Genre: Mystery

Nemesis

The Anvil, an enormous asteroid, threatens the earth is about to devastate the world. But Min has bigger problems. Min has died – again. Every two years since she was eight, a man in a suit finds her and kills her. Where ever she hides, he finds her. After her death, she always wakes up in the same clearing in the forest outside her small Idaho town. When she returns from her disappearances, no one believes her story and there is no evidence. This year when Min is murdered, she goes on a mission to discover why.

Terrifying dreams of death haunt Noah. Anxiety is his only true friend. Noah tries to hide that he is different by blending in, going along with what others say. When Noah discovers that he has been lied to and his dreams were in fact reality, he vows to be brave and search for the truth.

When the military arrives just out of town, Min and her best friend Tack make an uneasy alliance with Noah. Although they do not fully trust each other, they are determined to find out what has been happening to them. They go on a search to discover the answers to the questions that plague them.

Told from both Min’s and Noah’s perspectives, Nemesis starts with a suspenseful story of Min being murdered and coming back to life. The reader is instantly drawn into Min’s mystery. With detailed descriptions of events, the reader can step into Min’s shoes and understand her feelings. Suspense will grip the reader, who will be surprised by the events in the story.

Nemesis brings the stereotypical high school to life, with the typical cliché groups. The language in the book is a bit over the top, with most of the characters constantly spouting a plethora of cuss words. The ending of the book is similar to Lord of the Flies and just as violent. In the end, a computer simulation talks about saving humanity, but the majority of the characters are so unlikeable the reader wonders if humanity should be saved at all.

Sexual Content

  • While with a boy Min imagines, “leaning forward and kissing him.”
  • Min and Noah kiss several times. They fall asleep on a couch and wake up next to each other. Noah, “buried my face in her neck. Our lips met again, and for a while all other thoughts fled.”

