Juvie

Starred review from September 9, 2013
Watkins (What Comes After) offers a frank view of life in a juvenile detention center as he explores the inner strife of an inmate suffering the consequences of a crime she didn’t commit. Being at the wrong party at the wrong time leads to a six-month stint in juvie for 17-year-old Sadie Windas while her older sister, who should have gone to jail, gets off scot-free. Simmering with resentment, Sadie worries she may have paid too high a price for her sister’s sake. A reflective first-person narrative alternately expresses Sadie’s traumas in lockup—bullying, brawls, and lies—and her past ordeals, including her dismissal from the basketball team, breakup with a boyfriend, and desperate attempts to keep her dysfunctional family glued together. Little by little, a multi-dimensional portrait of Sadie emerges, exposing her vulnerabilities and struggles with the mistakes she’s made (“Maybe not being guilty wasn’t the same as being innocent,” she concludes). Sadie’s emotional journey, impacted by her profound discoveries about fellow inmates and her growing friendship with a kindly guard, is absorbing and wrenching. Ages 14–up. Agent: Kelly Sonnack, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

October 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-Sadie's older sister, Carla, has a history of substance abuse and arrest. One night, she gets Sadie, 17, caught in a drug deal, and they are both detained. To keep Carla from going to prison, away from her three-year-old daughter, Sadie takes the rap, thinking she'll get community service. Unable to name names, though, she is sentenced to six months in a juvenile detention unit. There, she tries to keep her head down to avoid trouble from the guards and other prisoners, but still gets caught between different factions. At the same time, she worries about her mother and niece, and whether Carla is keeping her promise to finally get her life together. Told in alternating chapters from life inside to the weeks leading up to going into juvie, Sadie's narration displays her anger and bitterness, but also her naivete, both in regard to her sister and to her fellow inmates. Character development comes late and is a tad rushed as Sadie starts to realize that her own bad decisions put her in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some situations, like one of the guards befriending Carla on the outside and feeding information to Sadie, stretch belief. Still, teens, especially reluctant readers, will be drawn into the tension and action.-Jennifer Rothschild, Arlington County Public Libraries, VA

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 15, 2013
Once you're in juvie, it doesn't matter if you're a good girl. Sadie's the good sister: taking care of her mentally ill, shut-in father; raising her party-girl sister Carla's 3-year-old daughter, Lulu; making good grades; and playing basketball in hopes of a scholarship that will get her out of her crummy Virginia town. One night, while Sadie tries to keep Carla out of trouble, the two of them are caught in a sting. Carla's on probation for shoplifting and possession, so Sadie agrees to take the fall, thinking she'll get off with some community-service hours. But she's caught before a hanging judge in the mood to make an example of drug-dealing minors, and the next thing she knows, she's spending six months in juvie. Neither the guards nor the inmates in juvenile detention are interested in rehabilitation. Demeaned and degraded, her schooling reduced to pointless GED-prep workbooks from apathetic teachers, barred from the simple comfort of human contact, Sadie doesn't see how she can return to her outward-bound trajectory when her six months are over. She wants to make friends, to avoid trouble and to protect those weaker than her, but none of that is as simple as it seems. In the midst of the terrible reality, realistically tiny glimmers of hope shine like candles fighting the darkness. A bleakly optimistic reminder to hold on to what is good. (Fiction. 13-17)

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2013
Grades 9-12 Bleak. That's what six months locked up in juvie looks like for 17-year-old Sadie. She isn't anything like the conniving, lethal girls in surrounding cells. Sadie's first and only offense was inadvertently trafficking drugs while carting home her strung-out teen-mom sister, Carla. Sadie took the fall to keep Carla out of adult jail and her beloved niece, Lulu, out of foster care. But heroism doesn't dull Sadie's fear or her longing: for Lulu, for her motorcycle, for a promising basketball career, for an erstwhile boyfriend. Watkins (What Comes After, 2011) has created a compelling first-person narrative anchored on Sadie's self-reflection: Just when you start to feel good about your life because of some little thing that might go well, there are fifty other reminders about where you are and where you're going to be for a long time, and how you got here, and what everybody back home thinks about you now, and will probably think about you for the rest of your life. A haunting story of loyalty, regret, and the fervent hope for second chances.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2014
When seventeen-year-old Sadie and her sister, Carla, are caught participating (unintentionally) in a drug deal, Sadie takes the blame to protect her family; her punishment is a six-month sentence in a juvenile corrections facility. The novel is bleak and brutal--which, of course, is the point--making Sadie's loyalty to Carla and resolve to survive all the more powerful.

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)