The Last One

Brilliant was the final book in the Avery Sisters Trilogy and while I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two, I am glad I went ahead and finished the series.  This final book focuses on almost-seventeen-year-old Quinn.  She is the oldest sister and the one who has always been knows as the good girl with the perfect judgment.  During this spring/summer of serious confusion, brought on by their mother's shady investments and resulting in the family losing all of their big-time wealth, Quinn experiments with the Wild Side of life.  Good book and a read-worthy series.  The mom is a huge jerk though!

The Birds

A little while ago my dear friend Kara posted on FB that she wished that authors would focus on one book, instead of a new trilogy, series, etc. At first,I found that to be true as I read Stork. Don't get me wrong, I really loved Stork! I recommend it completely to people who liked Nancy Werlin's Impossible and Extraordinary. I thought it was a fast read, even though it is over 300 pages. I thought it was different and cool. And it takes place in the most awesome of the 50- Minnesota!
Kat is originally from LA but her parents are divorcing and she and her mom have moved to Norse Fall, Minnesota, her mom's home town, to start life over. Kat is having a bit of a hard time adjusting to Norse Falls, as you can imagine, it is WAY different from LA. The thing that sets Kat apart from other YA characters who have been through similar situations, Kat is not a jerk about it. Her dad cheated on her mom. She's mad at him, but doesn't hate him. Her mom moved her off to the hinterlands to a tiny little where she works in her grandpa's general store and goes to school with dudes who all wear flannel and girls who don't know Michael Kors from Michael Jackson, and she could be a huge, spoiled brat about this. She's normal, not perfect, but she's a decent, decent kid. A real kid. A normal kid. Well, kinda. She's also a stork.
Yeah.
It sounds really weird, doesn't it? Okay. It IS really weird. But it just fits, it just seems to make sense!
When I was almost finished with Stork I realized that it has a sequel, Frost, which I ordered from the library. At first I was really sad and I thought right away about Kara's FB status. But once I finished Stork I realized that while Stork will continue, the book was good enough on it's own. It didn't end with one of those cliff-hanger deals like The Line. It was a solid solo book. So maybe, if authors are going to write a series, that's great- as long as the books can also stand alone, like Stork. Great characters. Great book and now that I'm all done with it, I'm glad that I'll have the opportunity to read more about Kat and her Minnesota adventures.

Sisters

As I have mentioned before, I don't know what it is like to have a sister and so some of the sister stories contain elements to which I am unable to relate, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading about siblings and their rivalry and relationships. Secret Obsession is one of those books that make me kinda glad that I don't have a sister!
I heard Roby interviewed some place on satellite radio, I wish I could remember where, but she was so interesting and the book sounded so good, I couldn't wait to read it.
Two sisters. One man. A crazy, crazy story of jealousy and insanity and also faith in God.
Great, great, great! Short, too. I can't wait to read more from Roby and I have already given this book to a friend and can't wait to hear what she thought. I loved this book!

Decisions

It seems like a lot of the books I've read lately get me started on my foster care rant, and Pregnant Pause was no exception. Pregnant Pause was my first Han Nolan book but won't be my last. It is extremely well-written and unpredictable with excellent characters. Elly is sixteen and pregnant and just married to Lam who is eighteen and has just graduated from high school. Elly and Lam had a great time while they were dating, two self-described screw-ups who got high, drank a lot and got a arrested in their spare time. Elly's parents are missionaries who serve mainly in Kenya with babies orphaned to AIDS. She has a sister, ten years older, who is married, lives in California and has, so far, been unable to have a baby. Lam's parents run a weightloss camp for kids and have allowed Lam and Elly to stay in one of the camp cabins.
I can't give too much away, it would only ruin a seriously awesome story.
One of Elly's options is to give up the baby, which, of course would mean foster care.
 A lot to think about here. Very original and inspired.

