Tag Archives: Fiction

The Calculus of Change by Jessie Hilb

07 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by in Young Adult

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Aden has a great relationship with mathematics, but the rest of her life is up-in-the air. The family is still reeling from the loss of her mother. Her best friend is boy-crazy and intent on starting an affair with one of her teachers. Aden has never dated and thought that part of her life was fine until Tate came into her life. Tate wears his yarmulke and a grin to school and is a friend to everyone. Aden is fascinated by him – especially that he is not afraid to openly display his religious convictions.

When Tate needs help with his calculus class, Aden steps in and helps him with his homework. Aden knows she is drawn to Tate, but he is dating another girl. I was feeling very impressed with Tate and Aden’s relationship at the start. He talks to her about his faith (She is also Jewish), and takes her to meet with a rabbi. But I lost that view of the relationship when he invites her to his house one night, gives her alcohol and proceeds to have sex with her. Worse yet is the fact that he gets up and leaves her in the bed with no explanation, does not even tell her ,”Goodbye.”

The redeeming part of the tale is that this did not destroy Aden, but she realizes that she cannot be around Tate. Girls who read this may understand that they don’t have to get “mushy brained” about love relationships.

I believe this must be an informed purchase for the high school library. The characters are very believable, and there is an over-all good resolution. However some schools may object to the sexual scenes. Also, the best friend does have sex with the teacher, but does not in trouble for it. The friend, Marissa, becomes pregnant, but she also had sex with another student about the same time so the fatherhood of the child is unknown. The teacher tells Marissa that his wife forgave him and that he is staying with her. That resolution bothers me. I don’t want to NOT recommend the book, but if it is purchased, it definitely needs to stay in the high school library.

The Dragon With a Chocolate Heart by Stephanie Burgis

29 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Children's Books, Fantasy

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Aventurine is a young female dragon who wants to explore the world outside her family’s lair. Her adventure into the unknown has disastrous results when she meets a food wizard who gives her enchanted chocolate which turns her into a human.

Aventurine falls madly in love with chocolate and wants more of it. She eventually is taken in as an apprentice to a famous chocolatier and begins to learn how to make the best chocolate in the kingdom. She also makes a friend of a young girl in the town.

Unfortunately, her dragon family is trying to find her, and Aventurine must decide how to stop them from destroying the world she must now live in. This is a cute story for elementary readers, grades 3-6. I recommend its purchase because it is a very unique approach to dragon tales.

Girl in a Bad Place

20 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in Mystery and Suspense, Young Adult

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Mailee and Cars are two high school best friends who always look out for each other.  They both have issues that cause them to rely on each other.  Cara, the logical organized one, gets drawn into a survival cult that is living in the mountains near their town.  Mailee is not pleased with the was Cara is getting involved with the cult, but she is unsure about how to help her.

Cara invites Mailee to visit the commune, and Mailee becomes even more uneasy when she meets the leader of the group. Mailee stumbles on something outside the camp that terrifies her.  She knows she has to get Cara away from the group, but her effort to do so may get her killed.

The price that one must pay for true friendship[ is the theme of the book.  The characters are very well developed, and the plot is tightly constructed.  There is some sex alluded to but nothing graphic.  I highly recommend its purchase for the high school reader.

Truthwitch by Susan Dennard

07 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Fantasy, Young Adult

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Fans of Sarah J, Maas will love this first book of a new series. This story takes place in the Witchlands. The main characters, Safiya and Iseult, and the land in which they live has long known the diverse power of witches.  These two come with very unique powers – which most had thought were long gone from the land.  Iseault is a Threadwitch.  She sees the ties that bind people to each other as strands of color.  The colors indicate to her the emotional bonds between people. But, she is unable to see her own bonds, and the lack of that ability limits her knowledge of how people may be using her.  Iseult is the cool-headed, more balanced of the two.

