Publishers Weekly
04/04/2022
Gardner (Girl on the Line) portrays complex, vulnerable characters navigating the aftermath of gun violence in this emotionally charged novel. On the day of a Bay Area mall shooting, 18-year-old Betty is helpless to do anything, awaiting the fate of her mother and older sister Joy, who are trapped inside the same store as the shooter. Though physically unharmed, the cued-white family is left untethered by the experience. Betty’s mother becomes a fierce advocate for gun control, compromising her relationship with her daughters; Joy, 21, refuses to leave their Berkeley apartment and develops a reliance on alcohol and prescription medication; and Betty, compelled to learn more about the shooter and why he died by suicide in front of Joy after the incident, seeks out his half-white, half-Indian American brother Michael, 17, a former classmate. As their unlikely friendship develops, stirring unexpected feelings in Betty, and tension within the family builds to a dramatic climax, Betty struggles to come to terms with “how dangerous the world really is.” Though the story is told from Betty’s point of view, her mother’s fury and her sister’s terror are as palpable as Betty’s burning desire to understand why the event happened and whether it was preventable. Ages 13–up. (May)
Booklist (starred review)
"Gardner’s unforgettable voice blends Jodi Picoult’s emotional, ripped-from-the-headlines storytelling with Mindy McGinnis’s unflinchingly honest protagonists. Gardner’s gorgeous language and the atmospheric tone makes this a well-crafted, genre-defying story that deserves a wide readership."
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)
[Journey is] a strong, vivid, and funny character, with a taste for dark and often evasive humor… she’s also here and hopeful, and that’s a hard-won prize that will hearten readers with their own battles.
Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) (starred review)
This remarkable novel reproduces the personal and family trauma associated with the loss and recovery of a missing child . . . The Second Life of Ava Rivers is an enthralling tale.”
Kathleen Glasgow
Praise for The Second Life of Ava Rivers: "A beautiful, moving, and thoughtful story about how far we're willing to go for family."
School Library Journal
06/01/2022
Gr 9 Up—Although her single mom couldn't afford to send her to college with her affluent peers, newly graduated Betty Lavelle is finding her way in her hometown of Berkeley, CA. Life changes suddenly when Betty's mom and sister Joy survive a mass shooting at their local shopping mall. As the title indicates, the novel highlights the different ways in which people respond to and recover from tragedy. Betty's mom becomes an activist working to dismantle the Second Amendment, while Joy retreats inward, struggling with agoraphobia and substance abuse issues as she attempts to self-medicate. Betty, who was at the mall but not present for the shooting, struggles with the lingering guilt and a desire for concrete answers and solutions. She befriends Michael, the perpetrator's brother, intending only to use him for information. However, as she and Michael grow closer, they find a connection that runs deep despite the secrets both are keeping. Although told from Betty's perspective, the book offers insights into many characters' struggles and growth throughout. Betty is a capable, believable narrator, and YA and new adult readers will relate to the big questions she poses about the state of the world and her own future within it. The main character and her family are cued as white. There is pansexual and nonbinary representation. The book includes many possible triggers, such as violence, substance abuse, depression, and suicide. VERDICT This powerful novel is an important addition for teen collections.—Mary Kamela
Kirkus Reviews
2022-02-09
A random shooting changes the trajectories of three women’s lives in this contemporary novel set in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Betty is a recent high school graduate from a working-class family who is engaged in an unpaid internship. One day, she, her mom, and her older sister, Joy, make an uncharacteristic stop at the mall and encounter the most harrowing experience of their lives. Betty’s mother and sister are trapped, hiding in a clothing store, while Betty, who was next door eating a cupcake, runs toward them when she hears shots. Joy witnesses the shooter kill himself right in front of her. The months that follow are divided into three parts as Joy struggles with agoraphobia and substance use disorder, their mother channels her feelings into gun control activism, and Betty tries to hold everyone together even as her long-absent father disappoints her all over again. Betty’s incisive and sarcastic yet vulnerable narrative voice captures this exploration of trauma realistically, imbuing it with humor and authentic desperation and grief. A relationship she strikes up with Michael, the shooter’s half brother, feels a bit too obviously a plot device in places, but their warm, witty exchanges strike just the right chord, and readers will root for them to become more than friends. Most main characters are White; biracial Michael’s father is Indian American. Both Betty and Michael are pansexual.
An intelligent, expansive story of a family surviving the increasingly common unthinkable. (Fiction. 14-18)
