One staple of contemporary young adult literature is the beach setting. Jenny Han makes great use of the beach setting in her novel, The Summer I Turned Pretty, which explores the changes that come with adolescence and young love. Every summer Belly and her family stay at her mom’s best friend Susannah’s beach house at […]
Virtuosity by Jessica Martinez | Book Review
December 13, 2011
Carmen has cracked under the pressure as we see in the opening pages of Virtuosity by Jessica Martinez. You are pretty much thrown head first into the plot as Carmen is dangling her million dollar violin over a hotel balcony. Does she drop it? Even more important, how did she even get to that point, […]
Past Perfect by Leila Sales Book Review
August 31, 2011
Y’all, Past Perfect, Leila Sales’ sophomore novel is off the hook with awesomeness. Every summer, Chelsea and her parents work as reenactors, or historical interpreters at Essex Village, a tourist attraction where it’s always 1774, baby.
Book Review: 10 Miles Past Normal by Frances O’Roark Dowell
May 4, 2011
Normal is overrated. No, really it is. However, not a whole lot of us really see that in high school. I remember desperately wanting to fit in while in high school and to be normal. But, well, normal girls don’t emerge from the library every day with a stack of books. Normal girls talk about […]
Book Review: Between Here And Forever by Elizabeth Scott
May 2, 2011
I learned several important things after reading Between Here And Forever by Elizabeth Scott. Number 1) A coma and a persistent vegetative state are not the same thing. Number 2) I am the master at figuring out ‘secrets’ by the 20th page. Number 3) I want to read more Elizabeth Scott, but not for the reasons you might think.
Book Review: Stay by Deb Caletti
April 5, 2011
FINALLY! Finally it’s happened to me. A book where the creepy relationship is played out as exactly that. Oh, friends, the heavens must have opened and sung a beautiful song while Deb Caletti wrote Stay, because this book straight up gets it. It gets that bad relationships are bad. Obsessive relationships are scary, not sexy. […]