Yankee Girl

Mississippi and integration in the 1960s

The year is 1964, and Alice Ann Moxley's FBI-agent father has been reassigned from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi, to protect black people who are registering to vote. Alice finds herself thrust into the midst of the racial turmoil that dominates current events, especially when a Negro girl named Valerie Taylor joins her sixth-grade class -- the first of two black students at her new school because of a mandatory integration law. When Alice finds it difficult to penetrate the clique of girls at school she calls the Cheerleaders (they call her Yankee Girl), she figures Valerie, being the other outsider, will be easier to make friends with. But Valerie isn't looking for friends. Rather, Valerie silently endures harassment from the Cheerleaders, much worse than what Alice is put through. Soon Alice realizes the only way to befriend the girls is to seem like a co-conspirator in their plans to make Valerie miserable. It takes a horrible tragedy for her to realize the complete ramifications of following the crowd instead of her heart.

An unflinching story about racism and culture clash in the 1960s.

I thought this was going to be another one of those books that skirted around the issues and told a slightly buttered up version of the story. I was wrong. It got to the dirt of the issues that the black and the white people had to face. It showed both sides of the story and what it was like to be a white girl who supported black equality. This is a great book and was well worth the time to read it. I would defiantly recommend it.

The Freak Observer

The Freak Observer is rich in family drama, theoretical physics, and an unusual, tough young woman Loa Lindgren. When her younger sister dies, 16-year-old Loas clockwork galaxy collapses. The Freak Observer is a startling debut about death, life, astrophysics, and finding beauty in chaos.

This is a short book coming in at  only around 200 pages it makes it a nice short read. But even though its short its a deeper book. You get into the brain and heart of Loa and her feelings and her life. It didn't have a lot about her life with her sister but it focused more on what happened after. I didn't really enjoy the ending but it was okay. In the end i felt it was decent not my favorite but i didn't hate it either. 

True Believer

LaVaughn is fifteen now, and she's still fiercely determined to go to college. But that's the only thing she's sure about. Loyalty to her father bubbles up as her mother grows closer to a new man. The two girls she used to do everything with have chosen a path LaVaughn wants no part of. And then there's Jody. LaVaughn can't believe how gorgeous he is...or how confusing. He acts like he's in love with her, but is he? 

This is another novel written in verse, its actually the second book in the Make Lemonade series. I should have looked that up before reading it but it ended up not really matter, it didn't really have any flash back stuff very much so it didn't annoy me to read it out of order. In  the end it was a decent book, not my favorite but still a good read. 

Frozen

The Heists were only the beginning.

Gray Weathersby escaped from the primitive town of Claysoot expecting to find answers, but what he discovered shook him to the core: A ruthless dictator with absolute power. An army of young soldiers blinded by lies. And a growing rebellion determined to fight back.

Now Gray has joined a team of rebels on a harsh, icy journey in search of allies who can help them set things right. But in a world built on lies, Gray must constantly question whether any ally—or enemy—is truly what they seem…

I seriously love the side of this book. Its awesomely pretty! I received an ARC  of this through epic reads and I was so excited about it because it sounds great. Not having read the first one, if I had I might have enjoyed this a little more then I did. I felt like part of the books dragged a little and had some "boring" parts.  But the more exiting parts made up for it some of the times. I felt like it should have been a little bit more of a thriller then it was, it should have been a little more... Exciting? I don't know but it wasn't as action packed as much as I had hoped. But maybe that was just me. Overall I liked it but not LOVED it. 

A Stillness of Chimes

When Laura Gantt returns to Georgia to handle her late mother's estate, she hears a startling rumor---that her father staged his drowning years ago and has recently been spotted roaming the mountains. 

With the help of her former high school sweetheart, Laura searches for the truth. But will what they find destroy their rekindled feelings?

I first thought this book was going to be a odd type of a book. And i was partly wrong. I felt that there were parts of the story that took to long to happen and they should have moved a little faster but it wasn't horrible. I also felt that the characters grew during the story and were better and stronger people in the end. I enjoyed the book as a whole and loved that there was an edge of mystery to the story and the author wove the story together well. In the end, I would  recommend it.   I recieved this book through Multnomah for review. 

Wicked Lovely

Rule #3: Don't stare at invisible faeries.
Aislinn has always seen faeries. Powerful and dangerous, they walk hidden in the mortal world. Aislinn fears their cruelty - especially if they learn of her Sight - and wishes she were as blind to their presence as other teens.

Rule #2: Don't speak to invisible faeries.
Now faeries are stalking her. One of them, Keenan, who is equal parts terrifying and alluring, is trying to talk to her, asking questions Aislinn is afraid to answer.

Rule #1: Don't ever attract their attention.
But it's too late. Keenan is the Summer King, who has sought his queen for nine centuries. Without her, summer itself will perish. He is determined that Aislinn will become the Summer Queen at any cost — regardless of her plans or desires.

