Summer '17 Book 19

How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather

It is no secret that I am incredibly fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials. Even better is when you get to read a work of fiction written by a descendant of someone involved with the trials. In this case, the author is a descendant of Cotton Mather, who wrote materials on how to determine if someone was a witch or not.

This has been described as Mean Girls meets the Salem Witch Trials, and that is not so far from the truth, except this time it is the descendants of the accused witches who are the bullies.

Samantha Mather has spent most of her life in New York City with her father and stepmother, Vivian. Recently, Sam's father fell into a coma, and he was being moved to a hospital in Boston because it was too expensive to keep living in New York with the bills mounting up. So, Sam and Vivian move to Sam's deceased grandmother's house in Salem to be closer to her father.

Things don't go so great for Sam. In the first week of school, she has earned the enmity of The Descendants--the girls and guy who are descended from the accused witches--because she is a Mather, who was partly to blame for the Witch Trials. It doesn't help that people started dying when Sam came to town.

As it turns out, there is a curse that rears its ugly head when ALL of the descendants of those involved with the Trials are in Salem. With the help of a spirit named Elijah, Sam seeks to break the curse.

I am not going further than that, but there are some interesting twists in this novel. The ending was a little bit of a surprise, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I just really loved this one, and hope that there are more like this in the future.

Summer '17 Book 18

Love and First Sight by Josh Sundquist

I decided to read this because I loved his nonfiction work We Should Hang Out Sometime. This book is his first novel, and it is phenomenal!

Will is sixteen, and starting a new high school. And while that is a big deal for anybody, it's an especially big deal for Will because he is blind. Like, has never seen anything so he has no frame of reference for anything when people try to describe things to him.

On his first day, he accidentally gropes a girl on the stairwell, sits on someone and makes a girl cry. The person he sits on actually invites Will to join him and his friends at lunch, so Will makes some friends his first day. The girl he makes cry, may be the girl of his dreams.

So, Will is given this opportunity for an experimental surgery that could give him sight. He chooses to have the surgery, and begins to experience having sight for the first time. He also discovers that he has been mislead by everyone about what the girl of his dreams looks like. Really, looks don't matter, but he is more upset that everyone felt they had to hide it as if looks matter. Will and the girl have a fight, and he wants, though weeks later, to remedy things, she's not at school. Will and his friends end up driving halfway across the country to find her.

Will she accept Will's apology? Will they become an item? Read and find out.

I just want to mention what I really like about this book: it forces you to see things from the perspective of someone who has never seen anything. I might never considered things from the perspective of a blind person, and having read this, I would like to believe I would be more empathetic.

Summer '17 Book 17

The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord

I came across this a few weeks ago in the meager book section of my local Target, and when I read the back cover it sounded cute. It was.

Paige is starting her junior year of high school. She wants things to be different because for the last year, she has been The Girl Whose Boyfriend Died. They hadn't dated all that long, but his tragic drowning death affected her greatly. She found it difficult to move on, and to swim.

The day before school starts, Paige runs into Ryan, who she has had a crush on forever. She makes a list of things she wants to accomplish this year, and one of those things is to date. Specifically, to date Ryan. Although they became good friends, dating was not in the cards for them.

This, as it turns out, is ok because Paige and Ryan's cousin, Max, are kinda perfect for each other. Unfortunately, they hurt each other fairly deeply right before Spring Break, and things aren't quite the same for the rest of the year. Do they fix things and end up together? Do they fix things and go their separate ways? Read this; I promise it will be worth it to find out the answers to these questions.

Summer '17 Book 16

The Merciless II: The Exorcism of Sofia Flores by Danielle Vega

Ok, so I read the first book in this series about seven months ago, and although this was out then, I was waiting to get it in paperback. I hate paying big bucks for hardbacks when it will likely only take a couple of hours to read. All told, this one didn't take long, much like its predecessor.

This one picks up roughly six months after the events in the first book. Everyone on Sofia's block is moving away because no one wants to live near the murder house. Sofia herself is battling anxiety because they never found Brooklyn, and she thinks Brooklyn is out to get her. Sofia is having one such attack and calls her mother. It's Thanksgiving, and her mother is working, but trying to get off early to be with Sofia. Sofia has some hallucinations and then blacks out. She is awakened by someone knocking on the front door. It's a police officer who has come to tell Sofia that her mother was killed in a car accident.

