Boy Heaven

Children's Literature - Julia Beiker

The wind whipped their hair as they cruised into the gas station where their lives would change forever. Three cheerleaders, Kristy, Kristi, and Desiree, took life for granted as the world to bent to their everyday needs. No one denied their appeal as they showed off their stuff in front of their peers. The summer seemed endless as the week of cheerleading camp created a venue for them to be amongst the elite. Who would have guessed how a simple smile could wreak complete havoc and possibly destroy all their lives? But it did. If only Kristy had not been given that little red Mustang to cruise in that let the whole world know that they were free and able to be seduced. It probably did not help that none of the girls felt rules applied to them and so chose to sneak out of camp to go joyriding. Even though Boy Heaven had an interesting twist at the end that finally made the story come full circle, I felt the use of flashbacks confusing, and they interrupted the flow of the story. This made the text hard to comprehend at times and sometimes made me second-guess the plot. The story could have been simplified and more to the point, which would have rendered the reader speechless during the creative twists and turns of the finale.

School Library Journal

Gr 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 don't make sense (could two girls and a male lifeguard disappear overnight and not have anyone in the camp notice?), Kasischke's 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 Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.