Suddenly none of the rules that have kept Aislinn safe are working anymore, and everything is on the line: her freedom; her best friend, Seth; her life; everything.

Faery intrigue, mortal love, and the clash of ancient rules and modern expectations swirl together in Melissa Marr's stunning twenty-first-century faery tale.

So I had a love hate relationship with this book. I loved the story and the faeries and the magical part of the story but didn't always like the choices they made and the reasons they made them. I felt that the main charcter was a little more then slightly selfish always doing what was best for he wants and desires and not always caring about anyone else. I didn't really like the ending that well either, I know this is a 5 or 6 book series but it still didn't have an overly complete ending. But in the end i got over those things i disliked and really enjoyed this book and the style that Melissa Marr writes. I will defiantly be looking out for the rest of the books soon and look forward to continuing the series. 

Sidekicks

INTRODUCING: METAL MUTT! STATIC CAT! AND... FLUFFY!?!

Captain Amazing, hero of Metro City, is so busy catching criminals that he rarely has time for his pets at home. He doesn't even notice when they develop superpowers of their own.

So when he announces that he needs a sidekick, his dog, hamster, and chameleon each decide to audition. But with each pet determined to win the sidekick position, the biggest battle in Metro City might just be at the Captain's house. 

Then archvillain Dr. Havoc returns to town, and suddenly the Captain's in serious trouble. Can the warring pets put their squabbles aside? Or is it curtains for the Captain?

It's stay, sit, and save the world in this romp of a graphic novel!

So this is suppose to be for kids 8-12 but even as an almost 17 year old i still really liked it. I wasn't stupid or too little kidish. I really enjoyed it and loved the art work.  A great young kids version of a graphic novel! 

Th1rteen R3asons Why

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers thirteen cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, his classmate and crush who committed suicide two weeks earlier.

On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out how he made the list.

Through Hannah and Clay's dual narratives, debut author Jay Asher weaves an intricate and heartrending story of confusion and desperation that will deeply affect teen readers.

I really loved this book.  I enjoyed Hannah as a character and seeing her life through not only her eyes but also the eyes of Clay, one of the only people able to save her from herself. I agree with some of the other reviews I have read about Hannah having a dumb reason for killing herself, I agree but then i don't. I agree that they were kind of dumb reasons to kill herself but I also feel like what one person believes isn't very hard to deal with sometimes is, and her life wasn't perfect and all the things that happened to her were mostly caused by her peers. I hate to think that things like that happen everyday all because some kid can't shut up and get some common sense to think about what is coming out of their mouths before they say it. Just saying. But one thing that was kind of creepy for me was that i have a friend named Hannah Baker. Same spelling and everything. Its really creepy. Anyways all in all i really enjoyed reading this book and was happy to finally see what all the hype was about for this book. Hype I feel is well deserved. Everyone should read this book and it should be a mandatory read for all high school students. 

Little Faith: The Child of the Toy Stall

This compelling short story by the author of Christie's Old Organ will show you and your children how true faith in the Lord Jesus carries the believer through the most grievous of hardships.

So this book was rather short, at a whopping 96 pages so its a rather short read. So I read through this in around an hour.  I had  higher hopes for this book, it was okay but the girl kind of made me mad. She seemed to be thinking she had to do a things she didn't need to if she had simply stopped and thought the situation through first before making any rash choices. She did this all throughout the book and even though everything turns out well in the end its still kind of  infuriating to me that she acted this way. But I  guess in the end, all in all it was a decent read. It is a classic I believe so the writing was very different compared to what i am used too. But still it was good. I would recommend it  to someone looking for a quick Christian classic.

Candy

Kevin Brooks, author of Kissing the Rain, Martyn Pig, Lucas excels at portraying the gritty details of English underclass life, and here, in a story of a boy desperately in love, he has written an irresistibly suspenseful and compelling YA novel.
When Joe Beck, a fifteen-year-old suburban kid, gets lost in a disreputable neighborhood on his way to an appointment in London, he is struck dumb by his first sight of beautiful and seemingly innocent Candy. She talks with him, teases him, but reveals nothing about herself except her phone number. Later they have a perfect day at the London Zoo, and soon Joe is as addicted to Candy as she is to heroin, in spite of the threats of her menacing pimp Iggy. Almost nothing matters except his desire to free her from her terrible life-- not his band's chance for a recording contract, not the song he has written for her that has become a hit without him. But there is something that still matters to him, and when he rescues the young prostitute from her sordid rooming house and takes her into hiding to sweat out her addiction, Iggy finds and uses that one thing that is stronger than Joe's passion for Candy, in a heart-thumping, breathless conclusion. 
Wow, this book was amazing! I loved the story and it was amazingly written with amazing characters that showed their flaws throughout the story. I felt this book was a cross between Ellen Hopkins Crank (minus being not written in verse) and Looking For Alaska  By John Green. I felt like there was so many parts to this book that i loved and wanted to write down and have that part of the story forever, those words and those feelings forever wrapped up inside of my head. So in the end, I thought the ending was good, not sad but not overly happy either, a happy medium I guess. I would defiantly recommend it to anyone looking for a read simailar to Crank. 

