By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Sci Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

More questions than answers. At the end of the book, that’s what I’m left with.  Who are SYLO? What is The Ruby?  What are those strange flying ships? Why is Pemberwick Island under quarantine? Who are all the people suddenly on the island?  What do Tucker’s parents know that they aren’t telling him?  What happened on the mainland?  Is there anyone Tucker can trust? Every single time you think you’ve figured something out, another mystery appears, confounding, frustrating, and driving you on in the vain hope that you can have at least one answer before the end.  But it is not to be.  Both theRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Elementary Book Reviews, Historical Fiction, Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense
With: 0 Comments

In a word, “delightful!” I actually can’t stop raving to whomever will listen to me about Newbery Medalist Cynthia Voigt‘s Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things.  The first book in a new trilogy for middle readers, this book enchanted me from page one – its captivating story, chock full of mysteries large and small; smart, likeable characters; detailed and delicate pencil drawings from Iacopo Bruno; and beautifully rendered historical details – it’s everything I love in a book and more. 12 year old Max Starling’s parents are famous actors and they’ve been invited to India by the Maharajah of Kashmir himself, with two firstRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Sci Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Early on in James Dashner‘s newest The Eye of the Minds, I jotted down: “Matrix“;  then a little later, “The Maze Runner,” and finally “The Truman Show.”  Dashner combines these and more pop culture influences in an imaginative, if not a wholly original, way to create a world within a world full of shadows, illusions, and shifting realities. VirtNet is an all-immersive virtual reality game.  After physically connecting to the interface, a player climbs into a “coffin,” the gateway into the VirtNet that induces a sleeplike state that keeps the player in suspended animation while inside the game.  Everything about Virtnet is programmed to beRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Elementary Book Reviews, Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Mystery & Suspense, Sports, Supernatural & Horror
With: 0 Comments

Ok, I am so glad to be a vegetarian.  All those terrible things that I could imagine happening at massive feedlots, huge industrial slaughterhouses, and behind the guise of corporate “farming”, happen in Paolo Bacigalupi’s nightmarish comedy Zombie Baseball Beatdown.  Milrow Meat Solutions processes enough beef to feed people in seven states, which means acres and acres of cows packed into feedlots in filth and excrement up to their bellies, a plant the size of a small city that employs vast quantities of undocumented workers who, for 24 hours a day, race to process thousands upon thousands of cuts of beef, and a research andRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Elementary Book Reviews, Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Mystery & Suspense, Sports
With: 0 Comments

The story of Sasquatch in the Paint, written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld, is one that the majority of us can relate to. We were all once that awkward kid in junior high trying to find a place to fit in, whether it was a position in the status quo or not, we all just wanted to have friends to sit with at lunch. In the seventh grade Theo had thought that he would forever be one of the nerds on campus, he and his best friend Brian had recently joined the Brain Train and could not be happier. The Brain Train was aRead More →

By:
On:
In: Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Romance (YA), Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

A tale of star crossed lovers of a different sort unfolds in Page Morgan’s The Beautiful and The Cursed. The story takes place in 1890’s Paris, France, a time where royals ruled the world. Lady Charlotte moves her daughters, Lady Ingrid and Lady Gabriella, from an English mansion to a French abbey she plans to remodel into an art gallery. Her son, Lord Fairfax, was sent to France two months earlier to scout out the location. The move could not have come at a better time for Lady Ingrid. Her reputation in London had taken a nosedive when she accidentally set her friend’s home onRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Elementary Book Reviews, Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Supernatural & Horror
With: 0 Comments

I love a good, spine-tingling mystery.  Smart detectives, heart-pumping tension, dark and spooky locales, they’re all it takes for me to get lost for hours.  And I especially love it when the plot is so well constructed  it weaves in and out on itself, and is chock full of false clues, hidden gems, and tiny, realistic details that sparkle and pop like a faulty flashlight on a pitch-black night.  So imagine my thrill as I was drawn into The Screaming Staircase, the first book in New York Times best-selling author of the Bartimaeus series Jonathan Stroud‘s, new series Lockwood & Co. For the past fifty years,Read More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Realistic Fiction, Realistic Fiction (YA), Sports, Sports (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

In Foul Trouble, veteran sports journalist and best-selling novelist, John Feinstein, takes an unflinching look at the cut-throat process of collegiate recruiting top student talent.  Feinstein pulls back the curtain to reveal a shadow world that is rarely seen by the general sports fan and it’s not a very pretty:  a subculture packed with unscrupulous people who latch onto these young athletes hoping to make millions on the kids’ talents; high stakes ultimatums and heavy amounts of pressure to go with the “highest bidder” even if its against NCAA rules and one’s own better judgment; and a dizzy array of media attention, drugs, swag, andRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Sci Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Creative narration, as it colors perspective, can add to a book’s appeal.  Just as Death narrates Markus Zuzak’s The Book Thief, which offers a perspective on the Jewish holocaust, and God narrates Alan Lightman’s Mr. g, a hypothesis about the universe’s creation, the ghost of Jacob Grimm narrates Tom McNeal’s new book, Far Far Away. Although the story doesn’t begin “once upon a time” or “in a land far, far away,” McNeal’s recent release is a fairy tale. Set in the parochial village, Never Better, Far Far Away features heroes and heroines, villains and ogres, horrors and cruelties, as well as lessons for and truthsRead More →