Because this book came recommended, I knew I should stick with it even though it didn’t immediately capture my interest. The book is well written, and Hammond’s strength is the way she interweaves her characters together. It certainly is a character-driven story with the plot taking a back seat. Samson Brown has been taking care […]
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I am generally not a fan of nonfiction, reading the genre only on recommendation. This book was recommended by a colleague who started reading the book and then realized it would be perfect for me. In the book, which is broken down into short, manageable chapters with specific examples interspersed throughout, Doctorow extrapolates his ideas […]
Written by Donald Friendman and illustrated by J. C. Suares, this book was a Christmas gift, and I enjoyed it. It’s exactly what it sounds like: an illustrated “dictionary” of dog-related terms. As someone interested in etymology and the origins of language, I enjoyed reading about phrases used from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare to […]
I picked up this book when it caught my eye at a second-hand book store. It’s about a twelve-year-old (Joey) who vanishes during a camping trip. He re-appears two years later, only he’s still twelve and wearing the same thing he was wearing when he disappeared. The rest of the world has grown, and he […]
I had been meaning to read this book for years. After I moved, it got packed in the bottom of a box of books, and I finally found it again. This book reminds me of 1984, only looking at society from a more personal, feminine, perspective. The novel is written (spoken) through the voice of […]
Read this book if you want to be kept in suspense, and have your blood raging and your fists clenched. Kyra is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives in a cult called The Chosen Ones. We hear the story from her point of view, so we’re limited in our understanding of the cult. We learn, however, […]
The Raft is a survival tale told from the point of view of a teenager named Robie, who lives on the Midway Atoll (in the Pacific). While visiting her aunt on Hawaii, Robie decides to go home early and takes a cargo flight home. But she is not recorded on the manifest, and the plane […]
This review contains minor spoilers. I heard much praise about this book before I decided to read it, and I think all the praise I heard built it up in my mind, which left me slightly disappointed. The book follows a (sort of) magical circus that travels the world and opens only at night. The […]
Advertised as “featuring 1,046 must-know vocabulary words,” this supernatural mystery is published by Kaplan and marketed to students wanting to build vocabulary for the SAT. That said, the primary goal of this story is learning words rather than the plot itself. The story follows a high-school junior, Will Lassiter, who lives next door to a […]
I received an advance review copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. This is a short (PDF at 65 pages) read that opens with a prolog: Jasyra being confronted by the Demon King, who breaks all protocol by breaking the Dragon Fyre Sword and scattering it in many pieces across the world. […]
