I don't think I really need to explain this, the description on their website explains it all.
Help these kids out so they can have an awesome library to go to and have the opportunity to check out their favorite books!
This is a great site and the merchandise is super awesome.
If you can't afford to buy anything, please at least click through and share it with other people!
http://outofprintclothing.com/p-s-244-library-fundraiser/
Now I will end with my favorite James Patterson quote:
"There are millions of kids in this country who have never read a book they loved. Never, ever, not one. That's a disaster."
Every little bit helps! Lets keep kids reading!
Thanks everyone,
Courtney
Hi! I'm Courtney. I read (mostly) good books and write cool reviews. I appreciate you checking out the page, and I hope you find a new book to read. Please feel free to comment on any of these posts. Let me know if you have read any of these books or if you plan to!
April 16, 2014
April 13, 2014
Perfect by Ellen Hopkins
Let me start by saying this, I did not know that this book
was related to her book Impulse.
Impulse is one of my favorite books, and it is also one of
the only ones to make me cry.
So when I figured out that this book was related to Impulse,
I felt the impending doom of the situation that originally made me cry. (Conner)
Then… it happened and it broke my heart all over again. She
is good at pulling on your heartstrings, that Ellen Hopkins. That’s for sure.
Perfect is about 4 teenagers striving to prove themselves on
some level.
Andre – He is a dancer. He loves dancing, and he is really
good at it. His parents have other plans for him. He is supposed to go to a
good school and get a high paying job. He worries that people will think he is
gay if they know of his hobby.
Kendra – She is a model, and she wants to be perfect. She
wants the perfect face and the perfect body no matter the cost. She plans on
using plastic surgery and not eating as her paths to success. She isn’t healthy.
But, if she believes she is perfect, she is okay with that.
Sean – The jock of the group. He is a highly skilled
baseball player, and he will do whatever it takes to get even better. The
reader gets to see his downward spiral with his use of enhancement drugs as it
takes him from a normal teenager to a rage filled monster.
Cara – After dealing with her brother’s failed suicide
attempt, her parents expect her to be the perfect one. Once she starts to
question her sexuality, she fears that she will not be what everyone wants her
to be. Will being happy with Dani be enough for her?
Just like every Hopkins book I have read, this is a really
great book telling the story of growing up and finding who you are. It is
hardly ever easy, and her books give real insights to what many teenagers face
today. Perfect is no different.
I really enjoyed it. All of the characters are different in
their own ways, but all of their stories are intertwined.
The character development was great. They all grow and
develop while learning more about what life expects from them.
5/5 If you are generally a fan of Ellen Hopkins, or if you
are looking for a great YA author, this is a good place to start and a great
read.
April 11, 2014
Gravity by Abigail Boyd
Missing girls. A budding romance. And a town that is hiding
secrets.
Gravity starts off as just another YA book: A girl
protagonist with a best friend who talks about boys and make up.
Then it turns into something a lot deeper.
Ariel’s best friend Jenna goes missing, and no one knows
what happened to her.
Not only that, but other girls around town start
disappearing as well.
All of a sudden Ariel is tormented by horrible nightmares where
she sees blood, Jenna, and other terrifying paranormal creatures.
Ariel makes friends with one of the school’s “outcasts”
Theo. She is Ariel’s neighbor, and they begin to spend a lot of time together.
She feels a bit guilty making a new friend because Jenna is still missing, but
having someone to talk to and relate to is a huge plus for her.
Ariel’s dad runs an art museum in Hell. He loves art and
encourages Ariel to take art classes every year. He is excited to meet Theo
because she loves to draw and is actually very talented at drawing.
Ariel’s mother has a very time consuming job. When she isn’t
working, she is obsessively cleaning the house. She doesn’t allow shoes on the
carpet, and has signs up around the house in case anyone forgets.
Henry is the new boy in town. He is drawn to Ariel, but
their relationship is a little awkward at first. Ariel has never had a
boyfriend, let alone had many guys interested in her. She doesn’t know how to
talk to them, so it leads to many awkward interactions.
That was definitely one of my least favorite parts of the
book. I felt so much second-hand embarrassment for her it was a struggle to
read at times.
As their relationship develops, I found myself really
rooting for them.
I feel like there was still some parts left unexplained
about Henry. I hope his story is revisited in the next book.
