Boy Heaven - Softcover

Grade 9 Up–This first YA novel from a noted poet provides lots of thrills and chills with the added bonus of gorgeous, evocative use of language. Framed in an urban legend, the story centers around pretty, popular 17-year-old Kristy Sweetland and her week at cheerleading camp. Kristy and her best friend, slutty Desiree, and a new girl named Kristi sneak out to go skinny-dipping in Lost Lake when they pass two young local yokels in an old station wagon. Feeling bold and carefree, the girls flash their breasts as they speed by, and Kristy forgets about the whole thing until both Desiree and Kristi tell her that the two boys keep coming around to their cabins at night, whispering things in the dark. Suddenly, events take an ominous turn and Kristi starts becoming extremely weird, refusing to eat, sleep, or bathe, and uttering dark forebodings. Rightly so, as there are deadly consequences to that flash of skin the boys glimpsed. Although it takes a very willing suspension of reality for readers to believe the events, many of which dont make sense (could two girls and a male lifeguard disappear overnight and not have anyone in the camp notice?), Kasischkes writing imbues the book with such an eerie sense of apprehension that the pages keep turning. Her adult novel The Life before Her Eyes (Harcourt, 2002) is currently being made into a film and will probably drive even stronger interest in her work.–Susan Riley, Mount Kisco Public Library, NY
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