Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 01/01/2014 Oliver, 18, has graduated, but his mind has not moved on from Junie Blue. Too bad, since she’s just dumped him for reasons he’s only beginning to fathom. Local organized-crime boss One Who Knows (aka “Juan Junose”—get it?) claims all winning lottery tickets to keep his cash influx on the up-and-up, and isn’t it possible that Junie has scored such a ticket but doesn’t feel like sharing? From Inexcusable (2005) to Hothouse (2010) to Kill Switch (2012), the prolific Lynch is a reliable writer, unafraid to venture forth into new genres and tones, though with this odd little ditty, he wanders a bridge too far. The plot is minuscule; what we are to care about are the characters and their constant verbal interplay. Yet each of them exists in an unreal world where everyone trades the same type of minor-key jazz-bop drollness—an attempt at humor that never quite catches on and instead feels like wandering affectations in search of a conductor. Lynch’s rep should draw readers, though they’ll find greater satisfaction in previous works. - Copyright 2014 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 03/01/2014 Oliver, son of a wealthy financial adviser, and his girlfriend Junie Blue, daughter of a toadie for the local crime boss, are spirited recreational liars. O is so accustomed to their mutual mendacity that when Junie abruptly dumps him, he assumes it’s a joke—wrongly. He’s not buying her weak implication that this is all about the incompatibility of their separate worlds, though, and when she twice disappears on brief “vacations,” only to return with bruises and burns, O is convinced she needs his protection. But from whom? The boss, One Who Knows, is certainly a suspect, and Junie’s own father, Ronnie, is vile enough to batter his daughter if it advances his boss’s agenda. Rumors and inquiries lead O to suspect that Junie is holding a winning lottery ticket, which she is stubbornly refusing to share with One Who Knows, a policy that locals realize is a sure way to get yourself killed. O traces the boss’s true identity and sets up a deal to appease him and save Junie, but his little cabal releases some family secrets he’s now forced to confront. The rose-strewn fairy-tale romance, complete with luxury hotel accommodations and a matinee worthy getaway in a vintage Corvette, is a surprise in this otherwise dark genre, but this is a gritty mystery with breakneck pacing and characters and dialogue as smart and sharp as Lynch makes them. Expect fans to pass this title from hand to hand. EB - Copyright 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

School Library Journal - 03/01/2014 Gr 10 Up—Oliver and Junie's relationship thrives on lies. Together they are glib, sarcastic, and rarely serious, but they're in love. That is, they used to be, because Junie broke up with Oliver and now she's gone, possibly on the run from the local mob boss, the One Who Knows. Still desperately in love with her, Oliver wants to find and protect Junie, but how can he help someone who doesn't want to be found? This quirky novel from the Printz Honor-winning Lynch is charmingly clever and witty. Being wanted by the mob is not necessarily a light and fun premise for a novel, but Lynch uses this alarming situation to present a story about self-awareness and sacrifice. As a slightly unreliable narrator, Oliver is fine company. Although he is somewhat oblivious to his socioeconomic privilege and emotionally clueless, readers will root for him because of his devotion to saving Junie. She manages to evade him for almost half of the novel, but when they finally meet again, their biggest hurdle turns out not be the mob, but their opposing visions of the future. Lynch's staccato and ironic style is highly readable. Readers who aren't sure what they want to do with their life after high school will find that this book's light and honest approach to figuring it out rings true.—Joy Piedmont, LREI, New York City - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.