I want to know why his family is so mysterious.
Ariel has a feeling that something not quite normal happened
to Jenna. She has always been interested in the occult and other paranormal
things – how could you not living in a town called Hell?
She enlists the help of Theo and Henry to conduct a séance
at an old orphanage. It is being turned into a haunted house, so they have to
try to do it when no one is around.
Things just start getting weirder from there and they don’t
know who they can trust.
Ariel’s own father doesn’t believe her when she tells him
that she hears THUDs in her walls.
After a fire breaks out at the school, Ariel and Henry
decide they must get to the bottom of things. They go searching for a security
DVD to see who started the fire. When they find that it is broken, they decide
to go to the source of the fire to figure out what was trying to be destroyed.
Will they finally learn what has been happening in Hell?
One thing I really liked about this book was the fact that
it didn’t rely on the paranormal aspect to be interesting. The paranormal
aspect was one of the main points of the story but it just added depth to an
already intriguing plot.
I find that some books can rely too heavily on it to the
point where it becomes monotonous and feels like there was no real thought put
into the story.
You can tell that there was a lot of thought put into the
plot and characters to make this a really strong novel.
As I started getting towards the end, I felt like it sort of
lost itself. It seemed as though the book was heading one way, and then decided
to turn around and go in a completely opposite direction.
It wasn’t a twist in the story; it was more of how it played
out. I thought the end result was going to have a lot more paranormal
occurrences to it. It seemed that the book was building up to be that way, but
instead it only came to light when Ariel was seeing the dead girls . . . and
the THUDing.
4/5 stars. I have to keep in mind that this is book 1 in a
series, but I feel like more could have been explained in the end. If it
continues into the next book, that is great. But, it did leave this one feeling
a little unfinished.
Also, any book that has a strong fall/Halloween theme is
likely to win me over somehow. Its my favorite season :D
Things I would hope for in a sequel:
·
Revisiting suspicions surrounding the principal
·
Henry’s family
·
The reference to “one of us” that surrounded the
‘popular’ kids. I feel like it didn’t only mean that they had a lot of money
and influence on the town.
·
WHY the girls were going missing.
Memorable Quote: “Take it from me – don’t fall in love so
easily. I learned that the hard way. You have to cut that part right out of
you.”
Read ahead for spoilers
April 7, 2014
First Love by James Patterson
First Love is not what I would consider a normal Patterson
book.
Yes, he has a lot of young adult novels.
Yes, he has some romance novels.
But, this is a cross over between the two, and I didn’t
really feel like I was reading a Patterson book at all.
That being said, it was not bad. I actually really enjoyed
it.
First Love is basically a new-age Bonnie and Clyde story.
Two high school students, Axi and Robinson, decide to leave their small town on
the West Coast and travel all over the country.
Doing something like this is completely different for Axi
because she is known as a good girl who gets good grades. No one would imagine
she would skip the last part of her semester to steal cars and take off around
the United States.
That’s right, I said steal cars.
Axi’s original plan was to take a bus from destination to
destination. She had the whole trip mapped out, and everything that they would
need was packed in her bad.
Robinson had a different idea. If they were going to run
away, they were going to go all out. He decides to hotwire a motorcycle as
their first vehicle, and they speed away towards their first destination.
Their trip was going great; they were getting closer than
ever . . . and falling further in love with each other. Then, the worst thing
happened.
Cancer.
Axi and Robinson originally met in the hospital. They both
had cancer, and upon deciding to go on this trip, they were both in remission.
But as their trip progressed, they realized Robinson was
becoming seriously ill again. The cancer was back, and it wasn’t going to let
go of him this time.
This book turned from a happy love story to one of fighting
through emotions and finding strength when you only want to fall apart.
It was a roller coaster of emotions, and it was written so
well that you didn’t expect what was coming.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it to be a really addicting
story. It was hard to put the book down when I started it. That is pretty
typical for a Patterson book, but as I said before, I didn’t feel like I was
reading a Patterson book.
Overall, it was a really sweet love story and an otherwise
crazy plot of two kids on the run from their lives at home.
