AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
Kurt Vonnegut's
absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a
man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the
planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we
follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life,
concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an
American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
I'm
not quite sure why this is considered one of the best books ever
written. It was good. I enjoyed reading it. But I can't say that it
blew me away and my life is forever changed.
AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
At seven minutes past
midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his
bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting — he’s
been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly
every night since his mother started her treatments.
The
monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it
wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants
the truth.
From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan
Dowd — whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it
herself — Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of
mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.
I recommend this book for anyone who is dealing with loss. Or grief of any kind.
I
am currently a blubbering mess and can't form enough coherent thoughts
for a review. This is such an amazing, cathartic book. It's a
surprisingly quick read; I finished it in one sitting.
AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
In the spring of 1708,
an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly
succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his
crown.
Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her
next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle,
she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to
write.
But when she discovers her novel is more fact than
fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory,
making her the only living person who knows the truth-the ultimate
betrayal-that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes
very close to destroying her...
I love this book! I'm not normally into romantic historical fiction, but if there are more like this, I want to read them!
AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
Lina is just like any
other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws,
she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge
into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've
known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train
car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way
north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches
of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for
beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina
finds solace in her art, meticulously - and at great risk - documenting
events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her
father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long
and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it
is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately
survives.
I
had no idea -- NONE -- that Stalin committed genocide on a larger scale
than did Hitler. I'm amazed that anyone was able to survive under the
conditions portrayed in this book.
Fantastic story, but very difficult to listen to.
AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
Three teens, three
stories—all interconnected through their parents’ family relationships.
As the adults pull away, caught up in their own dilemmas, the lives of
the teens begin to tilt….
Mikayla, almost eighteen, is
over-the-top in love with Dylan, who loves her back jealously. But what
happens to that love when Mikayla gets pregnant the summer before their
senior year—and decides to keep the baby?
Shane turns sixteen
that same summer and falls hard in love with his first boyfriend, Alex,
who happens to be HIV positive. Shane has lived for four years with his
little sister’s impending death. Can he accept Alex’s love, knowing that
his life, too, will be shortened?
Harley is fourteen—a good girl
searching for new experiences, especially love from an older boy. She
never expects to hurdle toward self-destructive extremes in order to
define who she is and who she wants to be.
Love, in all its forms, has crucial consequences in this standalone novel.
**I won this book from Goodreads as a First Reads giveaway**
I absolutely ADORE Ellen Hopkins and was so excited when I won this book, a companion piece to her adult novel, Triangles.
Hopkins is as amazing as ever, and I was completely engrossed in this
book. The way she weaves the characters' stories and lives together is
simply beautiful.
I love how she writes in verse; studying the
pages reveals new secrets. I savored this book and re-read passages,
pages, and sections.
A wonderful addition to her collection of YA novels.
AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart
Words
are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh
from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from
the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back
to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.
NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg
Since
she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her
neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a
beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now,
installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by
the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from
her memory.
HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle
As
Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds
herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Clues
keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological
puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons,
Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she
wants to survive this homecoming.
I saw this book at the library and snatched it up immediately. I had just finished reading Gone Girl, and I was excited to add another of Flynn's works to my list.
This
is a dark, disturbing story and is certainly not for everyone. I really
liked it: life isn't always full of rainbows and unicorns. Flynn is a
talented writer and is able to set the scene with characters that are
real. And really screwed up. I'm looking forward to reading Dark Places, though I think I need something light and fluffy beforehand.
AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?
Today
should be one of the worst days of seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan's
life. Having missed her flight, she's stuck at JFK airport and late to
her father's second wedding, which is taking place in London and
involves a soon-to-be stepmother Hadley's never even met. Then she meets
the perfect boy in the airport's cramped waiting area. His name is
Oliver, he's British, and he's sitting in her row.
A long night
on the plane passes in the blink of an eye, and Hadley and Oliver lose
track of each other in the airport chaos upon arrival. Can fate
intervene to bring them together once more?
Quirks of timing
play out in this romantic and cinematic novel about family connections,
second chances, and first loves. Set over a twenty-four-hour-period,
Hadley and Oliver's story will make you believe that true love finds you
when you're least expecting it.
Love
love love love love this book! It is definitely one of my new
favorites and I'm adding all of Smith's other works to my To Read list.
Smith's writing is evocative and poignant, something you don't see too often in the Young Adult genre. I liken it to The Fault in Our Stars: the subject matter is different, but the writing makes you feel like you are right there and experiencing everything first-hand.
I need to have this book in my personal collection so I can read it again and again and again.
AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
I really wanted to like this book. I enjoyed Story of a Girl
and I love teen angst, so this was a perfect book for me.
Unfortunately, I hated all of the characters, with the exception of
Jenna's step-father. It felt like the book was trying too hard to be
this deep, existential story. Instead, Jenna comes off looking like a
selfish brat; Cameron as overly emo; and Jenna's friends as caricatures.
I think that Zarr was trying to show how even the
"popular" kids have issues, but it was forced down our throats: look at
how bad Jenna has it!
What really annoyed me?
AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
Mackie Doyle is not one
of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a
world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls
ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement, left in the
crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies
to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is fighting to survive in
the human world.
Mackie would give
anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with
his crush, Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is
drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He
must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful
place, in our world, or theirs.
Well,
this was a disappointment. This book has been high on my TBR list for
the past several months. I mean, how can you (read: me) not love the
cover and the description?
Sadly, the book falls flat. Much
like the characters. I felt no emotional attachment to any of them, nor
could I understand their motivations for certain actions. There were
continuity issues, making me wonder if the editors spent enough time
reviewing the book before publication. And some of the descriptions
were just weird. Does anyone know what "bright ozone" smells like?
Please educate me!
Most importantly, I'm just not a fan of books where you're told what the characters are doing, thinking, and feeling, rather than being shown.
If this hadn't been an easy read, I would have given up halfway
through. Since I didn't dislike it enough to stop reading, I'm giving
it two stars.
I will keep Yovanoff on my list of authors to read
in the future, though. This was a great premise, and description of her
forthcoming book, Paper Valentine, makes me want to read it as soon as it's published.
AmazonBarnes & NobleGoodreads
An intense look at the rules of high school attraction -- and the price that's paid for them.
It
happens every year. A list is posted, and one girl from each grade is
chosen as the prettiest, and another is chosen as the ugliest. Nobody
knows who makes the list. It almost doesn't matter. The damage is done
the minute it goes up.
This is the story of eight girls, freshman
to senior, "pretty" and "ugly." And it's also the story of how we see
ourselves, and how other people see us, and the tangled connection of
the two.
Dear teenage girls,
I am SO glad that I'm not in high school any more. Girls like nothing better than to tear each other down. I'm pretty sure that we should all get medals for surviving the teenage years.
It gets better, I swear.
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Goodreads
Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace
is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence.
Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome,
taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one
summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and
their world.A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles’s crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.
The main character, Gene, was whiny and annoying. I'm not sure why this is a classic.
The narrator of the audiobook was very breathy, which was quite distracting. I kept waiting for him to take his next breath.