Unpredictable Bordem

This book looked so interesting. I thought it Predictable Irrationality would be like a Malcolm Gladwell, full of surprising insight and revelations about human behavior. Na. It was sort of a Malcolm Gladwell copycat and not anywhere near as entertaining.
There were a few parts that I thought were interesting, like why "free" isn't really "free" and how marketers use decoys when trying to sell the item that they want to sell. It was quick to listen to but a disappointment. I loved the Freakonomics books even though they are total pseudo-science and have a lot of urban legends, passed off as fact in them, but this wasn't even entertaining.

Never Have I Ever

is the second book in The Lying Game series and also the name of a game, too. I have never played Never Have I Ever, but I think it might be fun, but I don't drink, so maybe I could play it with chocolates and cheeses. Wow! I am totally doing that New Year's Eve! Never Have I Ever with chocolates and cheeses! Hooray!
Okay.
So SPOILERS! Read the first TLG first, first of all. Once you do, you will know that we still don't know who killed Sutton. The second book we have less suspects, overall, but personally, I am still clueless as to who killed her.
Really loved the book!

How Real is Reality?

The cover of Reality Check is too, too cute! It has four little avatar-type dolls, each one representing the four main characters in the story. I read someone's review and she wrote that the cover was the ugliest she'd ever seen! Impossible! I love it!
And I did really love reading Reality Check even though it was like a G version of LA Candy.
Charlie and her three best friends live in a little town in the not-so-pricey part of Long Island. While Charlie is working at the local coffee place she meets up with a woman from the Fire and Ice Network who wants to do a reality tv show staring Charlie and her three friends.
Lies and deceit are everywhere! Who can be trusted! Romances begin and fade! Reality Check is quite the fun, quick read, and even though none of the characters are particularly likable, the book really is!

You cheated, you lied, you said that you want me...

Now that I am all about the 50s music, I had to share this song and it goes with the book and all... The Lying Game is a new series by Sara Shepard the creator of Pretty Little Liars. It seems to be another one of those book packagers deals. Who care, though? So far, this series is a lot of fun. Like PLL, there's a bit of supernatural going on here, as a dead girl does most of the narration while her long-lost twin sister tries to solve her murder. The dead girl, Sutton Mercer, was not the nicest girl in life, but is quite likeble now that she's dead and can look back on all of the damage that she and her Queen Bee posse did. Sutton was the baddest of them all and maybe it was her bad behavior that got her killed. While Sutton grew up adopted by wealthy parents, living the good life, her twin sister (the sisters didn't know the other existed until after Sutton's death) bounced around from horrible foster home to foster home.  This first book in The Lying Game is all about Emma settling into Sutton's life. She has a stalker, Sutton's killer, who warns her that she better not let on that she is not Sutton, or else she will end up just like Sutton, dead.
The series was also made into a tv show, which I haven't seen. The new season starts early next year.
This is a good mystery and good fun.

Fantastic?

Everyone defines broad terms like "fantastic" differently. The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester might be someone's idea of "fantastic"- the secret, that is. But I don't know if it my idea of "fantastic," that's all. I don't really know even how much of a "secret" it is. The secret is a submarine and well, I don't think I am spoiling anything by revealing that, because there's a big ole picture of the submarine right on the front of the book. The other thing is, Owen tells a few people about the secret, and leaves the submarine exposed so that it could be even less of a secret. Maybe it is just that the title is confusing. Owen is a nice guy. He lives with his parents and his sick grandfather and his grandfather's care taker who is cranky a lot. It's summer time and at night Owen can here the train rumble on down the tracks. One night he hears something fall off the tracks and the next day he enlists the help of it two best friends to help him find it. They need to do this and keep it a secret from Viola, the nosy girl next door. They also need to figure out what to do with the bullfrog that Owen has caught. He doesn't seem very happy in captivity. I don't know. This was just okay for me. It's a country story. They aren't usually my thing, but Faith, Hope and Ivy June was a country story and I loved that. It's the kind of story that just slowly unfolds, but so was Egypt Game and I loved that. Maybe I just didn't like this one.

