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In: Action & Adventure (YA), Romance (YA), Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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A couple of weeks ago we saw “her“, the Spike Jonze film about the lonely man who develops romantic feelings for his artificially intelligent operating system.  I thought that one of the most fascinating aspects of the film was how the OS, who calls herself Samantha, grew from the basic program that Theodore bought into a complicated, dynamic, interesting, and fully-actualized “person.”  Questions of physicality aside, witnessing Samantha’s evolution beyond her original programming was like watching any human being discover, adapt, learn, and become who they are meant to be. As I was thinking about Samantha (and her relationship with her world and Theodore), myRead More →

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In: Arizona Authors, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Realistic Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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How do you become a man when you don’t have a man in your life?  What does it mean if your father left you and your mom?  Or worse, was never in your life to begin with?  In Dead Ends, the second book by Arizona author Erin Jade Lange,  the question of fathers and the legacies they leave to their children unites unlikely friends on a journey of discovery, healing, and transformation. In his high school, there are the “haves” and the “have-nots”, and Dane Washington is a “have not”.  What Dane does have, however, is a fierce temper and the power to back itRead More →

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What would you do if you had a problem so large, so immensely and terrible, you just couldn’t bring yourself to face it? Would you want run away from it or deal with it head on? Kendra is in deep trouble and she is anxiously pinioned, unable to decide whether to fight or fly. She’s been cheating for months and someone has finally caught her. She panics, just as her older brother, Grayson, is returning home from rehabilitation. In her despair, she superimposes her problems onto him, believing she can somehow ameliorate her situation by fixing her brother’s obsessive compulsive behavior. With this in mind,Read More →