The Baby

The Baby
by Lisa Drakeford

The Baby by Lisa Drakeford is a well-written piece about a high school girl and her four friends. She did not know that she was pregnant, and has to give birth in the middle of her best friend's house party. This book gives teens a good glimpse into what their future would look like if anything were to happen to them regarding high school pregnancy. This book uses multiple voices in a shifting point of view in five different sections. The five sections are titled by the characters names to let you know which life you are going to get a peek into.
This book, while it has it's crazy baby plot, the other plots are super cute such as the pursuit for friendship, the pursuit for a partner, and, in some ways, the pursuit for truth. This book could be viewed as a health video in some ways, but compared to it, it's SO much BETTER. Depending on a video, the book is not corny or cheesy, and when it get too intense, you can put it down and pick it up later, and when you pick it up later, read at your own pace. A health video, depending on the video, is cheesy and corny and NOT well written.

If this book were a food, it would be watermelon and feta cheese. The watermelon, which is really yummy but can get everywhere really fast and then start to stick even quicker, is like the main plot with the baby being a serious issue. The feta cheese, which adds flavor to the already good watermelon, is like the mini plots because they are the toppers on the baby plot.

I really have to give this book a five out of five stars and a recommendation for the Teen's Top Ten because of its great execution of describing the teen mom life, and my information is based off of totally awkward health videos. I should mention that the ending should have deducted a fraction of a star because it left a cliffhanger, but it's all the more reason to add, even though it's not possible, another star. It also makes me want Lisa Drakeford to write another one. Oh, I looked her up online and coming up this year is a book called The Crash that I really want to read when it comes out because it looks so amazing, and I love books! If you think that you might love this book as much as I do, check her out at  https://www.chickenhousebooks.com/authors/lisa-drakeford/

             ~Libby

Entangled and the Splintered Trilogy

Ensnared and the Splintered Trilogy
by A.G. Howard

Ensnared is the conclusion to the Splintered series, a series that is, essentially, a spinoff of Alice in Wonderland. I started following this series right after it came out, and it is honestly one of my favorite book series- ever.

Alyssa is a descendant of Alice, and is afflicted by a strange issue- she heard the plants and insects talk to her. Her mom had the same thing, and everyone thinks that she is crazy- but Alyssa finds out differently. On her journey(s), she has to fix Alice's mistakes, defeat an evil queen, and a lot more. This series is packed with adventure, romance, and an incredible plot. This book, Ensnared, is the conclusion to this series.
I, personally, was worried that this series would fall flat on the second book and the third (like so many others have done in the past). However, it surprised me by continuing to be amazing all of the way through; a very rare thing for a trilogy to do. This book was a fantastic conclusion to the trilogy. Without giving too many spoilers, I just have to say that I was scared the love interests would get messed up in the end- but A.G. Howard came up with the perfect conclusion that satisfied this worry without ruining the series for me. I was even more pleased when the romance did not take over the entire plot, because I have always been... well, not the biggest fan of romance. This series has just enough romance to add to the plot, but not too much to make the book focus on it.

This series is simply amazing- one of the best I've read in a long time. I highly suggest it to anyone who may ask (and have done so on numerous occasions). If you are interested in Wonderland, spinoffs of famous tales, romance, or just reading an amazing book, find this one! It is AMAZING!!!

If I was to relate this book to a food, it would be Altoids. "Whaattttt?" is what you are probably thinking right now... here's why Altoids are the perfect food to represent this book; in my house, Altoids are not just an after-meal breath freshener. They are a snack. We can eat a box of Altoids and enjoy it. You can never eat too many, and they taste good no matter what. You don't feel bad after you eat a ton of them either... they are like the infinity snack that you can just. keep. eating. This series is like that- you can keep reading it and never get sick of it. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.
For those of you who are like "Cool, I'm in!"or "I want to find out more about this supercool author", you can check her out at http://www.aghoward.com/
If you are someone who is interested in the idea of reading a spinoff of a classic tale, A.G. Howard also recently released a spinoff of The Phantom of the Opera, so if that peaks your interest more than Wonderland, check it out! You can find information on this book, called Roseblood, at the website cited above.