EXCELLENT start to a series

Or it would be an excellent stand-alone that would just leave you wanting more, more, more. This is the kind of horror that Dean Koontz should be writing nowadays. Great book, even though it is not set in the US, which is always my preference for a book, but I didn't even care that this one was set in England or somewhere else, I have no idea, but it didn't matter. The Shadowing #1 Hunted was so so good! It was scary and original and had sympathetic characters. Great stuff. I can't wait for the next one!

Also I am going to link my books to Good Reads now. I LOVE libraries, obviously, but libraries really need to work on their online catalogs. What is the deal, anyway?

It' a bird. It's a plane. It's Shredderman!

Secret Identity is the first in the Shredderman series by Wendelin Van Draanen. This has become a pretty popular series and I can see the appeal. It has clever illustrations and looks Diary of a Wimpy Kid-esque, which is sure to capture the attention of even reluctant readers. Both Wimpy Kid and Shredderman appeared in 2004. The chapters are short and Nolan is a pretty sympathetic character. He's a geeky kind of kid and very lovable, in my opinion. This first book is all about how Shredderman came to be, which was as a result of a nasty bully in Nolan's fifth grade class. When Mr. Green assigns a project which involves reporting on someone of note, Nolan decides that he will report on the bully and expose all of his horrible deeds on a website.

Get Your Mower Running

Gary Paulsen, again! I really enjoyed Lawn Boy! The Lawn Boy begins his summer vacation with a gift from his grandma. She brings him an old riding mower that once belonged to his grandfather What starts out as Lawn Boy mowing a few lawns turns into ventures in the stock market and a chance at some big bucks. Funny, quick read.

Not my thing....

Man...Crossed was long.
Man. Long. I was hoping that I too might cross over (to the Promised Land) at times, before having to read one more page. I wish I would have gotten the book at the library, but I was so excited about reading Crossed, since I loved Matched, that I bought it on my Kindle. I'm not saying it wasn't worth reading, it just wasn't worth buying. Isn't that funny? I bought all of those Private and Privilege novels without even a second thought, nor did I regret buying them once I finished them. Some nights I bought two in a row because I HAD to find out what happened next! Crossed is better written than those books, right? Yeah, but man, it just didn't hold my attention. That says more about me than the book probably. The thing is, this book is probably best described as action/adventure. I guess I didn't expect that. There's more of the Ky/Cassia love angle, yeah, but most of the book is the description of their journey to escape Society and find each other and then to hook up with The Rising.

The end of the Thrillogy

I am really sad to that Todd Strasser's Thrillogy is over! Kill You Last was so good. As I thought about the last Dean Koontz book that I read and compared it to this one, I just thought...man adults should read more YA fiction, especially if they are like this one. Kill is a great mystery that I couldn't figure out at all, but it wasn't frustrating, it was just a short, well done thriller for sure.
Shelby's parents are very interesting! Her dad is a photographer and they live a pretty fancy life. He is also kind of creepy sometimes...staring a little too long at Shelby's friends, making comments about how hot they are, things like that. Other than that, he is a super dad. He's never done anything weird with or to Shelby and he's always been honest and there for her when she needs him. Her mom tries to pretend that she doesn't notice the creepy factor of her husband, she just likes to pretend that everything is perfect in their family.
But then....three of the girls who went to Shelby's dad for head shots for their modeling start end up missing. The only connection to the three girls is that they were photographed by Shelby's dad.
And then...Shelby starts getting emails from 4894423vengeance, not threatening at first, just gloating about her father's quickly nose-diving rep but then she gets one that that says, "I like you Shelby Sloan. If I have to kill you, I'll kill you last."
Page turner, baby!
Here are links to my thoughts on the other two books:
Wish You Were Dead
Blood on My Hands

Glass

Faces of Meth, a play on the old Faces of Death movies from the 80s is a serious taste of reality. I don't think that anyone could see what meth does to people and then try it themselves. I just don't understand how that can happen.

