Gr 9 Up —Sixteen-year-old Jane lives in an old Victorian house with her family, their cook, and their gardener. Jane's mother, Mina, is a famous punk musician in the band Placenta. Yet, when Mina isn't out on tour, their home life is anything but idyllic. Jane's father, Vernon, has confined Mina to the System—a series of pneumatic tubes running throughout the house that she watches her family through. Since homeschooling Jane and her younger brother, Henry, during the pandemic, Vernon has chosen to keep them home, creating an elaborate and rigid set of rules. When Jane stumbles upon a stash of security camera footage that dates back to before she was born, she begins to see the dysfunction and abuse happening in her family. With a new perspective, Jane starts to write a punk opera and works to save her mother from the System. Along the way, Jane finds her voice, gets herself back to high school and her friends, and fights against Vernon's abuse. As typical of King's work, this novel blends realism, fanciful, and genre to create a young adult feminist anthem that thoughtfully addresses issues of abuse. VERDICT Fans of King's work and teens interested in music and social issues will be drawn to this work.—Rebekah J. Buchanan

A white teen living a sheltered life seeks to break her rock-star mother out of the cycle of abuse perpetrated on their family.Sixteen-year-old Jane lives in a large, old Victorian house with younger brother Henry, father Vernon, their cook, their gardener-and Mina, her mother, who, when she's not out on tour with her world-famous punk band, Placenta, is confined by Vernon to a system of pneumatic tubes that traverse their house. Ever since the onset of the global pandemic over four years ago, Jane and Henry haven't been allowed to return to school, instead receiving a bizarre regimen of home-school instruction from Vernon, while Mina watches on helplessly from her capsule in the tubes. Only when Jane stumbles on a cache of home movies-actually security camera footage from around their house dating back to her parents' courtship days-does she begin to gain some perspective on her dysfunctional, abusive family life. In secret, she starts composing a punk opera to express her desire to save her mother from the life she seems trapped in. When Mina leaves to go on tour for Placenta's latest album, Jane uses her wits to mount a nascent, persistent rebellion against Vernon's toxic grip on their family's psyche. Expertly blending fabulism with hard realism and Victorian language with contemporary teen-speak, this powerful narrative examines the myriad effects of emotional and physical abuse on a family.Painful yet compulsively readable. (Fiction. 14-18)