Sayfiya is a Truthwitch; she knows when people are telling her the truth.  Most of the rulers of her world do not realize that she is a truthwitch because she knows her life is in danger if they dicover her abilities.  If her power were made known, she would be the most sought-after person in the land because she would know if countries and rulers were telling the truth to each other.  Safiya is also impetuous and quick-tempered.  She often acts without thinking the consequences through.  She definitely needs Iseult to give her balance.

A young Bloodwitch, a man who can smell people’s blood and track them down, and a young male Wind Witch appear on the scene and their lives are changed forever.  The girls have many harrowing adventures the outcomes the reader will not anticipate. The reader will be eagerly anticipating the arrival of the next book in the series.

High school and middle school readers of fantasy will drawn into this tale of friendship and love.  I recommend it for such people.

Marked by Laura Williams McCaffery

16 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Political fiction, Young Adult

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This book is not at all what I expected when I picked it up. I had thought that it might be about tattoos and people’s reactions to them. While it IS about tattoos, it is more about a dystopian society that touts education as a way to move up in society while, at the same time, making it nearly impossible for that to happen.

In this society, if a person is caught in a misdemeanor crime such as buying food or medicine in a “shadow market” – an unsanctioned market where items are available that are not normally available in the regular stores, they immediately receive a tattoo around their wrist. Three tattoos, and they go to prison. Tattoos are given immediately without any sort of trial – only that the police had caught them doing something “illegal.”

Lyla Northstrom is one such girl who has received a mark when she went to a shadow market to buy medicine for her ailing mother because her mother is not able to get medical care from any acceptable medical facility.  A police officer, who she has known since a child, offers her a way to redeem herself and to get her mark removed.  He wants her to spy on one of her best friends who has also been marked for participating in underground activity. She must decide if her freedom from condemnation and a chance to get an education is worth betraying her friend. As she gets further into the underworld and into the world of the government that is controlling her world, she learns that many things are not as they seem.

This book is also a sort of commentary on the control that government can get over people’s lives and the results of that control. I watched a documentary on freedom just yesterday, and I was hit with the comment that one can either have economic freedom OR government regulations – not both.  This books is a good example of what MIGHT happen if the government reigns supreme in all aspects of one’s life.  It is too frighteningly possible for such a society too exist is freedoms are eroded one by one.

This story is told as a combination standard novel and graphic novel, an unusual approach but may help get the graphic novel people reading something a little more challenging.  I could not list it as a graphic novel, but it does have elements of that genre in it.  And, one of the characters does write a type of graphic novels.

 

Sandrider by Angie Sage

04 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in Fantasy, Young Adult

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This second book in the Todhunter Moon series is well-written and is a pleasure to read.  Alice Todhunter Moon is a novice magician in the Castle when a young girl accidentally enters the lives of the people in the Castle through the Ancient Ways. The inhabitants of the Castle already know about the Egg of Orm which had been stolen by an evil sorcerer named Oraton-Maar. But, they have no idea where he is keeping it until it hatches.  Of course, the girl can help them, but she doesn’t trust them, and they soon learn they can’t trust her either.

How Alice and her friends manage to get to the egg before the baby Orm hatches and whom the Orm will imprint on when it does hatch makes this a very fast-moving tale that will appeal to the middle-school reader.

Reader of the Septimus Heap series will enjoy this new series.  It continues with Septimus Heap now being in charge of the Castle.  This book may stand alone, but the reader will want to go back and read the first book if she begins with this one.

The Murdstone Trilogy by Mal Peet

30 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by in Adult fiction, Fantasy

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I had read Tamar by Mal Peet, and I loved the story.  When I saw this book show up on our review list, I was glad that I could review it, thinking that it would be as good as the one I had read.  I was VERY wrong.  I read the entire thing, hoping against hope, that I would find something to like about it. The only thing I can say is that it was the biggest piece of twaddle I have ever read.