I contributed towards another blog post in 2014 about trilogies that do not get worse in the middle and actually deliver to the reader (I used this trilogy as an example). If you want to read more about this, you can find the post at http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2014/10/27/notes-from-a-teens-top-ten-book-club-book-group-participant-series-that-deliver/#more-11408

Enjoy reading!
         -Lucy

The Killing Woods

by Lucy Christopher

     One day, Emily Shepherd’s father, an ex-soldier suffering from PTSD, stumbles out of the woods carrying the dead body of Ashlee Parker, a girl from Emily’s school.  Emily’s father pleads guilty of manslaughter, saying he was enacting one of his flashbacks from battle, but Emily is convinced that he didn’t murder Ashlee.  The story is told in the alternate viewpoints of Emily and Damon, Ashlee’s boyfriend.
   Sadly, there wasn’t much I liked about this book.  I didn’t really like the writing style, especially Damon’s voice.  I didn’t like Damon much at all.  He thinks like he’s trying to be a tough guy in his head, and his attitude changed significantly as a character depending on whether the reader was in his head or viewing him as Emily.  Emily was fairly decent as a character, and she had reasonable doubts about her father and dealt with the difficulties of being viewed as the daughter of a murderer in a reasonable way.  However, she also felt superfluous.  I don’t think much of anything would be lost if her chapters were cut out entirely.
     My main problem with the book was that it hinged on Damon waiting to remember what happened the night Ashlee died because he had been drunk and high.  He and his friends had been in the woods that night playing the Game, but they lied to the cops, saying nobody else had been in the woods, making everyone even more sure that the murderer really is Emily’s father.  I’m still not entirely sure exactly what the Game is.  Something that involves running around the woods with collars and fighting each other.  That really could have used some explanation and made the book a lot more disconcerting than it needed to be.
     This is a 1.6.  I didn’t like Damon, I didn’t like the plot, and I didn’t like the writing style.  There was too much waiting as I read.  It was not, however, as bad as some other books I’ve read.  It’s flavored water because it tastes artificial and a little overpowering in the wrong way.  Plain water would satisfy your thirst better.

I Become Shadow

by Joe Shine


     Ren Sharpe is living a normal life.  She just started high school and she’s working hard to fit in with the other kids.  Then she gets kidnapped in the middle of the night and taken to a secret facility owned by F.A.T.E. that trains bodyguards.  There’s a satellite that takes pictures fifty years in the future, and it took a picture of her gravestone, indicating she only lived to be fourteen, so they took her for their program.  They also know who is important in fifty years, and it’s their job to protect the world changers.  This is an interesting idea, but I didn’t understand why it was necessary.  If they know the future, wouldn’t they know the world changers aren’t going to be dead?
     After four years of intense training, Ren is assigned to Gareth Young, a student at the University of Texas.  She’s not allowed to actually contact him, but she does.  After all, she’s a student there too, as cover - and all her grades are fixed, so she doesn’t actually have to do any of the work.  They start falling in love, even though Ren still likes someone from her training and is keeping in touch with him.
     This is where things start going downhill.  People attack Gareth, and now Ren can use her training.  I just have no idea why people attacked him.  The explanations were so full of conspiracy theories that I have no idea what was going on for pretty much the second half of the book.  Ren runs around with Gareth, other people run after them, people from F.A.T.E. show up, and that’s about what I understood.  The underlying plot was lost on me.
     Ren’s internal dialogue was a bit different.  I didn’t find it particularly better or worse than the standard, just kind of different.  It worked well with her character, a carefree, think-of-me-what-you-will sort.
     This is a 2.7.  The premise, while interesting, did raise some questions that weren’t addressed at all.  If I were kidnapped and forced to be a bodyguard, I would at least wonder why they didn’t bother try to save me if they knew I was going to die.  I also didn’t really like Ren’s relationship with Gareth, and I didn’t like Gareth that much.  And there was that whole second half that was just confusing.  This is like chewing gum.  At first, there’s some flavor and enough to keep it interesting, but then the flavor goes away and you’re left wondering why you’re chewing a tasteless chewy thing and making your jaw tired.

Returning to Shore

by Corinne Demas


     This is a story about a girl whose mother just got married for the third time, so she is sent to spend the summer with her father while her mother is on her honeymoon.  Her father lives on a small island along Cape Cod and is determined to save a local species of turtles.  Although at first Clare is hesitant and slightly uncomfortable around her father, who she hasn’t seen since she was very small, they grow to like each other by the end.
     Though not particularly fast paced, Clare manages to have enough activity to keep the reader engaged.  It’s a fairly short book, so I didn’t really expect much to happen.  Clare herself is a pretty realistic character.  Her emotions and reactions were fleshed out and they were what I would expect a girl in her situation to feel.  The other characters, however, were lacking.  They were there more for Clare to react to and seemed very flat and more like names floating around the page than actual people.  Even the father, who was a major part of Clare’s internal development, left a lot to be desired.  I wish the book had been a little longer and the other characters and their relationships with Clare had been developed more.  It would have made the book much more poignant, but instead, it was more of a flat read.
     The back cover description hints at a lot more development than was actually in the book.  There was a bunch of personal development for Clare, but the other subplots - the memory lane, her father being the town crazy - hinted at on the back cover are more like caricatures of what’s in the book.  The cover is also more bleak than the story deserves.  It’s serene, but not depressingly so like the cover indicates.  Imagine a blue sky and the girl looking towards the horizon instead of towards the ground.
     It is a 2.85.  It’s not something I would devour, and not something I would reread (though some might, depending on the type of book you like), but it was nice in a quiet, serene sort of way, and I think that some of Clare’s realizations were done really skillfully.  It is a piece of cheese.  Something to be eaten slowly in a relaxed way, but also something that is over pretty quickly.  It is soft, and it’s not a sharp tasting sort of cheese, but a mellow one that you enjoy while it’s there and appreciate what it gives you even though it’s not very filling.

