The Lure

November 11, 2013
Ewing returns to the subject matter of her novels Drive-By and Party Girl—teens pulled into the world of gangs—with the story of 15-year-old Blaise Montgomery. In Blaise’s Washington, D.C. neighborhood, money is tight, drugs are sold openly, guns are everywhere, and gangs offer power and protection. Despite the grandmother who’s desperately trying to save for Blaise’s education, Blaise decides to be jumped into a local gang. Ewing surrounds her heroine with a large cast of friends, potential boyfriends, and threats—first and foremost Trek, the gang leader who sees Blaise’s beauty underneath her baggy clothes and uses her to lure rival gangsters. Unfortunately, as the body count mounts, with Blaise trying to keep her hands and her conscience clean, the improbabilities do, too; Blaise is an odd combination of super-tough and very naïve, especially where Trek is concerned. While the many small plot twists aren’t predictable, the overall trajectory is, especially when Blaise says things like “a tremor of premonition came over me that my future and Trek’s were on an inescapable collision course.” Ages 14–up.

December 15, 2013
Gritty realism and airbrushed romance go head to head in this tale of life among Washington, D.C.'s street-wise gangs. Years after her best friend died in a drive-by shooting, Blaise seeks safety and protection by joining Core 9, a gang active in her downtrodden neighborhood. As their rite of passage, Blaise and Ariel opt for a severe beating rather than the gang rape Melissa endures. At the pinnacle of Core 9's hierarchy is Trek, a handsome sadist whose favor is essential for survival. Desired by both Trek and her de facto boyfriend, Rico, virginal Blaise longs for Rico's best friend, Satch. When Trek offers Blaise pay to use her feminine wiles to draw gangbangers out for Trek to kill or maim, Blaise, guided by pure motives a saint would envy, reluctantly agrees. She's embarrassed but thrilled when Melissa's makeover transforms her into a sleek seductress, but she's sickened by the job itself. The girls of Core 9 are lovely; the guys handsome, muscular hotties who sell drugs but largely stick to beer. All, even Trek, are smart and self-aware, their families vicious or victimized. While some characters speak Spanish, none are identified by race or culture; ungrounded in cultural identity, characters feel generic. Skilled storytelling and starkly gripping details of gang life can't paper over the contradictions: This is stylish gangster porn. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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March 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-Blaise and her friends do not think any further than surviving high school-literally. Their low-income neighborhood in Washington, DC is controlled by rival gangs. The only way most teens have a chance at making it is to join one of these crews. Blaise is tough and chooses to undergo a brutal hazing ritual to fight her way into Core 9, but Melissa decides to get in through the "rollins" process-a throw of the dice determines how many guys she will have to have sex with to join. Blaise feels powerful at first and enjoys the extra money membership affords, but becomes desperate to escape as she sees Trek, the group's leader, abusing Melissa; witnesses the needless death of an 11-year-old boy; and gets "promoted" to the role of "lure"-bait to track down enemy gang members. Fairly true to the gritty reality of urban organized crime and violence, the ending, however, wraps up too quickly and perfectly, and readers will have to suspend disbelief to completely accept it. Place this fast-paced novel in collections where realistic urban fiction is popular. For fans of Allison van Diepen's Snitch (S & S, 2007) and Greg Takoudes's When We Wuz Famous (Holt, 2013).-Suanne B. Roush, Osceola High School, Seminole, FL

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2014
In order to survive their violent Washington, DC, neighborhood, Blaise and her friends join a notorious local gang. At first she revels in the new sense of belonging and respect, but the risk escalates when the gang leader starts using Blaise's attractiveness as bait for his enemies. The gritty story sometimes falls into melodrama, but Blaise narrates with vivid urban imagery.

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

February 1, 2014
Grades 9-12 Joining the Core 9 gang should offer Blaise protection from the drug deals, guns, and violence in her Washington, D.C., neighborhood, which borders three rival gangs. When she is asked by Core 9's head gangbanger to dress sexily to lure enemy gang members to revenge beatings, however, she knows she is in danger. Blaise is a fighter with a gangster sixth sense for avoiding trouble, but even she is not sure she will make it out of high school alive. Ewing describes gritty and, unfortunately, all-too-realistic scenes in which poverty, fear, and self-preservation make Blaise and her friends take perilous risks, from theft to gang-initiation sex. The author doesn't make judgments, but rather depicts the characters as products of their environment. The story's nonstop action becomes an adrenaline rush when Blaise dares to think about a way out of her dead-end neighborhood. Even if she doesn't make it out, she will go down fighting. An eye-opening, heart-pounding look at survival on the streets.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)