I've been blessed. I've never fallen into the snares of drug addiction. Well that's not true, as nicotine is a drug, and a mighty powerful one, isn't it? I have been tobacco free since May of 2010, thanks be to God, though. I don't drink, and like I said, I'm not a drug-user. Parts of Glass by Ellen Hopkins caused me to be very judgemental. Glass is the second in a trilogy about Kristina Snow, a girl who had a great future, until she started using meth. I didn't read the first book, Crank, but as I listened to Glass, I felt the author did a good job of bringing the reader up to speed. Kristina's story is a first-person account, told in verse of a descent into what I can only call a serious kind of hell. Her addiction ruins all of her relationships, her body, her mind. The loneliness of her story is incredible. Laura Flanagan does the reading of the book she is just excellent. I read some place that Hopkins has a daughter who is a recovering meth addict. I can't imagine the pain that must bring. I hated myself for being so angry with Kristina. It's so easy for me to judge. This is such a powerful warning against trying it even once that I feel like it should be required reading for tweens before it is too late. The story is definitely hard core though, very graphic for a tween. But how do you get the word out early enough? How do you stop even one kid from trying a drug like this? Powerful book. Gritty and real.

One Lucky Son of a Stone --- SPOILERS!

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!
Maybe the reason that a lot of people hated Son of Stone so much is because they aren't used to reading books like I do, such as The Private Series or The Gossip Girls, where the rich and popular get everything they want and life just flows along and falls into place for everyone. Total fantasy, but totally fun. I loved Son of Stone because it was just to ridiculously bizarre that way! In Son of Stone, Stone's son, Peter is the luckiest and most brilliant boy in the world! Everything just comes to him like he is magic. As I said at the top, this review has spoilers- I wish the review I read on amazon.com would have indicated the same, but what can ya do? Arrington is shot and killed by a former lover. All of the reviews thought this was horrible and any character's death is not happy, but I have to say, I didn't have much love for Arrington in this book or any of them, but especially in this book. She's such a jerk to this guy. Of course he shouldn't have shot her, but still, Arrington is NOT a sympathetic character in Son of Stone. Stuart Woods is a pompous jerk. You can tell that by the note he puts in all of his books about how he doesn't really want to hear from his readers. I have no doubt that he doesn't even write this stuff anymore, and I am sure he knows he isn't fooling anyone. Nor does he care, he's totally in this for the money. But so what. He still "writes" a very entertaining, young adult-type novel. To get mad at him or criticize his work is like getting mad at McDonald's for not making a decent burger. He's not pretending to be anything more than junk reading, so take it for what it is. Keep it comin' Woods Factory of Fluff! A lot of us love it!!!!

Ancient Egypt is Really Ancient

The Egypt Game is older than I am, which is really saying something. I have seen it around, of course, for ages, but never picked it up to read. For one thing, it won the Newbery and if one is honest, one must admit that most Newbery winners are dreadful and useful only for enhancing sleep, so I know I avoided it at least partly because of the medal on the cover. The other reason I avoided it was the rest of the cover. I've seen a few different covers of TEG and man, BAD. It's like they were competing for the worst cover. Finally, the jacket description just didn't seem to tell enough about the plot and what it did tell seemed to corroborate what the Newbery and the cover were saying, "stay away, unless you are suffering from insomnia." Last week though, I was dying for a book on CD. The only thing around was TEG. Half way through the first CD I was hooked totally. I was glad then, that the jacket description didn't give away much of the plot because I was just loving the way that the book flowed. I was, right away, loving the characters and the game that they played in the little area behind an old junk shop where a mysterious man worked and lurked. I want to be like the book jacket and not give any more away, because the story is just so wonderfully woven, that you'll want to just see it unfold for yourself, like I did. When it's over, you'll wish it wasn't. There is a sequel called The Gypsy Game, and I am looking forward to reading that soon!

If I homeschooled my kids

Now first of all, there is NO way that I would ever homeschool my kids. Why?

The answer is simple, I don't have any kids.

