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) This story explores the horrendous underground practice of sex trafficking. It brings together two girls from completely different worlds as they find themselves stuck and enslaved to the brutal men running the show.
Hope is a girl from a very wealthy, prominent family. Oksana is from a very poor section of Russia, and her mother is dead. Oksana is tricked into and then trapped in the prostitution trade. During 'business' travels, Hope tries to help Oksana escape, but only manages to get herself kidnapped by the trade men too.
The author avoids getting too much into the details of the horrible activities that go on in trafficking, but she does spread awareness and shed truth about its horrific nature. The narrative itself is a little unrealistic because Hope is eventually able to get back to her family with nothing more than mental trauma and some scratches, but I suppose that's typical of a young adult book.
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) This book, like the previous one I just read by a different author, spent way too much time on artsy writing and less on the story itself; both had depressing conclusions.
The main character is a very plain girl whose only gratification yet has been through running track. The problem with her life is just that: she's plain, middle, ordinary. It's also known that she can be easy, but supposedly only with shy, quiet boys.
This is until another track runner dies at her school, the same track runner who had been hitting on her just a few days before. The same day he died, a new, middle-eastern boy arrives in her math class. He is interested in her, and they start becoming more than friends. For the first time in her life, she gives her heart out to someone. After they make love for the first time, he starts distancing himself from her. It hurts her like hell, though she won't admit it. Time with him had even had her sacrificing her love for track. He finds someone new, and she stays home watching her father destroy another great relationship he had with a wonderful woman. The book ends with her gaining only a bit more confidence in herself, but even less confidence in men.
This is another horrible read for the romantics, or really any girl who hopes to one day be happily married.
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) This is a good book, no doubt about it. The only criticism I have is that it's just such a tragic narrative. It made me bawl afterwards. Some of the sequences of sad events seem almost unreal because of the never-ending drama; but at the same time, still very plausible.
The main character is a teenage girl named Pattyn Von Stratten. Her family is very strictly Mormon. Her mother is a baby maker (7 daughters) and her dad is a highly abusive alcoholic. Pattyn is a smart girl who questions her families ways, but being young, she runs into horrid mistakes during the process. So to solve this, her family sends her to her aunt's rural ranch to stay for the summer. There, she finds herself, but also creates even more trouble for her future. (It didn't have to be trouble, but you know the way this very catastrophic world works.) The book ends with an unsure conclusion where Pattyn is deciding between murder or suicide.
The writing in this book is good, though very unconventional. It's like every chapter is an art piece, or poem. I'd recommend it if you don't mind feeling completely hopeless about life for a while, otherwise choose something with a little more positive lesson. This basically expresses that going against the norm will bring some good, but mostly bad into one's life; at least that's the way it worked out for Pattyn.
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) So I had this book for a really long while, and tried to renew it the second time because I was dreading reading it. Turned out someone had it requested! So I was forced to read it if I was ever going to. I guess it's popular now that ABC is making a TV show out of it.
It's entertaining - full of non-stop suspense. It's like an exotic "24" (the TV show) for younger generations. I don't know what number this book is in the line.
There's tons of background that they continually fill you in on throughout the story, like most series books, but it starts out with the main character, Heaven, moving to Japan. It soon seems the place she is staying in is untrustworthy and dangerous - with much struggle, she escapes; of course her dreaded, also untrustworthy ex-boyfriend helps. Later, it turns out he was actually plotting against her the whole time too. She doesn't know where to turn, and tries to find her birth mother. (She was adopted of course!) She finds her and they fend off a big army of ninjas together and ride off with another guy from Heaven's past, Teddy. Why is everyone against her? Her father has ties to the Japanese mob and Heaven's famous for some reason not made clear in this book. Etc... It's crazy, a lot too crazy for me. But it's not boring.
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) Caroline B. Cooney used to be my favorite author when I was younger. Her books are full of suspense, drama, and thrills. This is a little different from her usual work, but not by much.
This is a classic teen love story except for one unexpected twist: the boy Nicoletta (the main character) loves isn't really a boy at all. In fact, he's not even human. He's part of a curse placed on a cave long ago - he's now part of the cave and can only appear in human form in the sunlight. Otherwise, he's a big, moving piece of nature (dirt, plants, rocks, etc...)
