This Town Is Not All Right

May 15, 2020
All is not as it seems in the coastal Maine town to which 12-year-old twins Beacon and Everleigh have been relocated by their dad. A year after the accidental death of their older brother, Jasper, Beacon and his sister and father are still gripped by grief. (Their mother died when the twins were 1.) Their new home is a world away in every respect from Los Angeles, where Beacon had a social group of skateboarding friends and knew what to expect from his acerbic but honest twin. Uncanny, archetypically eerie events begin at once when they arrive in Driftwood Harbor, and though at first Everleigh agrees with Beacon that something is off with the oddly polite and orderly kids at school, the most extreme of whom belong to a club called the Gold Stars, she soon begins acting strangely too. Beacon's struggle to piece together what is happening in the small town and his quickly found friendship with outcast Arthur render him an easily sympathetic third-person protagonist. Carefully paced unveiling of details will hold readers' attention even though they are centered on familiar science-fiction tropes. All of the main characters are white, with some textual indicators of diversity in the background--such as mention that Nixon, a member of the Gold Stars, has dark skin and that Arthur is Jewish. An engaging, plot-driven thriller that begs for a sequel. (Science fiction. 10-14)

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May 1, 2020
Grades 5-8 YA author Krys (Hexed, 2014; Dead Girl's Society, 2016) turns to middle graders in this tightly plotted novel. Twelve-year-old twins Beacon and Everleigh move with their widower father from L.A. to Maine a year after their older brother drowned. Beacon has his doubts about how therapeutic the move will be, and his fears are not allayed by the kids he and his sister encounter. These kids are quiet and eerily polite, and they all belong to a service organization called Gold Stars. Then Everleigh becomes a Gold Star student, wearing skirts instead of ragged jeans and becoming excessively courteous, confirming Beacon's theory that something strange is going on. The answer is complicated and incredible, veering into X-Files territory and involving an alleged UFO crash 40 years previously. Beacon has to overcome his fears to help his family and rescue the one friend he has made. The plot-driven novel is tightly paced, and a twist and cliff-hanger at the end seem to suggest a sequel. For junior conspiracy theorists everywhere.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2020

Gr 5 Up-It's been one year since Beacon and Everleigh lost their brother in a swimming accident. Things weren't great in LA, but being stuck in Driftwood Harbor is worse. First, the car breaks down, and then Beacon starts to imagine things. At least, everyone tells him he is imagining them. And then his jean-wearing, car-fixing sister is wearing makeup and a dress and being super nice. Something is definitely not right in this town. Trying to uncover the truth, Beacon and Arthur set out to gather evidence and track the personality changes that are happening around them. What exactly is in the vitamins that the school insists every student take? Why is everyone so nice all the time? And what's with the local alien legend? Beacon is going to get to the bottom of all of this even if it kills him...and it might. This tale of science fiction is reminiscent of classic body-snatching, and could have been set in Stepford, CT, as easily as the small fishing town of Driftwood Harbor. What appears to be a simple case of chemical behavioral influence turns out to be much larger and more sinister. This creepy tale twists quickly before fizzling into the expected. By the end, most readers will know where the plot is heading long before the last page. Beacon and Arthur are the typical odd ducks with few friends. Everleigh begins as the tomboy and is turned into the perfect popular girl within a few pages only to be saved by the conclusion. Overall, the story falls flat and the momentum doesn't hold. VERDICT Only for science fiction fanatics.-Elizabeth Speer, Weatherford Coll., TX

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