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Emma, a high school student in 1996, has just received a computer from her father. Her best friend Josh, who lives in the house next to hers, has an America Online CD-ROM that he offers her. When she finished downloading it, she discovers Facebook in her list of favorite sites. Clicking on it, she discovers her Facebook page 15 years in the future. To her dismay, she sees herself as being miserably unhappy. She messes around with her life, desperately doing anything to prevent her unfortunate future. She decides to apply to different colleges so that she won't meet her future husband, but everything she does just seems to make a different future in which she is still unhappy. Josh, on the other hand, is extremely happy with his future, and he's terrified that something Emma does will mess it up.

It's definitely a cool idea, but the book did not execute it well. It turned into one of those books that's about high school kids, who they want to go out with, and all the other tiny things they do in their life. The future Facebook added an interesting element, but Emma ended up rushing home every day to check it, and ended up acting like kids do now, so it didn't seem different than the other books about a random high school kid. The idea wasted away as the book progressed, so by the end, it had lost any novelty that it had at the beginning.

The book is a 1.9. It's better than some books I've read, but not nearly as good as many others. Like Splenda, it seemed sweet at first, but quickly lost its appeal, and there are alternatives that are better.

Rotters by Daniel Kraus

Joey is 16 years old, and getting an A in all of his classes is very important for him. At least, that's what the text says in the book, though by his actions, it is very difficult to come to that conclusion. What kind of straight A student practically fails out of and gives up on school? Anyway, his mom dies at the beginning, though that part was kind of confusing, and I was left wondering whether she had actually died and how for a while. He goes off to live with the father who he's never heard of. At school, he is immediately picked on by the other students. These characters, though they don't really deserve to be described as characters, more like names on a page, are extremely superficial. They see Joey's dad, Harnett, as a bad garbage man who hasn't ever picked up anyone's garbage. Joey soon finds out why. Harnett is a grave robber, and is part of a secret society of grave robbers called Diggers. Joey ruins his life when he decides that he wants to be a grave digger too, and the story spirals away.

The story as a whole just didn't make sense. Really, a secret society of grave robbers? And they each have their own special "instrument," a shovel, that they love, and name, and is perfect just for them. That's taking the whole thing a little far. And one of the characters literally falls apart during the book. That does not happen. No one can just pull their eyes out and stab themselves in various places every day and still be able to dig up over 20 graves in a night. Joey starts going insane partway through, and the book becomes very difficult to read. Someone needs to point out to Joey that skeletons don't give advice and that signs from writhing masses of rats are probably bad. Also, I think Kraus made Joey pray to a two-fingered Jesus just to make the book even more bizarre than it already was. Bizarre is not always good, especially when taken too far.

The book is worthy of a 1.7. It was not well written, the plot was ridiculous, and the characters were awful. Kraus seemed to concentrate more on effects, rather than causes and development. It is comparable to a rotten banana; it was mushy and not very appetizing. It was hard to read, much like a rotten banana would be hard to eat.

Blink & Caution by Tim Wynne-Jones

Blink & Caution was an interesting book. It was a good story, once you got past the fact that it was in the present tense. And as if that weren't bad enough, half of it was in the second person! The beginning was awful, but once I got used to the writing style, it definitely started to improve. There's a boy named Blink, who is referred to as you and who's real name is Brent. He walks into a hotel one day to steal people's leftover food for breakfast when he sees the CEO of a company walk out with three other men. People say he got kidnapped, but Blink knows that he went with the men under his own volition. Then there's Caution, as in Caution: Watch Your Step. Her real name is Kitty, and that is how she is referred to in most of the book. Kitty runs away from her drug dealer boyfriend named Merlin, and she is convinced that he can actually do magic. He goes away pretty quickly, and is not a major part of the book. They are both haunted by their past. Blink has left home because of a nasty stepfather. Kitty is almost suicidal over the death of her brother, and she is convinced that his death is her fault. They end up meeting, and they go off to see if they can make a whole lot of money somehow with the knowledge that the CEO's kidnapping is fake.

I'd give it a 3.2. It was ok; the writing style dragged it way down. It wasn't a book that I felt the need to keep on reading, but it was good. It also had a great ending. I like books that have a well written ending that is put together nicely and ties everything up. Well, most things, anyway. It was like a snickers bar. A nice chocolate covering, not the best taste, but it leaves you satisfied.