2gether 4ever: Notes of a Junior High School Heartthrob

Love! Heartbreak! Homeroom! This collection of real junior high school love notes from an incorrigible recess Romeo captures the high drama, low gossip, and emotional rollercoaster ride of dozens of youthful romances. Intricately folded and secretively passed under desks in the 1970s -- to and from his best friend and his many, many girlfriends -- these notes lay bare the triumphs and tragedies of young love, from the thrilling promise of TLA (True Love Always) to the devastating letdown of "let's be friends" (with maybe a quick trip to Make Out City). Also included are a note-speak decoder (SSS: Sorry So Sloppy) and a handy diagram for folding a triangunote -- the only way to pass notes to your beloved of the week. In the cynical era of the "elimidate," 2gether 4ever is a sweetly hilarious reminder of a time, and an age, when it was okay to wear your heart on your sleeve.

So i thought this was going to be this amazingly cool real life story told in notes. But what it was is what I feared it would be, a one sided story. He basically told the whole story from one side of the story, the other peoples whom we has the notes from and their replies to the notes he sent. I was disappointed by that fact that you most of the time didn't have his side except on a few notes. It seemed like only bits and pieces of a bigger story was being played out in the book and I had a hard time putting any of the pieces together and knowing what was going on at any part of the book. But love the concept though and  I have a book that's similar in style called The Notebook Girls and I hope it will be better then this one. My one other big complaint is that the notes were hard to read. Some where faded and written in pencil or just the simple fact of horrible penmanship. Either way it was hard to read some of them, I ended up taking a break in the middle of the book and read a different one for a while just so my brain didn't have to do as much work just having to comprehend the individual words. Even though the book is only 96 pages long it takes awhile longer to read then a normal 96 page book as its slower reading. If you don't mind those annoying facts, go ahead read it but if you have those pet peeves like I do, don't bother. I was seriously hoping for some much more with this book and was let down. 

So Yesterday

Ever wonder who was the first kid to keep a wallet on a big chunky chain, or wear way-too-big pants on purpose? What about the mythical first guy who wore his baseball cap backwards? These are the Innovators, the people on the very cusp of cool. Seventeen-year-old Hunter Braque's job is finding them for the retail market.

But when a big-money client disappears, Hunter must use all his cool-hunting talents to find her. Along the way he's drawn into a web of brand-name intrigue-a missing cargo of the coolest shoes he's ever seen, ads for products that don't exist, and a shadowy group dedicated to the downfall of consumerism as we know it.

This book was awesome! My first dive into a Scott Westerfeld novel and loved the style and the story. The story was decently faced passed but had a couple slow points too, like any great novel does. I really enjoyed the diversity of the different charcters and how they grew and formed throughout the story. They learned more about themselves as a person and the people around them too. I will defiantly be diving into more of his books soon, like the uglies series. I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to all teen readers. 

The Westing Game

A bizarre chain of events begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing's will. And though no one knows why the eccentric, game-loving millionaire has chosen a virtual stranger - and a possible murderer - to inherit his vast fortune, one things' for sure: Sam Westing may be dead... but that won't stop him from playing one last game!

Winner of the Newbery Medal
Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award
An ALA Notable Book

Wow, this book was really good. It had almost all of the points I like in a book, mystery, puzzles, and adventures. Its awesome when I can find a  book can hit all of my favorite things without being a 500+ page book. I really enjoyed this book even though it is meant more for kids, I think everyone would enjoy the story and plot behind everything. I would defiantly recommend it to children and adults. 

The Inner Circle

There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories. I love those stories. And since I work in the National Archives, I find those stories for a living.
Beecher White, a young archivist, spends his days working with the most important documents of the U.S. government. He has always been the keeper of other people's stories, never a part of the story himself...

Until now.

When Clementine Kaye, Beecher's first childhood crush, shows up at the National Archives asking for his help tracking down her long-lost father, Beecher tries to impress her by showing her the secret vault where the President of the United States privately reviews classified documents. After they accidentally happen upon a priceless artifact - a 200 hundred-year-old dictionary that once belonged to George Washington, hidden underneath a desk chair, Beecher and Clementine find themselves suddenly entangled in a web of deception, conspiracy, and murder.

