Dark Eyes

Gr 7–10—Wallis Stoneman seemed to have everything. Rescued from an orphanage in Russia by wealthy Americans, she was whisked off to live in glamorous Manhattan. But by the age of 16, she has opted to live on the streets with other runaways, attempting to shun her former life. An encounter with a Brighton Beach shopkeeper from whom she is trying to obtain a fake ID opens an unimaginable door to her past: he hands her an envelope with documents, a gemstone, and a letter from her birth mother. The path Wally takes to find out about her early life and to reunite with the woman who gave her away 11 years earlier is dangerous without her knowing it, because a criminal is also on her mother's trail. The teen is trained in martial arts and the use of handguns, equipping her to go toe-to-toe with a man so evil that he was sentenced to life in prison. He is also her father. This debut novel glamorizes life on the streets and stereotypes street kids. It has an "and then this happened, and then that happened" feel, and, as each event unfolds, it is more and more difficult for readers to suspend disbelief.—Melyssa Kenney, Parkville High School, Baltimore, MD