide him with an alibi. But someone is watching, and Pip may be in more danger than she realizes. Pip’s sleuthing is both impressive and accessible. Online articles about the case and interview transcripts are provided throughout, and Pip’s capstone logs offer insights into her thought processes as new evidence and suspects arise. Jackson’s debut is well-executed and surprises readers with a connective web of interesting characters and motives. Pip and Andie are white, and Sal is of Indian descent.
A treat for mystery readers who enjoy being kept in suspense. (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-9636-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
This scorching glimpse of life (and death) among the moneyed classes hits its marks, if a bit mechanically.
A summertime stay on Martha’s Vineyard confirms everything Linden thinks about rich people.
Best known for emotional YA romances, Cotugno tries her hand at an emotional whodunit—and readers who can roll with the weird attraction her protagonist seems to exert on the two main young women here may find themselves caught up in an engrossing whirl of, as the title promises, lies, secrets, and louche living. Hardly has he arrived for a two-week stay at palatial August House than Michael Linden and his host and boarding school roommate Jasper’s twin sister, Eliza, are bedroom-bound; his ghosted former platonic friend Holiday turns up; and Greg, despised boyfriend of another houseguest, winds up in a coma after an apparent accident. Dragged along by Holiday, who, along with inexplicably letting bygones be bygones, turns out to be an enthusiastic amateur sleuth, scholarship student Linden finds plenty of fuel for his (supposedly) secret resentment of the privileged classes and the way they can get away with anything. Though not, as it turns out after a comfortably conventional denouement complete with surprise confession, murder. Also, as a tease at the end suggests, for all that he comes clean about several secrets of his own, Linden leads the pack in the “things to hide” department. Aside from one prominent supporting character—a brown-skinned lacrosse champion—the central cast reads White.
This scorching glimpse of life (and death) among the moneyed classes hits its marks, if a bit mechanically. (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780593433287
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