Soon a man is dead, and Beecher is on the run as he races to learn the truth behind this mysterious national treasure. His search will lead him to discover a coded and ingenious puzzle that conceals a disturbing secret from the founding of our nation. It is a secret, Beecher soon discovers, that some believe is worth killing for.

Gripping, fast-paced, and filled with the fascinating historical detail for which he is famous, THE INNER CIRCLE is a thrilling novel that once again proves Brad Meltzer as a brilliant author writing at the height of his craft.

This is the third novel I have read by Brad Meltzer and it was just as good as the last. I like how he will incorporate people and events from his other books into the story. I love his writing style and how there are the short chapters throughout the book that allow you to jump from person to person a little bit faster and easier. Some of the reviews I was reading through said the  story was lacking in action compared to some of his other books. I felt like there wasn't a ton but enough for the kind of person the main character was. He wasn't the type of person that would make dumb choices, that most of the time make up part of the action in books. He was more of a bookworm and a little nerdy so that's not really a part of the story I would see in there. The one thing that annoyed me about him was the fact that he was a little to trusting and that cost him in the story, he didn't know who to trust because everyone to shooting different lies at him and he seemed to think one thing then that proved false and on and on. We got some answers in the end but not all of them so I assume there is a sequel? Anyways, I would definitely recommend  his novels. 

For Such a Time

Powerful Retelling of the Story of Esther
In 1944, blond and blue-eyed Jewess Hadassah Benjamin feels abandoned by God when she is saved from a firing squad only to be handed over to a new enemy. Pressed into service by SS-Kommandant Colonel Aric von Schmidt at the transit camp of Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, she is able to hide behind the false identity of Stella Muller. However, in order to survive and maintain her cover as Aric's secretary, she is forced to stand by as her own people are sent to Auschwitz. 

Suspecting her employer is a man of hidden depths and sympathies, Stella cautiously appeals to him on behalf of those in the camp. Aric's compassion gives her hope, and she finds herself battling a growing attraction for this man she knows she should despise as an enemy. 

Stella pours herself into her efforts to keep even some of the camp's prisoners safe, but she risks the revelation of her true identity with every attempt. When her bravery brings her to the point of the ultimate sacrifice, she has only her faith to lean upon. Perhaps God has placed her there for such a time as this, but how can she save her people when she is unable to save herself? 



"I absolutely loved this book. For Such a Time kept me up at night, flipping the pages and holding my breath wanting to know what would happen next. Based on the Biblical book of Esther, the story takes the reader to a concentration camp inside World War II Czechoslovakia, where a young Jewish woman has captured the attention of the Kommandant and has the opportunity to save her people, much as Esther did in the Biblical account. The story is gripping, compelling, and I dare anyone to close the cover before the last suspenseful page."--#1 New York Times Bestselling Author, Debbie Macomber

"When I finished Kate Breslin's novel for the first time, I had an urge to flip back to page one and start reading all over again. It's that good. For Such a Time is an intimate portrait painted on a grand scale, bringing to life the drama and pain of suffering with the triumph and joy of freedom. This book deserves a wide audience, and newcomer Breslin has a bright future."--#1 New York Times bestselling author, Susan Wiggs

"An engrossing and inspiring story from a talented new writer."--Bestselling Author, Sheila Roberts

The story had a decent writing style, but not my favorite by a long shot.  I didn't mind it though. The plot was good, based on the story of Esther, retelling's are a huge favorite of mine so i am always excited about getting a book that is based on a retelling of another well known story. Defiantly recommend you read this debut novel by Kate Breslin!
I received this book from review through Bethany House Publishers in exchange for an honest review.

The Ruby Ring

The Battle Begins The year is 1524. William Tyndale makes the fateful decision to produce an English Testament without Church permission. He knows that a vernacular scripture will free the common people from spiritual domination by a corrupt and ignorant Church. If Tyndale is caught, he'll die at the stake. So will anyone found assisting him. 
Owen Alton, a London grocer's heir, catches Tyndale's vision. But if he helps Tyndale, he'll be disinherited and lose Jane Horne, the minor-knight's stepdaughter he loves. 
Jane has defied her family in her desire to wed Owen. If he now should leave her for Tyndale.... As if she didn't have enough troubles, Jane discovers the shocking secret behind her mother's ruby ring.

So I thought that this book would be different them it was. It was set in the 1500's, but it didnt really feel like the book was set in that time, it felt more like the 1800's or so. The feel was just off.Also the main character kind of bothered me, she was just a little bit too trusting and didn't really think things through. Maybe it was just me, but it did. But it wasn't the biggest thing that bothered me. The one thing that did bother me is the cover. It had way to much going on. I realize that they wanted to show the different parts of the story, but there is no flow to it and its all just stuck on there. Its not the worst but not the best by a long shot. The artistic side of my brain was screaming about this cover. All in all a decent read but could have some improvements.