Altered by Jennifer Rush
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This may not be the best literature, but it is a great story.

Something’s going on in Anna's house. Her father does strange genetic experiments in their farmhouse on four boys who live in their basement. As Anna gets to know the boys, she falls in love with Sam, and when an organization called the Branch threatens to take the boys away, they stage an escape and Anna goes with them.

They are on the run, and the secrets about the boys start to come out...


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The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media by Brooke Gladstone
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Gladstone is both narrator and visual tour guide, popping up throughout Neufeld's comic panels as both her contemporary self and camouflaged alongside historical figures.

The comic book format permitted me to read and learn about a subject I would not have attempted in a formal book format; the graphic format makes sense as a way to ease the "pain".

Beginning with the Incas, Herodotus, and the Acta Diurna of the Roman Senate, she wends her way to the present. The history’s always interesting, and her discussion on objectivity, and what psychological research has revealed about how people receive news and opinion is amazing.

One of the most intriguing sections deals with bias: commercial, bad news, status quo, access, visual, narrative, and fairness. This leads nicely into a discussion of war journalism. Throughout I was scandalized by the tidbits of information about falsehoods, lies, and tampering that goes on in the media.

This is definitely an interesting and easy way to read about a complex, interesting subject that has an effect on us all.


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A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is very well written but I didn’t enjoy it.
I was drawn by the interesting title and intriguing blurb on the back of the paperback. The plot had unexpected twists and turns and the characters behaved or reacted in unpredictable ways.

The characters were despicable and their motivations and desires were disturbing. Their lives were sad and full of despair. This is not a book you feel happy after reading.  However, I could not put it down nor leave it on the shelf after starting.  I had to keep reading to see where the plot took the characters and how the story resolved itself.

I stayed with it and I’m glad I did, even though it is not to my taste (too dark) it was worth reading.  I can see why it was so well reviewed.  It was good literature.


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Tell The Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a special book, one you’ll remember long after you have finished the last page.  It is not marketed directly to YA but easily will delight and inspire young readers.
It's 1987, and awkward 14-year-old June's favorite person in the world, her Uncle Finn, has just died of AIDS. Finn leaves her a message asking her to take care of his longtime partner Toby, whom June’s family blames for Finn’s illness. At first cautiously, then enthusiastically, June tries to fulfill Finn’s wishes, and discovers complicated parts of her family history that she’d rather not have learned.
We are witnesses to June’s dreams and insecurities. She searches for answers on how to heal her rocky relationship with her sister Greta; how to be the person Finn thought she could be; how to understand her parents; and how to recover from a broken heart.
The characters’ relationships are exquisitely complex and real.  The writing is descriptive to the point that you can feel June’s aches. This novel is full of emotion so have your tissues ready.


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Without Tess by Marcella Pixley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lizzie watched her sister slowly deteriorate and die.  Tess promised to never leave, but she still died.  
After Tess died, Lizzie snatched Tess's Journal and has clung to it and the memories it holds ever since.  She often reminisces about the good times and getting pulled in to Tess's magical make-believe world.  Lizzie was too young to realize how dangerous Tess’s magical world could be.
Now Lizzie is in high school and lost in a world of guilt and grief.
How can Lizzie make peace with what happened to Tess?  Can she start to live her own life?


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For The Win by Cory Doctorow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On-line gamers beware!
Millions of people around the world addictively play in multiplayer online games, battling to win virtual gold, jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, millions of “gold farmers” slave in electronic sweatshops harvesting virtual treasure that their employers then sell to First World gamers for real money.

But unrest brews across the globe as slave gamers unite to create a union that challenges the status quo. From the US to China to India, young gamers fight pitched battles in the virtual world.   Their aim: crash the economy of every virtual world and win their emancipation.


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http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10794589-life" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px">http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320463268m/10794589.jpg" />Life'>http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10794589-life">Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal'>http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/200052.Mal_Peet">Mal Peet

My rating: 3'>http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/355406900">3 of 5 stars


Life : an exploded diagram
By Mal Peet

Forbidden love
Class barriers
Politics
War
Environmentalism
Some major explosions, both literal and not.

