3 and 1/2

All Your Twisted Secrets was a full four before the end for me...it just seemed to get a little text book with the Amber's thoughts at the end...but again, just me.  Kept my attention throughout though!  A good one for keeping ones mind off of the current state of the world and a really important message about bullying and social media...just a little too preachy I thought...at the end. 

Super Super Book

My boss asked me what a good book for the "if you liked Wonder when you were younger, what should you read now?" and that next week I happened to find Posted and I recommended it to her right away. I read this one because I absolutely loved John David Anderson's Mrs. Bixby's Last Day.  This guy is just a great, great writer.
This book helps to convince me even further that technology is neutral, sorry Miss Turkle!  Kids can be cruel with or without social media.  And post-it notes can be just as harmful as tweets.

SPOILERS THE DOG DOES DIE - but still good!

I make no apologies for spoiling dead dog stories, however, The Beginning of Everything wasn't ruined for me.  Unlike My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece this death of a pet didn't seem cheap and sensational and over the top.  Even though it happens in a very violent way here.  This was a good book.  It took me a little while to get into it and the ending was not the way I wanted it to be, yet probably has it needed to be.

Is it just the name?

Once I knew this woman who was really into Mother-Daughter book clubs.  I have to say that this is one woman I have a hard time thinking about because she was someone who pretty much defines the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" thing!  So I am not sure if that is why I was so against reading a book in the series The Mother-Daughter Book Club.  I can't remember if she actually liked the series, or I just associate all things MDBC with her!  I also wonder if my lower rating of the book has something to do with that.  But I don't know.  I mean, it was okay, and 3 of 5 stars isn't a bad rating at all, it is just low for me.  I think to be fair to the series, I will read another though!

Emoticons

Unfriended grabbed me with the cover and I am glad it did!  Rachel Vail is the author of the Avery Sister Trilogy and I really enjoyed them and had forgotten to check to see what she had written lately!  So this was a very good discovery!  This book gives a really good lesson, but  not preachy or overtly, about bullying, in particular, cyberbullying.  It also just shows how there are really no "all good" or "all bad" people.  I loved the reasons shown behind the actions of Natasha, the "bad, but not all bad" one, that kind of thing.  And of course, Hazel, who probably did things that were more heinous, but yet, it was easy to see how people make bad choices from a place of pain.  Good stuff.

Oh, I don't know...

Dork Diaries #1:  Tales from a Not-so-Fabulous Life has gotten a lot of bad reviews.  Main character, Nikki Maxwell certainly has first-world problems. Upper-middle class first-world problems, really.  But the series is still going strong, with the eleventh book coming out this fall.  It even has a spin-off now,  The Misadventures of Max Crumbly:  Locker Hero.
From the bad reviews from adults, saying the Nikki is just superficial and annoying and materialistic and mean and so forth, I thought I would hate this book.  But actually, I didn't.  The series is very popular.
I don't think that Nikki is any more superficial and annoying and materialistic as most other tweens.  She is in eight grade in the books, but fans of DD are much younger.
Will I read another?  Probably not, but I think I could recommend this.

I know how they felt! SPOILERS!

When I read Nikki and Deja:  Birthday Blues I had to laugh at the ending.  I knew just how Deja felt when the rain came down!
First of all, I love this book and I love this series.
This is the second one in the series and I have started the third.
The deal is this, Deja's birthday is coming up.  She loves her birthday and she has been running around, like she does every year, talking about her party and planning a great time.
She has a nemesis. however.  In Antonia.  Antonia knows that Deja's party is going to be Saturday afternoon.  So what does Antonia do? She has a "just because" party at the same time on the same day and she hands out her invitations before Deja does!  So now, all of the girls, in all of the third grade classes are going to Antonia's party which will have an outdoor roller skating rink and a lot of outdoor games and fun.
Deja was just planning and indoor game party.
But then...it rains!  And even though it is raining on Deja's party, that means it is also raining on Antonia's party, too!  And so Deja and Nikki are super happy and dancing singing the It's Raining, It's Pouring song!
All of the girls show up, except for Antonia.  And because Deja isn't a Junie B. or an Ivy or a Bean, she plans to call Antonia and invite her anyway.
This is a great, great series.  And I love it!  There is more in here, though.  Like Deja wondering if her dad will come.  She hasn't seen him in many years.  And Deja getting some advice from some older folks in her neighborhood and well, this is just an all-round great book.
I felt like Deja once because since 2009 at my work we have been having a car cruise in the summer.  All of a sudden another local entity, less than 6 miles away, in the same industry, had a car cruise on that very same night.  Theirs was a fund-raiser, ours was not.  But still.
I was so sad and mad and hurt and just angry.
And then...it rained.
And oh...how we danced.
Now it had never rained before on our car cruise day.  And it hasn't rained since.  Because I am not as kind as Deja, for years after I would promote our car cruise as "often imitated, never duplicated."  Yes, I even did that this year.
The thing is, the other entity never did have another car cruise.  So why do I still do that?  I need to let it go! Like Deja!
Great book.  And next year...I will leave off the imitated/duplicated.  
Maybe.

