In Matt de la Peña's (Mexican WhiteBoy) compulsively readable thriller, a new disease attacks and runs rampant through the poor population in the U.S. on the border of Mexico, and a tsunami threatens the lives of passengers and crew on a luxury liner.
High school student Shy Espinoza, who narrates, takes a summer job aboard a Paradise Cruise Lines vessel to make money for his family back home in San Diego, Calif. Six days into the voyage, a passenger says something cryptic to Shy ("This is the face of your betrayer," the man tells him, "Me, David Williamson"), then climbs over the ship's railing. Shy tries to save him by grabbing the man's arm. But the man's sleeve rips, and he falls to his death in the ocean. What was the meaning behind the man's words?
De la Peña gradually reveals a complex set of connections between the man who committed suicide, several passengers aboard the ship, and Shy himself. Shy feels helpless when he finds out from his mother that his cousin now shows the same symptoms his late grandmother exhibited. The whites of her eyes turned red and her skin began flaking off--Romero's Disease. Shy has rarely left his hometown, and has never been exposed to the casual way in which the wealthy talk down to the crew. Friendships blossom among the crew members as they work together in close quarters to keep the passengers happy. One of them tells Shy he's being followed. De la Peña paints a few secondary characters in broad strokes, especially the mysterious Shoeshine and Carmen, a crew member who becomes Shy's crush. When the tsunami hits, Shy winds up in a damaged lifeboat with the daughter of David Williamson's business partner, and an oilman who had boasted to Shy--just hours earlier--that he planned to propose to a woman, but she stood him up at dinner.
The breakneck plot will draw readers in, but Shy's personal discoveries about how the world is skewed toward those in power, and his decisions to do the right thing, will hold their attention. At one point, Shy observes, "Some people's lives mattered more than others." The book ends with unanswered questions to be resolved in a sequel, but Shy emerges with a clear conscience and a bittersweet understanding of where he belongs--even if he hasn't quite decided which is more destructive: Mother Nature or human nature. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: Amid disasters, a teen must come to terms with the chasm between the classes while serving as crew on a luxury liner.