This book has them all.  A story that spans generations set against a backdrop of war and global politics. It describes minute facets of the characters lives in intimate, colorful and satisfying detail. Clem came, a “wartime mishap,” whose birth was brought on by a German air raid over rural England is smart and has a gift for drawing. He attends school on scholarship which brands him as trying to “get Above Yerself.”.  Clem falls in love with Frankie, the daughter of a wealthy man. Both know this romance can go nowhere but they become deeply involved.
Mr. Peet’s narrative drips with sentimentalism about the past; it’s full of delightful colloquialisms and humorous anecdotes. For example, imagine Clem trying to find out about sex through Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Mr. Peet depicts the uncertainty of both young love and of the nuclear threats of the time.
Does love conquer all and win out in the end?




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Virtuosity by Jessica Martinez
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Virtuosity is all about addiction. Addiction to music, winning, competition, drugs, winning, forbidden romance, winning, violin, and did I mention WINNING?
Carmen and Jeremy are preparing for the biggest violin competition in their lives. To win means assured fame and fortune; to lose means the virtual end of your violin career.
Carmen and Jeremy are the favorites to win. They are competing directly against each other and they are both addicted to WINNING. However, they have a huge crush on each other. The competition brings anxiety, tension, disappointment, frustration, fear of failure; when you start praying to break a leg or some catastrophe so you can get out of this situation.

Despite the interference of an annoying controlling mother, Carmen’ struggles to succeed without her anti-anxiety drugs but can she succeed

It doesn’t go at all the way you’d expect. Wait for the ending and the aftermath.


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Six at the Table: Take the 70s, Add Family and Mix Well by Sheila Maher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This could have been written about me!  It brought back such memories : Curly-Wurlys, the excitement of a bottle of pop (rare occurrence), being so self-conscious at school, Teddy's ice-cream (my absolute favorite.  I enjoyed my memories as they were revived through reading the book.



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The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I knew how it would end right from the start.  Stereotypical - handsome, intelligent, empathic hero meets beautiful, hardworking super(single)-mom and voila! The chapters from Keith's perspective were interesting and it can't be faulted as a beach read.



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The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us by Tanya Lee Stone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whether we love her or hate her, we all know her.  Barbie : destructive role model or just a toy?
A brief survey of Barbie, from concept to development and then we follow her changes and how she relates to girls through the years.  The author discusses the Barbie quandary – is she a positive or negative influence on her owners?
Through plenty of photos we see Barbie’s different roles through the ages as she graduates from nurse to surgeon, stewardess to pilot.  Her development mirrors society.  And Barbie is not just an American phenomenon; she is world-wide and her different facial and body images are documented.
A fast and captivating read for anyone.  Makes you want to resurrect all those Barbies you once owned. Oh wait, I cut her hair and I’m sure I lost her clothes too.


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Redwall by Brian Jacques
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had to read this for my book club. I would never have picked it up if not for the club.  I don't plan on reading any others.  It is well written.  But I am shocked to think of it as written for tween.  It is so violent, and graphically violent to little animals.  If I had read this when I was 10 I would have been devastated.


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I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Ed Kennedy is an underage cab driver, pathetic at cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend Audrey, and devoted to the Doorman, his old and incredibly smelly dog. He doesn’t have a lot of prospects: he works, plays cards and ….. well, that’s it really.

Until the failed bank robbery ….

Until the envelope arrives in the mail…..



Here is

A book about hope

A book about caring

A book about a messenger

A book that is a message





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Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A book about bullying.
A book about the effects of steroids.
A book about losing your humanity.
A book about facing fears and doing the right thing.

Football is king at Oregrove High School.
And the best players think they are privileged and beyond the rules that bind everyone else. Nothing pleases these self-proclaimed kings more than to target the weak.

The bullying becomes progressively more violent over time. 

Who is brave enough to do the right thing and show these thugs up for what they truly are? 