As Sofia is not yet eighteen, she cannot live by herself, and because her grandmother can't even take care of herself, she can't take care of Sofia too. Her only option, really, is to go to a Catholic boarding school a couple of hours away. Once there, she becomes friends with her roommates, Leena and Sutton. Leena has a forbidden pet rabbit and a crush on one of the altar boys, Jude. The problem is, Sofia can't stand the rabbit and has her own crush on Jude.

Then things start to happen...Leena breaks her leg during a rehearsal for the school play. Then the rabbit dies. Leena sees Jude getting a little too close to Sofia, and dies in a fire that night. These events convince Sofia that she has a demon attached to her somehow. She tells this to Jude, who tries to exorcise the demon himself. Things go downhill from there.

There's a third book in this series, so I will likely end up reading it, just for closure. While this installment was ok, it was nowhere near as riveting as the first book.

Summer '17 Book 15

The Cabin by Natasha Preston

This is the third book I have read by this author, and by far, the best. The Cellar had potential to be a good read, but I felt it dragged, and Awake was just lacking overall. This, however, was good.

Summer is almost over for Mackenzie and her friends, and they are all going to a cabin that belongs to the boyfriend of Kenzie's best friend, Courtney, for the weekend. It's to be a last hurrah before they all head off to university. there was a lot of drinking going on, and Kenzie has a one night stand with the brother of Courtney's boyfriend.

The next morning, Makenzie and Blake go downstairs for breakfast and make an unsettling discovery: Courtney and her boyfriend, Josh, have been murdered. Stabbed to death. Worse, it had to be one of those in the house who committed the crime. Makenzie doesn't want to believe that her closest friends could have killed their other friends, but she also doesn't believe Blake did it, even though everyone else does.

It becomes an obsession with Makenzie to find out who killed her friends. Between Blake and herself, they uncover who committed the crime--or do they? Twists right up to the end in this book.

Summer '17 Book 14

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

I started this a few weeks ago in one of my professional development classes when we were determining our reading rate. Before I started something new, I thought it would be a good idea to finish this. I am so glad I did.

The book starts out a few days before Christmas with Dash, a teen boy, in the Strand bookstore in New York City. As he is perusing the stacks in the search for reading material, he comes across a red, moleskin journal. In it is the beginnings of a little scavenger hunt. If, after the third (or was it fourth?) mission, if he chooses to continue the correspondence, Dash is to give the journal to the guy behind the register with a mission of his own.

Enter Lily, who is a bit of a loner. It was her brother who wrote the missions in the journal in order for Lily to find a companion. Lily and Dash trade the journal back and forth, completing each other's missions, and getting to know the best parts of each other. Dash puts it into perspective at one point when he says that maybe they shouldn't meet because what if they don't live up to each other's expectations.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked seeing what Dash thought of Lily and vice versa. I also really loved that I have been to some of the places in the book, which is a new piece of awesomeness for me. I can't wait until I get a chance to read the next Dash and Lily book, which takes place a year after this one.

Summer '17 Book 13

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

I came across this at Target a few weeks ago. Despite not having much of a book section yet, this one stood out. I read the back, checked the price, and thought "Why not?" Really glad I did on this one. With the exception of the first twenty-four pages, I read the whole thing today. It's one of those that keeps you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end, and you don't want to put it away. At least that's how it was for me.

Anne and Marco have a six-month-old infant named Cora. They were asked over to the neighbor's house for a small get-together. The hostess said no children allowed, and the babysitter had to cancel at the last minute. Anne wanted to stay home, but Marco insisted that the baby would be ok, and they would check on her every half hour. Besides, they had the baby monitor-- what could possibly happen?

Yes, what indeed. As it turns out, baby Cora is kidnapped from her crib.

Anne's rich parents blame Marco. Anne blames Marco because he insisted they go to the party. Is the baby dead? Alive? Then they get a ransom letter. Marco goes to take the ransom money and collect his daughter, but someone takes off with the money, and he doesn't get his daughter.

As the story unfolds, you find that it really could be anyone who took the baby. Even though they pretty much spell out what happened to Cora the night she was kidnapped halfway through the book, there are still so many twists and turns that it makes you wonder if that is really what happened.

This was a fantastic read, much like everything Gillian Flynn has written. It would be totally boss if this were made into a movie, assuming it was cast well.

Summer '17 Book 12

The Circus by Olive Levez

This came in my special edition, Circus Freak Lit-Cube. I so wanted to like this book, but I would be lying if I said I did.

Willow is a seventeen-year-old girl. She lives with her wealthy father when she is not away at boarding school. She has a history of running away for attention because her father is one of those who buys her things, but doesn't give her the one thing she wants: time with him.

