ALA Booklist

Some books begin mired in sadness and move to hope. This is not one of them. London teen Jess is living with her mother and her mother's abusive boyfriend, Terry, who makes Jess take videos as he beats up her mom. Nicu is a Romanian whose parents are scraping up enough money to go home and get him a bride. Told in alternating chapters, this novel in verse chronicles the teens' meeting as they do community service for petty crimes. An unlikely friendship develops, fraught with ambiguity even as seeds of love take root. Things come to a head when Terry's attention turns to Jess, and Nicu learns a date has been set for him to return home and marry. All this necessitates an escape plan that goes horribly wrong. Jess is a strong character with a bitter edge, and readers will appreciate how the softer Nicu earns her trust (though his first-person accented voice at times feels inauthentic). This crushingly honest story effectively confronts issues of racism, abuse, and bullying, while admitting that often there are no easy answers to misery.

Horn Book

In this verse novel, tough girl Jess nicked some cosmetics with friends who let her take the fall. Nicu, an earnest Romanian-immigrant boy, impulsively stole a candy bar to satisfy his hunger. Their crimes lead to community service detail, where (English-language-learner) Nicu is drawn to Jess: "She seem lonely. / She seem lost..." This moving star-crossed love affair set in modern-day London is heartbreakingly timely.

Kirkus Reviews

Two teens with bad lives connect.Nicu arrived in "London North" only a month ago. He and his parents came from Romania because now that Nicu is a grown man at age 15, his father must earn money to pay for an arranged bride for Nicu back in Romania (against Nicu's wishes). Jess has always lived in North London, trapped by a stepfather who beats her mother and makes Jess record it on his phone. The two underdogs meet in a community service program for kids caught stealing and share a mild romance born of desperation. In alternating chapters, they each narrate in first-person free verse. Jess, who's white, narrates in standard English with touches of vernacular to convey her class. Nicu, who's Roma and brown-skinned, narrates in an unrealistic and dehumanizing broken English ("Her touching help peace my mental / and my body"). It's meant to show that English is new to him, but the use of broken language for thoughts inside his head is sharply belittling, precludes nuanced characterization, and is also incongruent with the use of standard English for his parents' dialogue, also presumably "translated" from Romanian for readers' benefit. This, along with Nicu's lack of grooming and unexplained misordering of weekdays, renders Nicu the cheapest stereotype, nullifying the authors' attempts to confront racism in their plot about bigotry, which includes anti-Roma slurs (as well as Islamophobic and pro-Brexit ones), violence, and injustice. Addresses persecution while reinforcing it. Skip. (Verse fiction. 14-16)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

In a verse novel told through alternating points of view, Crossan (One) and Conaghan (The Bombs That Brought Us Together) introduce teenagers Jess and Nicu, who meet during mandated community service after shoplifting. Jess is standoffish, secretly struggling with her mother-s abuse at the hands of Jess-s stepfather. Nicu, a recent emigrant from Romania, has traveled to London with his parents to collect and sell scrap metal, saving to pay for his impending arranged marriage. Seeking connection in an unfamiliar and unfriendly landscape, Nicu is drawn to Jess, and as their tentative friendship deepens, they develop a bond built on a common heartache and hope for escape. Jess-s perspective is shared through uncomplicated declarative poems that don-t mince words or shy from her violent home life. In contrast, Nicu-s poems, while thoughtful, are stilted, intended to reflect his unfamiliarity with English, -the tough watermelon to crack,/ a strange language with many weird wordings.- Unfortunately, it-s a gamble that doesn-t pay off, effectively reducing his character to caricature and undermining the novel-s empathetic intentions. Ages 14-up. Author-s agent: (for Crossan) Julia Churchill, A.M. Heath; (for Conaghan) Ben Illis, Ben Illis Agency. (June)