The Boleyn Inheritance is the story of Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII’s fourth wife; Jane Boleyn, her lady-in-waiting and Anne Boleyn’s former sister-in-law; and Katherine Howard, a beautiful young maid-in-waiting. By now, Henry is a hugely fat, sick, stinking, paranoid tyrant. These three women try their best to keep him happy and stay safe. I […]
The lass is the last child in a family of nine and the fourth unwanted girl. She is so unwanted that her mother doesn’t even bother to name her. When a polar bear comes crashing through the door one night and asks her to live with him in his castle for a while, she agrees […]
“I should have thought it obvious,” I said impatiently, though even at that age I was aware that such things were not obvious to the majority of people. “I see paint on your pocket-handkerchief, and traces on your fingers where you wiped it away. The only reason to mark bees that I can think of […]
On a beautiful July evening, nine-year-old Katie Mackey disappears on her way to the library. And our hearts break. I just don’t know where to start. It’s hard not to compare this to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, but there’s a huge difference. As I remember it, The Lovely Bones dealt with the family’s grieving […]
We first meet Crystal Spangler when she’s a dreamy twelve-year-old Virginia mountain girl, in the summer before she begins high school. We follow her as her dreaminess leads her to look for meaning, or for herself, in all the wrong places. I adore Lee Smith’s work. She writes about the mountains of Virginia. I’m in […]
Strange things start happening around best friends Zanna and Deeba. A fox appears on the edge of the playground, watching Zanna. They come across graffiti saying “Zanna For Ever!” A woman they don’t know approaches Zanna in a café and tells her what an honor it is to meet her. It all culminates one night […]
4 Stars. You should see my copy of this book. One of my co-workers, who, for various reasons, has only recently seen how much I read, saw all the neon post-it flags sticking out of the side of my book and asked me what on earth I was doing. I blushed and tried to explain how the people in Bailey White’s humorous little […]
4 Stars. Olive is obviously at the heart of this collection of stories. It’s very easy for fictional characters to be all good or all bad. I had moments where I hated Olive, cheered her on, admired her, pitied her, and even loathed her. But if you look deeply inside all of us, isn’t that the way we would really feel about […]
5 Stars. I just loved Yelena. She is so smart, sarcastic, ever-hopeful, and talented in ways that even she doesn’t realize. She’s the biggest reason I rated this book five stars. So my question is, with all the kick-ass female characters out there for teen girls to read, why is whiny Bella the one that most seem to have latched […]