Nonetheless, Nicoletta is hopelessly in love with him. She's never been in love before. And it's not like she doesn't have her options; the most desired boy in school desires her.
But their romance is difficult, for Nicoletta can rarely see him and when she does, she usually messes something up. Plus, she's having a very fake romance with that guy that everyone but her wants at school.
When Nicoletta brings her companions to the cave unknowingly, danger is imminent and tragedy is now destiny.
It's entertaining, but that's all. Not much substance, but very enticing.
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) I timidly opened this book as I was not looking forward to delving into another mind-numbing vampire novel. However, this does not read as an average vampire tale. It would make a great Disney movie if given the chance.
The main characters are two identical twin teenagers who couldn't be more different. Their names are even opposing: Sunshine and
Rayne.
Rayne dresses
gothic, is frequently moody, and doesn't like much of anything that's not tinted with dark colors. Sunshine is your average preppy, goody girl that likes Dave Matthews, flip-flops, and plain tank tops. However, as sisters, the girls support each other and often accompany one another to events. So when
Rayne signs a contract to become an immortal vampire, it's a sad time when their identities are mistaken. Sunshine is then bitten by her new "blood mate" that was supposed to bite
Rayne, and things turn into a mess! Yes, the storyline speaks similarly to many vampire novels, but the creative writing and logical reasoning that is woven in is what sets it apart and makes the story interesting; whether you're a horror/sci-
fi connoisseur or a
bonified 'creepy-things' hater, this story is fun and intriguing. It's got action, suspense, and some definitely enticing romance. Not a bad read.
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) If you think that's a boy and a girl kissing on the cover of this book, think again. Your sexual stereotypes and innuendos are broken down, just a little, in this novella.
It starts out with a very straight girl who has grown up in a hippy-convent family. She doesn't discover her likeness for the same sex until she travels to New York to live with her coke-head sister for the summer. She starts babysitting for a rich, lesbian couple, and therefore runs into a 'friend' who becomes not only her first same-sex crush, but also her first love. Did I mention they both have adorable, escape-artist dogs?
It's not a complicated story by any means; but it's a cute, quick read of a first-time lesbian love tale.
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) Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favorite authors. He wrote
Fight Club and other beloved novels. He's famous for his creative, over-the-top stories based on human instinct and desire. However, this book disappointed me greatly. I suppose the pressure from his fame may have got to him, but this book is a drudgery to get through unless you find dirty, grimy, cheap porn sets to be a turn-on. It's similar to the extreme erotic nature of
Choke, but with much less of a well-written story line and plot formation. Most of the readers' time is spent going through nausea-inducing details of desperate, disgusting, horny men and women.
The only thing I found even remotely interesting about this book was Palahniuk's interesting facts listed throughout. (Did you know Marilyn Monroe used to sit in a tub of ice before movie shoots in order to tighten her curves?!) However, the display of these facts was done horribly and ruined the character development.
The whole story here is set on a porn set where a porn star is trying to surpass the record of having sex with 599 guys in a row. One boy thinks he's the porn star's son that she is rumored to have given up for adoption at birth. The story had potential, but Palahniuk got sloppy - plain and simple.
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) What do you get when you combine a goth-phased, vampire-obsessed, teenage girl with a bored, diabetic, espresso-fiend? You get this Lucy chick. She's so smart she's even developed her own clever theory about the evolution of the legendary vampire myth. She believes 'vampires' developed from early age diabetics that existed before it was diagnosed as an illness. Her argument is very convincing.
She, in turn, is very convinced by a much, much older man she met on the internet who claims to be a "real" vampire. This is where the real struggle in the story is displayed.
Interesting, suspenseful, and horrifyingly easy to relate to. It's
incredibly creative and well-researched. Definitely worth checking out.
Excerpt from pg. 1 of Chapter 1: Blood; "Blood is my friend. Without it my cells shrivel. Without it I die. / At night, alone with myself, I hear it rushing through arteries and veins, platelets tumbling in a soup of plasma and glucose through slick, twisty tubes, lining up to enter narrow capillaries, delivering oxygen and fuel, seeking idle insulin. It is a low-pitched sound: wind passing through the woodlands. / I hear a higher pitched sound too: A demon dentist drilling, rising and falling but never stopping. It is the sound of my thoughts. / Alone, at night, with myself, the low sound and the high sound become music."
