Mafi combines a psychological opener with an action-adventure denouement in her YA debut, and the result is a page-turner with a slightly split personality. Juliette Ferrars is 17 and cannot remember a loving touch; indeed, after 264 days in solitary confinement, she can barely remember human contact. Then a boy is shoved into her cell, and her world changes. Just as she begins to trust Adam, guards burst in and march them off to the commandant. Juliette discovers Adam is really a soldier of the Reestablishment, a totalitarian regime that wants to use Juliette because her touch can kill. Juliette wants to get far away from anyone she can hurt or who can hurt her—though she can’t help hoping that, somehow, Adam might not fall in either of those categories. Mafi doesn’t escape some rookie pitfalls; descriptions like “fifteen thousand feelings of disbelief hole-punched in my heart” strain after lyricism, and proof that the divided plot can be brought to a satisfying conclusion must await later installments. Nevertheless, this is a gripping read from an author who’s not afraid to take risks. Ages 14–up. (Nov.)
The odds are ever in your favor to find your next read — if you start with what the citizens of Panem are reading. See the Hunger Games movie The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and keep the excitement going as you expand your TBR. With 24 stories for 24 tributes, which will you bring […]
There’s a lot at risk in Anna Banks’ Joyride, out tomorrow. And if you’re a fan of her writing, that should come as no surprise. In Banks’ debut novels, the New York Times bestselling Of Poseidon trilogy, readers are thrown into a contemporary world where mermaids exist, occasionally walk among us, and sometimes, dangerously, fall in love. […]
The age of superheroes is upon us. With a steady stream of comic book movies and TV shows being announced all the time, it’s a great time to be a fan. But superheroes aren’t just for comics and their adaptations. You can find all the epic battles between good and evil, crazy cool gadgets, and […]
Last week X-philes were sent into a tizzy with the news that Mulder & Scully (yes, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson!) will be returning to the small screen in a six-part X-Files mini-season. But with both Duchovny and Anderson busied up this summer with shows of their own—he on the hotly anticipated Aquarius, she in a […]
Rebecca Serle’s Famous in Love (out next month) is a deliciously meta YA novel: aspiring actress Paige Townsen lands her dream breakout movie role as the lead in an adaptation of Locked, the hottest YA book in all the land, and finds herself in a love triangle with her costars that mirrors the love triangle in […]