Soon a despicable act lays the foundation for right against wrong, decency over depravity, and freedom over victimization. 




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First Date by Krista McGee

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


This started off promising to be an entertaining read.  The idea was good and the dialog moved the story along.  But after week two of the competition the plot twists became too contrived and lost their reality for me.  I won't go into details as that would spoil if for others.  I'm willing to suspend my beliefs but only so far.
It also became too preach-y which turned me off.  I liked the Christian aspect until it became all consuming.



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Trapped by Michael Northrop

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Here is a cross between Breakfast Club and Assault on Precinct 13 and it has all the drama and suspense of each film.

A blizzard stalls over New England resulting in the worst storm in living memory. The high school closes early but not everyone leaves.

“There was a little circle of people in the hallway outside the gym when we arrived: four kids and one teacher, all standing near the double doors.  It looked like a field trip just beginning to assemble.  The three of us joined the group, bring the total to eight.  That was the most there would ever be.  From here on out, the number would only go down.” (pg 34.)

What happens at the school as the heat and power fails and the snow keeps piling up?





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The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a cancer book.
But a cancer book with a difference.
The Fault in Our Stars is not about living with cancer, even though that is the book’s plot. It’s about living. It’s about creating genuine relationships and opening ourselves to others and finding love, and laughing hard and often, even in the face of death.
What the characters express is an understanding that it is up to each of us to shape the story of our lives.
I expected gratuitous smaltz, super-heroic teens and troubled parents who disintegrated under the pressure of a sick child. That is not what happened.

I knew how the book was going to end. I was prepared: but I still cried even though I told myself it was fiction, and I should get-a-grip.  These characters are real.

The main characters’ feelings are very teenagery even if their dialog is sometimes more advanced than the normal teens’
You will fall in love with Gus and Hazel and Isaac. You will ache for the teenagers and their unfair lot in life, and you will ache for the parents as they do their best for their children.

Hazel and Gus may have faults in their lives but they get love right.

The Fault in Our Stars has received positive reviews from critics. The New York Times' review of the book "stays the course of tragic realism", while noting that the book's unpleasant plot details "do nothing to diminish the romance". Time called The Fault in Our Stars "damn near genius."Entertainment Weekly wrote, "[Augustus and Hazel's] love story is as real as it is doomed, and the gut-busting laughs that come early in the novel make the luminous final pages all the more heartbreaking".




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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Oskar is a highly intelligent 9-year old boy. Despite his intelligence that gives him a better understanding of the physical and historical aspects of the world, Oskar retains the emotions, confusion, and exasperation of a 9-year old. Oskar lost his father in the 9/11 attack. Oskar carries a secret he hasn't shared with anybody else. He was sent home from school soon after the attacks on 9/11 and was the first one home. There he found five messages from his father calling from one of the World Trade Towers on the answering machine, and he replaced the phone and kept the messages to himself. He finds a key in a vase when searching through his father's closet. This key sets Oskar off on a quest to find the story behind it, to find the secret that his father kept, in hopes that it would help him understand his dad better.
The story is one of loss and trying to understand loss.  The story of Oskar's grandparents runs parallel showing that loss and heartache is ever-present and for many not understandable.
I found the novel a chore to read.  I do not like the author's style of dialog where there is no line break between speakers. I think the story would have been stronger if kept to Oskar's actions.  He is a likable, real character and the grandparent's story cluttered his narrative.



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Pandora's Key: The Key Trilogy, Book One by Nancy Richardson Fischer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Don't let a cover turn you off a book.  I did - and it was a mistake.  This cover seemed amateur to me and so the book occupied my 'to-read' shelve for a good while.  Then I saw a review which was very positive and took the plunge, telling myself that I would give it a chance for two or three chapters anyway.

Well I couldn't put it down.  The characters are very endearing mainly because they appear so real - full of selfishness and worries.

I enjoyed the dual story lines that ran parallel building the story, until WHAM! they collide when you least expect them to.

This is a page turner, a suspense-fantasy-thriller rolled into one.


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