Because It Is My Blood

July 30, 2012
In this second installment of Zevin’s Birthright series, following All These Things I’ve Done and set in the late 21st century, Anya Balanchine faces additional tragedy and danger as she increases her involvement with her late father’s illegal chocolate business. After escaping from Liberty Children’s Facility, Anya travels incognito to Mexico, where she is schooled in the production of chocolate and taken under the wing of a family of cacao growers. When a failed attempt on Anya’s life sends her fleeing back to New York City, she has some hard choices to make. Her decision to stay in the family business and turn her father’s underground chocolate sales into an aboveboard operation is met with resistance on both sides of her law. The line between Anya’s friends and foes grows blurry as she attempts to weed out traitors and discover who has tried to harm her and her family. Discerning characters’ true motives will keep readers guessing, and the conflicting forces within Anya add an extra dimension of drama to this action-packed sequel. Ages 12–up. Agent: Douglas Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic.

August 1, 2012
In this sequel to All These Things I've Done (2011), 17-year-old Anya Balanchine, heir apparent to the illegal chocolate trade in 2083 New York City, attempts to leave her criminal past behind with mixed results. After doing time for shooting her cousin after his attempt on her ex-boyfriend Win's life, Anya tries to distance herself from her deceased father's black-market business. But when her fragile relationship with Win threatens the campaign of the incumbent district attorney, who also happens to be Win's father, Anya finds herself fleeing the country to escape further imprisonment. She hides out on a Mexican cacao farm, where she discovers the roots of Balanchine Chocolate and gathers the strength to go back and face the remaining members of her treacherous family. After a sluggish start, the last third of the novel takes off when Anya is confronted with several surprising betrayals and confessions. Zevin's stilted, formal dialogue and arid prose doesn't do her hot-blooded mafia story any favors. Still, fans of the first will enjoy the author's inventive combination of chocolate, crime and politics, as well as finding out Anya's post-prison fate. Casual browsers should be warned that this is a true sequel that entails a read of the initial installment to make all the necessary connections. Required reading if you own the first title. (Thriller. 12 & up)

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September 1, 2012

Gr 8 Up-In this sequel to All These Things I've Done (Farrar, 2010), Anya Balanchine's life becomes very complicated not long after she is released from a prison located near a future Manhattan. In her continued attempts to protect her siblings, manage her family's standing in the mafiya world of black-market chocolate, and plan her future, the teen finds herself in Mexico where she sees the cacao business from a different angle. Here she learns about the healing powers of chocolate and its rich folkloric tradition, causing her to wonder why it was outlawed and if it were possible that chocolate isn't dangerous, or even unhealthy. Anya's on-again, off-again romance with Win Delacroix persists in spite of numerous obstacles, including her rocky relationship with his District Attorney father. Threatened by her competitors in the criminal world, she is forced to return quickly to New York to intervene in her family's affairs. Anya finally finds a way to legitimize her family's longstanding ties to chocolate. The sequel is not as strong as the first book-the multitude of characters, plot twists, and conspiracy theories take readers on a bit of a bumpy ride. The romance is downplayed in favor of Anya's familial and political pursuits, but there is a satisfying, friendly relationship between Anya and Theo, a boy whose family is also in the chocolate business. Readers who enjoy mob stories and visions of future societies will be pleased. As in the first book, Zevin provokes thought about what we make illegal and why.-Nora G. Murphy, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, LaCanada-Flintridge, CA

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2012
Grades 8-11 This sequel to All These Things I've Done (2011) paints on such a broad canvas that readers will be amazed at Zevin's management abilities. They may get lost on occasion (especially if they haven't read the first book), but they will never be bored. Seventeen-year-old Anya, a victim of (and sometimes participant in) the chocolate wars of 2083, is being released from Liberty Children's Facility when the book opens. Difficult days, however, are not behind her. There is more imprisonment, an escape to Mexico, an assassination attempt, and then there's that mob family of hers, committed to providing the citizens of a crumbling New York with illegal chocolate. Can any of them be trusted? Win, her lovely boyfriend from the last book, is there, but Anya's decisions over what to do about her own role in the family's empire drives the book. Zevin's strong suit is characterization, and it shines here. Whatever the nefarious plot, no one becomes a cartoon characterlike chocolates, each is delicious in his or her own right.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2013
Chocolate has been banned since 2055. Now in 2083, seventeen-year-old Anya Ballanchine ([cf2]All These Things I've Done[cf1]), heir to Ballanchine Chocolate, wonders how and if she wants to continue as a crime boss. Anya's rather flat narration detracts from what should be an exciting dystopian novel. Clearly, this volume is setting up a third, with threads to be tied together later.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)