Grace Divine, the local pastor’s daughter, walks into art class one day to find Daniel Kalbi checking out her latest project. Not too remarkable, right? Well, Daniel disappeared from her life several years earlier on a violent night that her family never talks about, and she’s had no idea what happened to him. He seems […]
The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea Campbell: Book Review
Damien Locke is the son of the Mistress of Mayhem, a mad scientist supervillain living in Golden City. On his sixteenth birthday, he has a huge party to celebrate his thumbprint becoming a “V,” meaning that he’s a born supervillain. Except that it doesn’t. It becomes a mythical “X,” which can only mean one thing: […]
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater: Book Review
Grace has been obsessed with the wolves living in the woods behind her house for years. There’s one in particular that she thinks of as her wolf. On the day that she starts to think that there may be more to these wolves than meets the eye, some local hunters decide to go wolf hunting […]
Vampire Rising by Jason Henderson: Book Review
Alex Van Helsing has heard it thousands of times before. Yes, his last name is really Van Helsing. No, not like that Van Helsing. No, he doesn’t kill monsters. To paraphrase his father, that kind of thing doesn’t happen. Except when it does. What a fun, action-packed story! It begins with Alex running toward a […]
The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón: Book Review
When Max’s family moves to the beach to avoid being caught in the city during a war, they don’t realize that worse trouble is going to find them. First of all, I think the name Roland should be retired from fiction forever. It is impossible for me to read it without seeing The Gunslinger. When […]
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank: Book Review
Any kind of synopsis feels extremely redundant, but I’ll write one anyway. Anne Frank is a young Jewish girl in hiding in Amsterdam during WWII. I don’t know how I made it to be 31 years old without reading The Diary of Anne Frank. I’m glad I finally got to it though. I think Anne’s […]
Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier: Book Review
Loosely based on The Twelve Dancing Princesses, among other fairy tales, Wildwood Dancing is the story of five sisters who disappear into The Other Kingdom for a fairy revel every full moon night. But when their father leaves them alone to spend the winter in another city, their cousin, Cezar, realizes something is going on […]
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick: Book Review
I know a lot of you are going to disagree with me, but here goes…. Nora Grey is forced to sit next to the new guy, Patch, in biology class one day. He knows more about her than he should, and trouble starts to follow her around. I should have listened to Misty at Book […]
The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb: Book Review
Calder is a Fetch, a soul who escorts people on their journey to heaven. One day he shows up at a Death Scene, waiting to see if an infant chooses to die or not. The woman holding the baby takes his breath away. She’s beautiful and has a kind, caring, sad face. He can’t get […]
Ash by Malinda Lo: Book Review
Ash is a re-telling of Cinderella, with more fairies and no fairy godmother. The style this is written in is not a style for me. It feels true to what I remember of the original Grimm’s fairy tales, but that doesn’t mean I like it. It’s all third person, watching Ash do her thing, with […]
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld: Book Review
Aleksandr Ferdinand is the son of the Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He finds himself on the run one night with a few loyal men and a Stormwalker, a two-legged machine that sounds like something out of Star Wars. Deryn Sharp is a girl who loved to fly with her father. Now that he’s dead, […]