But if I had kids, and if I homeschooled them, and if I picked up the book or listened to the audio version of What the Night Knows I would be so angry at Dean Koontz, I would probably write him a letter. I've heard people rip on homeschooling before but I have never, ever read anything that ripped on homeschoolers as much as this book. It is clear that Koontz is making a serious anti-homeschooling statement here. The three kids in this book, ages 13, 11 and 8 are the most backward and weird, strange kids that ever lived. There aren't kids like this in the real world. Well....the youngest one might be normal. But the other two? Oh my gosh. Koontz is headed for a lot of criticism from homeschool parents with this kind of stuff. It is really ridiculous.

If you can get past that, this book is pretty decent. It drags in places, but it is scary. I haven't been able to sleep well ever since I started listening to it, and I think that says a lot about its scare-factor.

John is a robbery homicide detective with a sorrowful past. When he was just teenager the rest of his family was murdered by a true monster who committed ritual family killings of the most graphic and grisly kind. Koontz has a seriously twisted imagination and a great way with words. Twenty years later, across the country, in John's community it appears that the same ritual murders are taking place, even though the killer of John's family was killed all those years ago.

Like Koontz's other books, the reason is supernatural, the spirit of the serial killer, the "Rider" finds away to attach himself to others who then go and commit horrific acts similar to the killing of John's family. Now John fears that his own wife and children will be next.

The "Rider" was a little too close of a term to "Dark Passenger" for me, and I would have thought that Koontz would have come up with a better term for it, just because has been used with Dexter.

You know what they say about wishing....

Don't You Wish is a fresh and enjoyable YA novel with romance, teen angst, fantasy and science fiction elements. The neat thing about it is that when I first started reading it, I thought, “Ah, I see where this is all going…” and I thought that I could pretty much tell the story myself without even finishing it. As I continued reading it, though, I was happily surprised as the plot took on a unique direction and the author didn’t spend any time rehashing what has been done in so many other books.

Annie Nutter is an “invisible” at South Hills High School, a fictional school in Pittsburgh. In my mind I imagined it as a Bethel or South Park (one of the things I liked about the book was that it was set, a little bit, in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA). She plays in the orchestra, gets good grades, gets picked on here and there by the A Listers, has a best friend, an annoying little brother and good parents. Her life is pretty ordinary. Her folks aren’t rich and they struggle with money, like most folks. One day Annie sees her mom looking at an architectural magazine in Walmart and notices that she is crying. When she asks her mother why, her mom shows her the magazine’s article on a beautiful mansion in Miami. Mrs. Nutter explains that the man who owns the mansion, Jim Monroe, is a plastic surgeon who now owns a franchise of walk-in cosmetic surgery centers. He was her boyfriend in college and she could have married him instead of Annie’s father, who is a manager at the local Radio Shack and a wannna-be inventor.

Annie wonders if she would still exist if her mother had married the doctor. Would she be the rich daughter of her mother and this doctor, living in Miami, going to all of the glamorous parties in SoBe? What would that life be like?

With the help of a thunderstorm, her father’s latest failed invention and quantum physics, Annie gets to find out. She wakes up in the body of Ayla Monroe, the daughter of her mother and the rich doctor.

The book could have gone in all kinds of stereotypical directions, but it doesn’t, instead, it really gets into the head of Annie/Ayla and the other teens in both of her worlds. True the book is about alternative universes and traveling through iPod apps, but really, it is a realistic portrayal of teen social culture and I recommend it!

When they coming knocking....

The Glass Cafe has a long subtitle: or the stripper and the state: how my mother started a war with the system that made us kind of rich and a little bit famous.

I love this book for a few reasons. First of all, it is short. I think it is a sign of a great writer if he or she can say a lot in a few words (Mr. King...what can I say...you are NOT a good writer, dude and you never should have ripped on Twilight, because that's just calling the kettle black and you are, in no way, someone who can judge the writing of others).

 

 

The Glass Cafe is about a young boy, Tony, who lives with his loving and intelligent mom, Al, who works as an exotic dancer. When the authorities find out that she's a stripper and that she allowed Tony to sketch some of the other dancers, they send out the CPS folks and man...the results are hilarious.

The book is told from Tony's POV.

 

But anyway...another great book from Mr. Paulsen.