Heartless

March 21, 2016
After an angry breakup with her boyfriend, 19-year-old Jo Hall blacks out and wakes up on a gurney, surrounded by dead girls. She manages to free herself and trek through the Colorado snow back to her college dorm. Oddly, she can’t feel the cold, and she soon realizes the full horror of her condition: chalky skin, dehydrated flesh, a scarred torso “held together by rusted silver staples,” and oozing green goo. Jo looks dead, must be electrically charged to keep from running down, and is falling apart, physically and mentally. She sets out to find out who is responsible for a condition she hopes is reversible with the enthusiastic help of best friend Lucy and ex-boyfriend Eli. More Scooby-Doo than Mary Shelley, the novel’s frequent attempts at dark humor fall flat (“He’s always had a sensitive stomach,” quips Jo when Eli vomits after learning she’s undead), and readers will likely spot the villains a mile away. Newcomer Rhyne has created a sympathetic heroine dealing with some serious body horror, but muddled motivations and predictable hijinks mar this awkward homage to Frankenstein. Ages 13–up.

March 15, 2016
A reanimated girl seeks answers. After a fight with her boyfriend, Jolene storms off into a blizzard at night. The next thing the white 19-year-old remembers is waking up in some sort of a morgue, unable to talk, no longer needing to breathe, and oozing stink. Those behind this, who have abducted and experimented on more girls than just Jolene, are luckily so laughably bad at security that she is able to walk out and simply run back to her college campus. She turns to her best friend, an ambassador's daughter, for help, and the two decide to try to fix things on their own and tell only Jolene's boyfriend. Early gross-out humor, jokes about Jolene's rank stench, and the kind of inappropriate puns and jokes that emerge as a defense mechanism slowly evaporate into a never-ending stream of reminders that Jolene stinks. With the comedy and camp drained away, what's left is a thriller rendered tensionless by inexplicably unintelligent characters, heroes and villains both, and baffling plot holes. Readers will be frustrated in particular by watching the heroes struggle to detect obvious villains. By the end of the book, both plot and conspiracy reach peak ludicrousness. There are late-occurring attempts to recapture the early camp, but by then most readers will likely have stopped caring--and they probably won't care about the sequel-bait ending either.Not so-bad-it's-good bad--just bad. (Horror. 12 & up)

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April 1, 2016

Gr 8 Up-Jolene Hall is a 19-year-old college student who lives a very privileged life. Her roommate is the daughter of a foreign ambassador, she is dating a medical student, and her parents are wealthy. Late one night, she has a fight with her boyfriend, causing her to abandon his warm, safe apartment for the blizzard that awaits. The next thing Jolene remembers is waking up, strapped to a cold metal table in a place that she does not know. Freeing herself from that prison begins the turn of events that changes the outcome of her life forever. On the surface, this title reads like an engaging, suspenseful thriller. However, the dialogue is overused and forced. The main character, Jolene, is supposed to be a sympathetic protagonist. However, she comes across as a pretentious, spoiled brat. Her only saving grace is her best friend, Lucy, and her jilted boyfriend, Eli. They are the real stars of the narrative. The conflict and story idea are unique and potentially interesting, yet the end result is not successful. VERDICT While this debut YA novel shows promise, it doesn't quite hit the mark.-Amy Caldera, Dripping Springs Middle School, TX

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