Violence

  • Two boys fight at school. Ethan slugged “Tack full in the face. . . Tack dropped to the ground like a boneless chicken breast.”
  • Min and Tack put an oily rag into a Jeep’s gas tank and then set it on fire.
  • Several natural disasters happen throughout the world during a short time period. The events are described on the news.
  • In order to save a boy’s life, the sheriff kills a soldier. “He was lying face down on the ground, a dark puddle spreading beneath him.” As the kids run, shots ring out and they know the sheriff had been shot.
  • A group of men blows up a bridge. When they attempt to surrender, soldiers shoot them. “A line of bullets tore through the liberty men, cutting them in half. They feel in a bloody mass, each body pierced a dozen times.”
  • Tack kicks a soldier “in the crotch. The man dropped, writhing in pain.” The guards wrestle Tack to the ground. “Tack bucking and snarling like a wild animal until one of them struck him on the head with a rifle butt.”
  • Soldiers are rounding up a group of teenagers. Some of the teens resist and there is a scuffle. One of the parents tries to fight the soldiers and they shoot him. “Wendell dropped to his knees, then toppled forward and lay still.”
  • The military sprays a group of teens with a “thin green mist.” The reaction of the teens as they die is mixed. “Classmates writhed on the ground, tears and mucus coating their faces. The agony was unbearable—a burning, stinging horror that tore at the skin.” One of the commanders watching shots himself in the head.
  • When Tack confronts the leader and won’t follow orders, he is stabbed in the heart. Another boy who confronts the leader is killed. “Toby strode to where Benny knelt. Shaking his head, he put a gun to Benny’s temple and pulled the trigger. . . Benny slumped to the ground, a red mess where is head had been . . . Tucker stared at the fistful of hair still clutched in his fingers, then dropped it as if burned.”
  • In order to break Min out of jail, Noah attacks the guard. “Noah kicked him in the face, snapping his head back. Toby crumpled against the wall and lay still.”
  • Hector kills himself by jumping into a canyon. Hector believed he was already dead and was in purgatory.
  • When Min is eight she is murdered. She wanders off with a man, who she thinks is her mom’s friend, and he pushes her into a ravine.
  • A man murders Min multiple times throughout the book. When she is shot, she “tumbled to the floor, struggling to breathe, blood bubbling on my lips as I stared up at the drab fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Pain tingled everything red. . . Liquid was filling my mouth, hot and wet. The hole in my chest burned like a sliver of the sun.”
  • One time when Min was killed, she is chased through the woods. She falls and is barely hanging on the side of a cliff. “A shiny black boot smashed down on my fingers. I gasp in pain as my left hand loses its grip. I swing wildly, on the verge of plummeting to the white water belong. . . A foot stomps on my right hand. Snapping bones. A rush of air. Then I’m underwater, tumbling and spinning. Liquid fills my nose. My mouth. My ears. Something slams into my side, and ropes of agony shoot down my left arm. . . Pain explodes at my temple. I see and feel nothing more.”
  • Another time Min is killed when a man hits her with a car.
  • As Min tries to flee her killer, he finds her on the side of a cliff. He throws rocks at her until she plummets “to the boulders below. I land on my back and something snaps.” He then smashes her with a large stone.
  • Noah is murdered when a man stabs him. “The A spike on agony . . . blood pumps onto the pavement. Slides down the hill. Cold. Blackness. Nothing.”
  • Noah is murdered when a man cracks his skull.  “My head caved in! But I didn’t’ die right away. I struggled, by my arms wouldn’t move. Then he hit me again!”
  • When Noah is in the bathtub, the man puts a black metal rod into the water and electrocutes him.
  • Noah is on the lake in a skiff when a boat hits him. Noah tries to swim but his left leg is missing and he drowns.
  • Noah shoots Min. “There was a smoking hole in my chest. . . Tack was screaming, his clothes spattered in red.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Drinking is mentioned several times, although none of the teens are seen consuming alcohol. One character said the guys would get “Neanderthal drunk.”  Another time, Min talks about someone who, “spends most nights outside by his fire pit, drunk off his ass.”
  • Several of the adults drink alcohol, which is revealed in the descriptions. “Mom had put away the photo albums and washed her scotch glass . . . She rarely drinks, and never more than one. But she’d refilled her glass several times . . . “ ”
  • A character has to step over two adults who drunk themselves into a stupor and then fell asleep by their fire pit.
  • After getting in a fight, tack takes Advil.
  • Tack’s father is a drunk who hits his son.
  • Noah’s father is absent for the entire story. Noah thinks his father is, “busy getting loaded in another hemisphere.” Later in the story, Noah tells his psychiatrist that his dad drank a lot after he divorced his wife.
  • A psychiatrist gives two of the characters “little blue pills” to take daily. Neither character is sure what the pills are for, but when Noah is anxious he, “wanted a blue pill in the worst way.”
  • One of the characters takes his friend’s ADHD medication.

Language

  • Holy crap, crap, damn, ass, hell, prick, jackass, bastard, goddamn, piss
  • When a min shoots Min, she “carefully extended my middle finger” and told him to “go to hell.”
  • When thinking about the man who keeps killing her, Min thinks, “Wouldn’t let the evil bastard’s shadow every moment of my life.”
  • When describing a boy, Min thinks his face, “was gorgeous until you realized what a prick he was.”
  • Tack calls other people names including, “jackass, asshole, douchebag.” He tells one boy, “everyone here thinks you’re dumber than crap, I’m the only one willing to say it. None of these people like you, Ethan. You’re a loser and a fraud, just a redneck piece of trash like me. Kill yourself.”
  • Noah said his dad was a “drunk a-hole.”
  • One of the characters thinks, “Why am I so worthless? God, I hate myself.”
  • A parent spits at a soldier and tells him, “Piss on you and your threats. I know my rights, sunshine soldier.”
  • Someone accuses Noah of hiding behind a “skank’s skirt.”
  • When Min finds the man who has been murdering her, she calls him a “bastard,” and a “son of a bitch.”

Supernatural

  • When the world was destroyed, everyone died. “Though your bodies died, the program successfully preserved sixty-four electro-chemical blueprints. These were uploaded into the mainframe on Day Minus-Four after final measurements were taken. You now exist as autonomous lines of code within the MegaCom master program . . . You still must eat and drink. You must shelter from weather, and avoid hazards. You can be injured. You can be killed”

Spiritual Content

  • When the news is announced that the Earth will not be smashed by an asteroid, Melinda’s mom said “Praise God. . . God is good. Everything is going to be okay.”
  • When the natural disasters begin, Min’s Mom mumbled about “God’s judgement.”
  • Hector, a minor character, is the leader of the youth group. When the students are gassed and come back to life, he thinks he is in purgatory. He explains that purgatory is, “a holding place. Somewhere you’re judged. And tested.” After he jumps off a canyon wall, dies, and comes back to life, Hector said, “God isn’t down with me. It was stupid for me to think I was in control. I won’t defy him again.”

