Bright Shining World

September 1, 2020

Gr 9 Up-Wallace Cole has attended 14 different high schools, uprooted by his dad, who works for a powerful energy company. Their new town, North Homer, NY, had an outbreak of "hysteria" that is affecting teens near the energy plant. Now, in addition to being the perpetual nomadic new kid, Wallace has to worry about some weird sickness. When the student council president, Megan Rose, tells him to pay attention to the trees, Wallace notices there is something not quite right with the trees, and the town itself. Wallace starts seeing visions of his dead mother, and witnessing a town go mad. When he finally figures out what is going on, is it too late to fight for the souls of his community? This book might be classified as a little bit horror, or sci-fi, or fantastic realism. Wallace is an unreliable narrator and most of the story is spent wondering if perhaps he will wake up like Alice from a dream of Wonderland. For the majority of the story, the teens' visions aren't explained, and the ending feels like an afterthought. Characters' appearances and backgrounds are largely unspecified. VERDICT An abstract book with a touch of horror and an unreliable narrator. A strictly additional purchase.-Melyssa Kenney, Parkville High School, MD

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2020
An itinerant teen faces down a megacorporation's metaphysical machinations. Swiller's YA debut opens with acerbic narrator Wallace Cole en route from Kentucky to upstate New York. Since his mother died, his father's job has taken them to 22 states, and he's bounced through 14 high schools. Never mind that Wallace isn't exactly sure what his father does--apparently he's some sort of plant fixer for Jackduke, the country's second largest energy company. Wallace arrives in the Finger Lakes town of North Homer, where high school students are succumbing to bouts of contagious hysteria. All the same, stakes escalate quickly and unevenly. Clich�s abound: He meshes with misfits and beefs with a reactionary meathead. Wallace also falls for the brainy, gorgeous, high-achieving, inexplicably receptive homecoming queen, a turn of events that feels unearned. Mumbled explanations and illogical leaps hamstring the plot as Wallace suddenly discovers a grand conspiracy to destroy--well, call it what you will--the soul, spirit, human essence. The resulting text--too dense for a thriller and too anemic for science fiction--seems unsure of itself. Syntactical rollicks between utter despair and ostensible sincerity prevent tone from aligning with diction. Is this a sweeping social satire? Analogy for a generation's righteous angst? Derivative bildungsroman? Amid a world on fire reduced to a smolder, who's to say? All characters are assumed White. A high concept shakily executed. (Thriller. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.