Another New Orleans Tale

Meet Marie-Grace is the third book I have read in the past few weeks.  Of course they were all very different!  But it is just funny that three were about the Big Easy:  Sarny and  Out of the Easy and this girl in the American Girl series.  I didn't like the last American Girl book I read too much.  This one wasn't that much better, but it was better.  I really want to read Meet Cecile next even though I found out that she is going to be retired.

More Friends for Keena and Ty!

I had to find some girls who were nice enough to be friends with the likes of Keena Ford, Roscoe, Billy Miller and Ty Perry.  Nikki and Deja are perfect for them!  If the first book is any indication of their personalities.   They are real girls.  They have their tiffs.  They get cranky.  But they are not mean and just plain toads.  What an enjoyable book!  I am looking forward to the others and more by Karen English. They are in third grade and they would also be great friends with Dyamonde Daniel, too!

If You're Still within the Sound of My Voice

So this is one of the best songs ever.  And Glen Campbell has had some great ones.  This is the last book in the Secret Language of Girls trilogy.  I read the first one a long time ago and the second one since I've been doing the blog.  I highly recommend this series, but read them in order.  The friendship of Marilyn and Kate has changed as much as the girls have changed individually.  This was a very satisfying end to the series, told with the usual wisdom by the talented Frances O'Roark Dowell.  My only criticism of Dowell is that she wrote more! 

Self-harm

How wide-spread is self-harm?   Kiss of Broken Glass is a heart-breaking, but hopeful, but realistic, story of a girl who cuts.  We meet fifteen-year-old Kenna when she is being admitted to a hospital psych ward under Florida's Baker Act.  The Act means that she must stay for seventy-two hours under watch.  So the book takes place in seventy-two hours.  And what a seventy-two hours it is.  This is the first book I have ever read by Madeleine Kuderick.  And I can't wait to read another.  I see from her webpage that this is her first book, but it can't be her last.  The voice of Kenna is one that will stay with me for a long, long time.  I loved that there were no easy answers.  I loved the form in which it was written and then I loved, at the end, how Kuderick shared that writing this book was a personal journey, because of her daughter, who experienced an addiction to cutting.  How painful it must have been to write this book, but I hope at the same time it was helpful.  I am sure this book will be helpful to many, many others.  You know...I started this post with a question...but I think I know the answer.  Self-harm is pretty darn wide spread.  It just happens in so many different ways.  Drinking, drugs, sex, eating, cutting, smoking, bullying, gosh...anything and everything we do to demean ourselves.  To deny that we are children of God.  It is wide-spread.  It is everywhere.  That's why we need to be kinder to ourselves and to others. 

Brutal

The Chocolate War is a brutal book.  As I've mentioned again recently, as a born and raised Presbyterian, even though I'm a Baptist now, I still believe that human nature is basically evil.  There is no good without God.  We are all, as Calvin said, totally depraved.  The behavior of the students in The Chocolate War, well it isn't surprising.  It is horrifying.  It is just another reminder that we need God and His love in this lost world.

I listened to this book and in this edition, the author, Robert Cormier, gave an introduction.  Not only did the guy have an amazing Boston accent, but he made you really want to read the book!
TCW is gritty and real and heart-breaking.  A bit dated, of course, but it is so good and real that it doesn't matter.  

Southern Belle

I wanted to read Belles for so long and just couldn't get into it, but then I started listening to it and couldn't stop. I know other reviewers have criticisms of it, but then I don't care. I just really enjoyed it all the way through. I am going to read Winter White, too.
It is the story of Izzy, a 15-year-old girl who takes care of her grandma and lives on the "harder side of town."  She never knew her dad and her mom passed away when she was ten.  A social worker decides that she can't live with her grandma anymore, and that there is a long-long uncle, a state senator, who will take her in.  Now she is movin' on up.  Every book review says it is a Cinderella story, but I guess I don't know the real story of Cinderella but anyway...she now goes to a very exclusive prep school and lives the high life, but the girls are super nasty even as they smile in her face, they stab her in the back because of where she came from.  There is romance and gossip and all the rest.  Great book, a lot of fun!  Also set in North Carolina!