Kelly Ann Jacobson

What you find at the beginning of the story is the tip of a most interesting iceberg. Robin, Daisy Chain, Little John, and Skillet began an odyssey a long time before the story opens with Robin about to address a new class of girls interested in becoming coders at a unique academy in the Arizona desert. When she begins reminiscing, you're taken to Boston, then the wilds of Florida and introduced to a lifestyle created by bonds of love and trust, coupled with necessity. True, there are moments of violence in the story, but they serve to make the how and why of the girls' survival as teens very realistic. The deeper into the story I got, the more empathy I had for all of them. They had to be gritty and resourceful if they wanted to survive. When you get to the end there's a particularly neat moment, one that makes everything Robin had to experience well worth it. I hope this finds its way onto the shelves of plenty of libraries.… (altro)

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A roving female gang of fun-loving rebel bikers, street racers, and bandits led by Robin agree to give back to queer girls in need of help in this stunning modern reimagining of the Robin Hood legend.

Robin and her four Misfits—Little John, White Rabbit, Daisy Chain, and Skillet—have run away from their families in order to live off the grid on their own terms. For a while, they’re hidden, safe, and happy as they commit petty crimes that provide enough to get by. All that matters is keeping their small clan alive. Then, one mission proposed by an unfriendly associate from their past reminds them of their former lives and motivates the group to a new purpose. The five Misfits develop into a league of strong individuals united by a fresh goal: do whatever it takes to help queer girls rise above oppressive laws and attitudes.

Kelly Ann Jacobson, the author of the award-winning LGBTQ+ young adult novel Tink and Wendy, is back with another diverse twist on a popular legend.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I love Daisy Chain the best because her sibylline utterings aren't remotely clear to her listeners, fellow very young women, except by accident; or, I suspect, by her deeply sneaky inner sibyl wishing to make clear messages only occasionally.

The Prologue, by its nature, is a giant spoiler. Even I, deeply indifferent to spoilers, thought as we then moved back in time for the bulk of the novel, "what's suspenseful now that I know what I know?"

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

In that Daisy Chain-uttered Shakespearean truism, laddies and gentlewomen, lies the essential truth of this book. Every runaway runs out of steam at last. All lies are signposts aimed directly at the truth. And when eternal runaway Daisy Chain at long last finds herself, she then finds the greatly belovèd carved-granite mass that is Robin right where she left her.

So that Prologue? What does it spoil? Does knowing where mean how has no value? Or is "Don't waste your love on somebody who doesn't value it" more than one lie told in one sentence? That hand is always pointing its curled fingers directly at the truth of love never being wasted because it is valued...if, perhaps, differently than one would ask for it to be...but still valued.

What's on offer here is this: A story designed to be eaten up by young, questioning women in search of Identities in a world awash with given, never chosen, names. It's going to offer those young women snow chains for the tires on the unchosen, unsuitable dune-buggy that in their ill-suited design keep slipping on the glaciers where they inexplicably find themselves. This story can be their Nottingham of the spirit while their bodies work out how to steer their unstable, utterly unreliable transportation on to as-yet-unseen safer paths.

Highly recommended for those young women among your graduating family who could use a nudge to become Robin Hood not the Pretty, prized-but-powerless Maid Marian.… (altro)