The main character is a writer of sentimental coming-of-age books for boys.  His agent convinces him that he needs to write a fantasy, because “fantasy sells.”  He can’t bring himself to do it, but in a very Faustian move, he does sell his soul to a “greme” named Pocket Wellfair, who actually writes a fantasy for him. After he becomes a sensation in the fantasy market, his agent tells him that he has to expand his work into a trilogy.  Many unbelievable things occur between the writing of the first book and that of the third book – one of which is that he goes off to an island in the Mediterranean to avoid having to write the thing at all.

I totally get it that Peet is thumbing his nose at writers who are looking out for their own “pocket wellfair.”  I do know that he thinks that writers who write to please their agents – no matter how pleasing or pretty those agents might be – will not be happy nor successful in the long run.  Hats off to Peet for that.

However, the book is loaded with so many British phrases and phonetic pronunciations that no high school student will ever take time to read it.  I’m not sure that many adult readers in the U.S. would choose to read it.  There is no way I could ever recommend the expenditure of limited library funds for this.

Forbidden by Eve Bunting

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Ghost stories, Historical Fiction, Young Adult

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forbiddenBunting has told us a chilling tale based on events that really happened off the coasts of northwestern Scotland. In the story, Josie Ferguson goes to live with her father’s brother and his wife in an isolated village that people from other towns have little to do with.  Her relatives are emotionally cold to her, but they have accepted the responsibility to care for her until she reaches eighteen – not out of any sort of love, but because they will get money for doing so.

A young man named Eli shows up at her uncle’s home and she is drawn to him because he has a way of dealing with the family’s dog – a dog that had bitten her when she tried to go outside one night. Eli takes her to his aunt’s home to get the bite treated before it can get infected.  His aunt, rather cryptically, tells her that she cannot get emotionally involved with Eli because he is a “reporter” and is “forbidden.”

She manages to isolate the dog one day when her aunt and uncle are out on their fishing boat and goes into town to see if she can find at least one sympathetic ear.  She finds that the townspeople are as strange as her aunt and uncle, and that they have  some sort of secret which ties them together.

The entire town engages in “wrecking,” the practice of stripping wrecked ships of all saleable items that can be saved from ships that have been wrecked on the rocks of the firth.  Technically nothing can be salvaged as long as an animal or a man from the wreck was still alive.   That did not stop the “wreckers;” they just made sure that no one was breathing.

Josie finds out that her uncle and aunt are tied into the wreckers, and they actually lead ship to their destruction, but with Eli’s help, she manages to escape their grasp before she must take part in “wrecking.”

This is a fantastic ghost story, one of the best I have read lately.  The setting reminds me of Wuthering Heights, but the plot is different.  I think teen readers will greatly enjoy this tale.

 

 

Assassin’s Masque by Sarah Zettel

17 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Historical Fiction, Mystery and Suspense, Young Adult

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assassin's masque

Just when Peggy Fitzroy thinks that things might be going her way, what with her father turning up and her ex-fiancé finally out of the picture,  a new problem arises in the form of a mysterious woman. This woman seems to be known by her uncle’s mother, and Peggy believes that she could definitely be dangerous.
The Jacobites are coming ever closer to causing a rebellion that would remove George II and his family. Peggy has pledged her loyalty to the royal family, but events occur which make them doubt her allegiance. She begins to mistrust Mr. Tinderflint, the man who got her the position as a spy in the court. Who is really trustworthy, and who is lying about everything, is the point of this novel of the Palace of Spies series.
I recommend its purchase for those who already have the first two books, but this story can stand alone if the others are not available.

17 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Historical Fiction, Mystery and Suspense, Young Adult

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Peggy Fitzroy continues her spy game for the court of King George II as a lady-in-waiting. She finds that the man who was betrothed to her, and who tried to rape her, has returned. She tries to find out who are the real dangers to the royal family and to herself. Her uncle is still trying to run her life – even though he had kicked her out of his home and a strange man, named Johnny Leroy becomes an unexpected part of her life. This second novel of The Palace of Spies is a stand alone, but it will make the reader want to go back and read The Palace of Spies, the first book of the series.
I think teens who are interested in strong female characters, and who like spy stories will enjoy this series.
dangerous deceptions