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) Action-packed and suspense-filled. Follows Francine, a girl who was the only one of her siblings to survive their mother's insanity. She is eighteen now, but still has first-person flashbacks of the trauma in her memory. The only people around Francine that know about her past are her adoptive parents, her best friend, and her new boyfriend. Soon, a suspicious but inviting letter arrives from her mother, (who currently lives in a mental institution.) Curiosity and desire for truth overwhelms Francine, so she and her boyfriend sneak off to visit her mother. It is there that more trauma, terror, and suspense ensues - though not how you'd expect.
The characters are very well developed even though the actual plot is very unrealistic. However, the portrayal of mental illness is very true to life.
An entertaining novel; would make a great movie.
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) Follows a seventeen-year-old girl, Debbie, (AKA Tallulah,) who has run away from an overbearing home life to seek her friend that had also previously escaped to Florida. The issue is: her driver has robbed and ditched her. So she's destitute until a series of misfortunes, (and an act of kindness,) lands her a temporary stay in a generous woman's home and a job at the local veterinary clinic. From there on, it's non-stop soap opera drama. She even successfully resuscitates a near-dead baby. Wouldn't this make a great teen movie?
It's pretty crazy, and it gets even crazier as the sought Florida friend, (who, by the way, is also bipolar,) comes into the picture. It's a bit unrealistic in the trail of unfortunate events littered throughout, but very easy to relate to and definitely illustrates Tallulah's story of growth quite well.
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) The main character, Paul, is a teen boy just about to graduate a semester early from high school. He's the star basketball player and has straight A's. The catch is his anger issues: contributing factors to this include his absent father and vegetable of a brother. His father won a Pulitzer prize for a poem he wrote about their non-reactant brother, but yet he's never around to care for him or anyone else. The brother, Shawn, is a continued source of embarrassment and annoyance for Paul. These things add up to the worst but most fulfilling violent outrages a boy his age can have. He comes very close to killing a large man from road rage. Only a friend could stop him. Also, only further intervention by others he cares about can improve his current ways of living.
This is very poor compared to the first book I read by Trueman,
Inside Out. The character development continues to be incredibly excellent, but the story is lacking here.
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) A pretty good read for both teens and parents. For teens, it will show that their many private issues, intimate embarrassments, and unanswered questions are quite common. It illustrates that bodies and relationships are often complicated, but that they don't have to be. For parents, it will familiarize them with the kind of pressure-cooking sexual culture that this generation is soaked in.
The premise surrounds a small group of boys and their female counterparts. Jonathan is anxious about his attraction to a "chubby" girl; he also frets about a lump he found on his genitalia. Ben is being over-powered, over-burdened, and over-sexualized by one of his female teachers. Dino is an all-around narcissistic jerk who gets caught trying to juggle two girls at once; he also catches his mom cheating on his father, which results in his parents' split. The three boys are good friends and support each other.
It's interesting and educationally erotic, but the repetitive use of UK slang can get tiring. Not to mention a lot of the situational sex scenes don't need to dive into as much detail as they do.
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) A great illustration of modern, less-understood mental diseases. It's based on a brief, true part of the author's own life.
The story follows a clinically depressed teenage boy. The story starts off in middle school where the boy, Craig, studies hard to get into a prestigious high school. He gets in, but struggles to stay. The stress of both school work and social factors causes depression, and the depression causes various health hazards. He eventually gets help and medication. But it's only a matter of time until he experiments with his medicinal 'needs'. Without the meds, he contemplates suicide, and ends up in the local hospital's mental ward. It is here that he really finds himself, his life, and his first serious girlfriend.
It's a story of growth and reconstruction. It's original, funny, realistic, and wholesome - without being predictable.
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) If you like reading philosophy-based sci-fi books, this might be your pick. Although it does not contain very original in ideas: the concept is that multiple realities of the same instant layer over each other in time, while still existing in a linear fashion. This results in the story following a girl and boy being born with the same genes, house, and parents; the only differences between them are their genders and family circumstances. The boy's mother died in a car crash and has a weird aunt. The girl's mother was in the same accident, but lived; she doesn't have an aunt. They meet each other through a an emotional time "crack" while touching the same wooden figurine their mothers carved. Things are confusing and mysterious; I think the main point of this was to illustrate a possible option for time that was imagined by the author. Because it doesn't really seem to have a main idea or lesson.
