Customer Comments

What wonderful characters and what wonderful insight. Jesse and Emily could have been stereotypes and their story predictable, but George complicates everything in the best possible way. A great book for young adults and not-so-young adults. Even middle-aged adults (not than I am one, cough cough).

O'Flynn uses a variety of voices -- among a ten year old girl, a disillusioned security guard, a muddled music store manager, a nameless male shopper on the verge of a rage attack -- to great effect. The novel's plot hinges on the mystery of what happened to the young girl twenty years ago, and much of its commentary is on the directionless, empty lives epitomized by the modern shopping mall, but ultimately the story is about the hunger people have to connect, and the many ways that we, with mercy, accomplish those connections.

For so many young adult protagonists, their main desire is to find home, and in doing so, find themselves. Kenny is a young woman unmoored from the world and her own body. She lives in a world where small crises can (and do) turn big at any time, but she still discovers a path home. Reynolds use of voice, imagery, and figurative language are amazing. I love The Hunger Games, but there is also a huge place in my heart for Reynolds’s Kenny.

Retellings of fairy tales can too often seem like a bad reboot of a classic TV show. But in Ash, Lo makes the story her own. At its heart, Cinderella is the story of a girl controlled and overpowered by a family and culture who doesn't care what she wants. Ash, too, is at the mercy of others, but Lo's heroine finds the way through not just to get what she wants and needs, but to figure out just what it is that she wants and needs.

Wonderful characters, precise detail, intricate but realistic plot in a novel that informs us about a war most have forgotten. Didn't want it to end, and it has never fully left my head since I read it.