At the beginning of the book, Willow is planning to run away. It is her father's wedding day, and he is marrying his personal assistant who is half his age. Willow, being a snoop, found out that her future stepmother is pregnant, so she feels that her father will have even less to do with her than he already does.

Willow leaves before the ceremony, but not before she cuts the buttons off the wedding dress. She hitches a ride, and catches a train to Hastings. She has it in her head that she will join the circus. She also hopes that by doing this, she will find her mother, a circus performer, who left when Willow was very small.

Things don't go so well for Willow. She winds up with a girl named Suz who steals all her money. She finds Suz later, and befriends her. Suz teaches Willow how to be a fire-eater and juggler, which ultimately lands Willow a job with a small circus.

All the while, she keeps seeing herself on the tv and in the newspaper. She's been gone for quite a while and her father is pulling out all the stops to get her back. Willow doesn't feel she can ever go back.

Here's why I didn't like the book: Willow is too whiny. Oh no, she has a shitty father. Oh no, she's going to have a younger sibling. Boo freaking hoo. That's life. At seventeen, she should know that life sometimes sucks.

Summer '17 Book 11

This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

I took time off from the book I was reading (which will be the next one I blog) because this finally became available on Overdrive. This was a contender for the TAYSHAS list this year, but did not make it. Still, I have been trying to get my hands on it, so it was not a big deal to put aside another one to read this one.

This is about a school shooting, and it is told by four people over the course of fifty-five minutes. One of the people telling the story is the sister of the shooter. One is her girlfriend. Another is the girlfriend's twin, and the last is a girl who is on the outside when it happens.

Every year at the beginning of the second semester at Opportunity High School, the principal holds an assembly at ten o'clock. Everyone knows this, and everyone is expected to be there. Claire isn't there because she is training for track with the rest of the track team and the track coach. Tomas isn't there because he is breaking into the principal's office with Fareed, trying to find out what the deal is with Tyler Brown, and why he is coming back to school after dropping out. Autumn and Sylvia are in the auditorium, listening to the principal. Autumn is wondering where her brother, Tyler, is because he is supposed to be coming back to finish his senior year. Sylvia is just relieved that Tyler isn't there because he has done some not so nice things to Sylvia.

Then Tyler shows up in the auditorium with guns and ammo and starts shooting. He's locked all of the doors so no one can escape. Claire and the track team hear the shots and run, quite literally, for help. Tomas and Fareed hear the shots and call 9-1-1. Sylvia and Autumn watch helplessly as their fellow schoolmates are shot down.

These four voices tell the story of what's going on from both outside the auditorium and in, and the reader can see what was done to try to save the students as well as the madness that was taking them out.

This is not the first book I have read about a school shooting. If you've read my blog enough, you know this. Although I did appreciate seeing this from four different perspectives and the timeline that things happened, it wasn't told as well as Silent Alarm or The Hate List. This wasn't bad, but I didn't like it as well as the others. Not that one should necessarily "like" a book about school shootings.

Summer '17 Book 10

I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives by Caitlin Alifrenka and Martin Ganda with Liz Welch

I was introduced to this book during a book talk that one of the instructional specialists presented in a readers writers workshop class I took. As she was discussing the book, I was moved, so I bought it. This is nonfiction, which is not something I usually read, unless it's one of the Tudor biographies I enjoy. This doesn't read like typical nonfiction though; it reads like a novel.

As the title implies, this is written by two people, Caitlin and Martin, who are introduced as young teens through a classroom penpal project. Caitlin lives in Pennsylvania and Martin lives in Zimbabwe, and come from very different worlds. As to be expected, Martin's family is not well off. Their family of seven lives in half of a one room hut. The kids each have one school uniform apiece and one outfit apiece. Caitlin comes from a middle class family, so going to the mall and buying more clothes than one actually need is the norm.

Over the course of their correspondence, Caitlin discovers just how bad things are for Martin. He was kicked out of school a couple of times because his family couldn't pay his tuition, which was only about $20 of American money. Caitlin and her family became his family's benefactors so that the children were all able to go to school, eat, stay in their hut, and not have to worry so much about surviving.

On Caitlin's side, the correspondence gave her more empathy about people in other parts of the world, as well as here in the States. As she and her family help Martin and his family, you can see how she grows more aware of the world, which is something more young people need these days.

I so enjoyed this book. There were several times that I was brought nearly to tears, both tears of sadness and tears of joy.