The Splendor Falls

September 28, 2009
Seventeen-year-old Sylvie has recently lost both her father and her nascent career as a ballerina. Sent to visit family in Alabama during her newly remarried mother’s honeymoon, Sylvie grapples not only with dislocation and grief, but with hallucinations—in Central Park, in the airport and in her family’s antebellum mansion, Bluestone Hill—that she cannot control or explain. Her cousin Paula, an old-school steel magnolia, is no comfort, but Sylvie finds warmth in the competing attentions of theTom Sawyeresque Shawn Maddox and Rhys Griffith, a visitor from Wales with secrets of his own. As Sylvie learns more about Shawn, Rhys and the history of Bluestone Hill, she finds strength to understand her family’s past and her own unsettling but hopeful future. Sylvie’s voice is sharp and articulate, and Clement-Moore (the Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil series) anchors the story in actual locations and history, offering au courant speculations about the nature of ghosts and magic. Her ear for both adolescent bitchery and sweetness remains sure, and her ability to write realistic, edgy dialogue without relying on obscenity or stereotype is a pleasure. Ages 14–up.

September 15, 2009
Grades 8-12 At 17, Sylvie Davis is already a professional ballerina, but a broken leg destroys her career. Her mothers honeymoon sends Sylvie from Manhattan to Alabama, where her deceased fathers cousin is restoring the familys ancestral home. Despite her pain, physical and emotional, her surroundings spark her. She feels a connection to the land, to her father, and to the mysterious history that surrounds the house. Theres also no denying the attraction between Sylvie and two young men, one from Wales working on a dig, the other a local boy whose family is intertwined with hers. But what disconcerts her most are the ghosts she both sees and feels. Unfortunately, the storys strongest points are buried in too many pages and in Sylvies habit of telling readers almost as much about her dogs reactions to events as her own. On the plus side, Clement-Moore provides an atmospheric tale with a complex heroine who clears the way for possibilities in her own life with as much determination as she clears her fathers garden.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)