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) An amazing perspective of being young, homeless, and desperate. Most of us live in abundance and are blind to those needy and suffering around us; this book helps open our eyes.
It follows the journey of a thirteen/fourteen-year-old girl, Caro, who follows her mother helplessly through living on the streets and in cult communes. It starts out with the mother and daughter being robbed and abandoned by their current cult leader. They are forced to leave with nothing; so they learn to live on the tough San Francisco streets and form a family with other homeless individuals. After some struggling times, they find an abandoned house to squat in Berkeley. It works well until the police use some unethical methods to insure their eviction. Soon, Caro finds herself alone and helpless. What now?
The main lesson I interpreted is that life isn't fair, so you can't always live or play fair. In other words, luck is a part of getting what you want; hard work and effort is only part of it. It's a good read: thrilling and insightful.
However, I did get a little annoyed with the continued censorship the author used. We aren't stupid, we know the four-letter words and what sex is. It doesn't need to be spelled out, but it shouldn't be covered up either.
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) It seems like your average thriller spy novel that's been turned kid-oriented: and much of it is. However, some of the situations are
wholly original, making the story very enticing.
Basically, this fifteen/fourteen-year-old boy, Alex, is living with his only relative, his uncle. But things change when the police report his uncle has died in a car accident. The circumstances of the accident seems odd to Alex, so he investigates. Through a series of odd but adventurous situations he finds out that his uncle was actually murdered for being a professional spy; he was a bank employee as a cover. The company his uncle worked for blackmails Alex into taking his uncle's place in the project he had been working on. Alex has his uncle's training and a karate
black belt to lean on, and so the story ensues while he saves the world (or at least the world's school children).
It's alright, although highly unrealistic. But definitely suspenseful and fun.
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) This novella is evidence that it is very possible to create stories so full of 'impressive' literary elements that the essence of the story is shattered.
This tale surrounds an fifteen-year-old Anglo-Saxon (white) girl who lives a very introverted life among a New Mexico town. She is 'pretty' and has positive attention coming her way, along with jealousy, hatred, and fear because of her race. (The area is predominately Native American and Hispanic.) However, the only male she develops any feelings for is one of the town drunks, a man who was once the mayor of the town. He's too old for her, but he's only man who is not trying to hide behind a 'macho' persona. He's also the same man who appears as an Indian warrior in many of her reoccurring but never-concluding dreams. The end is very confusing, but she does finally complete her dream puzzle.
This is short, but not sweet. I expected much more from a Newbery Honor Book author. Gary Paulsen does have some great works though, such as
The Giver.
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) A sixteen-year-old female-artist, Ginny, runs into more than one obstacle while trying to explore her family's roots. She's half Caucasian and half Haitian, growing up in a rich, non-diversified suburban neighborhood. Her father won't speak more than a sentence about her supposedly dead mother. Not until an unknown half-brother comes to live with them does Ginny learn any truths about her family. She finds her dad has been lying, and thus sets off to discover what else she's been made ignorant of. In the meantime, she learns more about herself, such as her uppity-but-naive nature. She also learns that sometimes there are understandable, sympathetic reasons behind crimes and lies.
This story can be a little slow in the beginning, but it eventually picks up and is worth the wait. It's an alright read and has some good prejudice and discriminatory issues to tag in line with the main plot.
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) Centers around a 17-year-old country girl, Robin, who's madly in love with her boyfriend of two-years, Chris. Unfortunately, her boyfriend is going off to college next year and is now unexpectedly spending 'their last summer together' in Rome. Robin thinks she will perish without Chris, but instead the opposite proves true as she cares for her cousins' and aunt's post-tragedy emotions on a long and testing road trip across the country. Surprising events occur that lead to Robin eventually finding herself, her ability to survive and adapt, and her love for life.
It's a decent read with a common lesson found in young adult books. It's good for individual empowerment and bad for the romantics.
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) This story explores the horrendous underground practice of sex trafficking. It brings together two girls from completely different worlds as they find themselves stuck and enslaved to the brutal men running the show.