4/5 stars
Memorable Quote: "Maybe the compulsion to run away was genetic. Mom did it to escape her grief. My dad escapes with alcohol. Now I was doing it . . . and it felt strangely right"
Memorable Quote: "Maybe the compulsion to run away was genetic. Mom did it to escape her grief. My dad escapes with alcohol. Now I was doing it . . . and it felt strangely right"
April 4, 2014
Dented Cans by Heather Walsh
Dented Cans is the story of Hannah Sampson’s functionally
dysfunctional family.
Her father is an accountant. Despite making a fair amount of
money, he was very cheap. He also buys dented cans because the prices on they
are always marked down, and it gives them a cheaper meal than they would have
had before. His is a bit OCD and makes sure everything is spotless. Even the
phones are basically soaked in Lysol.
Her mother worked at her little brother’s school. She is
very serious. She doesn’t laugh at jokes much, and always seems to have on a
straight face.
Hannah’s first mission is to buy a car. She reads the car
ads religiously trying to find the right car at the right price to fit her
budget. Once she finds one, she must try to talk her parents into letting her
buy one. This is no simple task because of how cheap they are with their money.
One dilemma hanging in the air is the family trip to Disney
World. The idea is brought up at the beginning of the book, and the two oldest
kids – Hannah and Ryan – are not too thrilled about going. They have already
been there, but their youngest brother, Ben, was too young to remember.
Ben is now eight years old, but he is different from other
kids. He makes a lot of sound effects and doesn’t talk much.
Ryan seems to be a normal teenager, but he is the complete
opposite of Hannah academically. Hannah strives for perfect grades, and just
getting a B on her report card upsets her. Ryan scrapes by with lower grades
and isn’t too concerned when he winds up with a D in Spanish. He claims that
the teacher sucks and everyone else got bad grades as well.
They are definitely not a normal family, but they get by.
Then the trip to Disney World finally happens.
Hannah and Ryan do not want to be there. They would rather
be off doing their own thing: Ryan – playing some video game, Hannah – studying
her SAT vocabulary words.
Ben is sort of indifferent to the whole trip. He enjoys some
of it, but most of the time he is off in his own little world.
On the way home, Hannah’s mother reveals a family secret
that changes the way the kids view their parents. It is a pretty touching scene
but also very sad at the same time.
I enjoyed reading this novel. It made me laugh at times.
Hannah’s personality was entertaining at parts, and her conversations with Ryan
added some humor as well.
It was a pretty easy read. The chapters were a little
lengthy, but they seemed to go by fairly quick.
I could see there being a sequel to this.
4/5 Stars
April 1, 2014
The Contaminants by Devin K. Smyth
When the American Government plans for a global purification
of sorts, it sets of a chain of events resulting in a nuclear holocaust.
They had ships set in place to take people into space, but
only this one survived. Jessil was forced to leave her father behind, and only
has her two brothers – Ben and Lo.
The Contaminants is told through the eyes of the two
protagonists Raj and Jessil.
Raj’s father is a scientists that works in the laboratory
trying to regenerate part of the Earth’s surface to make it safe for their ship
to land. They are naming this new area New Dakota and they only have about six
months left to orbit the Earth before they run out of fuel.
Then they discover something amazing. It appears as if there
is grass growing back on Earth, and after further examining the camera feed
from New Dakota, they see a human. A human that Jessil believes is her father.
Was he actually able to survive the nuclear holocaust on
Earth?
This is a very character-driven book. The characters are all
really strong, and a lot of effort has been put into creating them.
That being said, I didn’t necessarily like all of them. My
least favorite characters were Lo and Jessil.
Lo was a whiney little brat throughout the book, and I
didn’t feel there was really a need for him to be there. He didn’t add anything
to the story for me. The fact that he was adopted didn’t really matter to me
either.
Jessil seemed like a know-it-all that didn’t want to listen
to others. Her personality was a little too strong, and it took away from the
plot at times. Being strong-willed obviously led to getting her way, but I
would rather have read some dialogue about making decisions rather than her
bossing people around and going off by herself.
Raj was sort of a redeeming character. He is very smart, yet he is able to put up with Jessil and tries to cancel out her overbearing self at times. He was probably the best character in my eyes.
This book was pretty easy to not put down. The chapters I
guess you could call them were pretty short so it was easy for my mind not to
wander. There was plenty of action to hold my attention, and the flow of the
book allowed for a lot of pages to be read without realizing it.
For a genre of fantasy/sci-fi that I don’t dive into as
much, I wasn’t disappointed with this one.
3/5 stars
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