If Only You Knew

Summer love isn’t supposed to be complicated. But then Joe meets two great-looking guys on the same day, and her life gets complicated fast. One guy makes her heart skip a beat, but can he be trusted? The other guy is trustworthy and totally outrageous, but is he still hung up on his crazy ex-girlfriend? With both guys demanding her attention, Jo’s not sure who to trust with her heart.

Then in a strange turn of events, someone begins stalking Jo, and she wonders if it’s connected to the horrible accident she witnessed last summer. With her life in danger, she’s not sure who she can trust. And to make matters worse, she has no job, no future plans, and no idea what her next steps should be.

At the beginning of the book, Jo’s story is slow-paced. However, suspense is added when Jo tries to solve the mystery of the accident she witnessed. Jo is a loveable character who many teens will be able to relate to—she is confused about life, love, and her place in this world. The ending leaves the reader with a surprising, sweet, and satisfactory conclusion.

Some readers may be turned off when the pastor in the book spends two to three pages preaching about the Bible. However, the characters in the book do not come off as preachy, perfect people, but as regular people—some who have a firm belief in God, and others who question God’s motives.

Sexual Content 

  • There is some kissing between Joe and her boyfriend. The scenes do not go into much detail. For example, “All I know is that somehow out lips found each other and in that instant everything else in the world disappeared and all I knew was that Sam’s mouth was on mine.”

Violence 

  • In one scene, two men try to hurt Jo and her friends with a baseball bat. Then the two men chase them with a vehicle and ram them off the road.
  • In another scene, Jo is walking when the two men (from above) follow her in their vehicle cat–calling and threatening to kill her and her friend. One of the men yells, “How ya think. . . those legs of yours will look flattened under the wheels of my car?”

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • Jo discovers that her boyfriend had been in jail. Before his jail time, the boyfriend describes the night he tried to kill someone, and while he was drunk, high, and scared, he turned himself in to the police.
  • Jo’s boyfriend also talks about how he used to, “drink too and use some drugs and stuff. . .”
  • One of the character’s father is a recovering alcoholic.

Language 

  • Jo said that she cussed, but there are no actual cuss words.

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content 

  • Throughout the book, the characters discuss their relationship with God. Some characters have a positive relationship with God, others do not.
  • In one church scene, the preacher discusses Philippians Chapter Two and how one should obey God. The pastor then goes on to explain how people should examine God’s word.
  • One of the characters talks about how she is waiting for God to bring the right man into her life.
  • At a wedding the pastor discusses the meaning of the Bible verse, “Love is patient. Love is kind.”
  • At one church service, the pastor talks about Jesus’ crucifixion.
  • In one scene the church is practicing a play that reenacts John Chapter Four, the “The Lady at the Well,” story.
  • Towards the end of the book, Jo accepts Christ and then later one of Jo’s friends explains how she cannot be separated from Christ’s love.

Haze

Seb does not understand people. He prefers numbers and computers. His parents don’t get him. When he’s at school, Guzzle is his only friend. But Guzzle isn’t always around to protect Seb from the bullies who harass him.

Things begin to change when he makes friends with Krisite, Madeline, and Jen. And things get even better when a new computer teacher, Miss Adonia, shows up. However, Guzzle doesn’t think Seb can trust Miss Adonai. Soon Seb is mixed up in a web of computer fraud, and he must turn to someone for help. But who should he trust?

Seb must also worry about Guzzle who is struggling to find peace in his life. Although Guzzle is popular at school, he does not enjoy his classes or the friends his popularity brings. To add to his misery, his mother is in an abusive relationship. Despite his struggles, Guzzle is a loyal friend to Seb.

Haze is an easy-to-read story that has loveable characters. There is enough mystery and suspense to keep the reader interested in the plot. The author adds drama to Guzzle’s life by showing his mother in an abusive relationship without adding violent detail. Part of the story revolves around a possible love interest, with a sweet ending.

The author teaches about Asperger Syndrome through Seb’s thoughts and actions. The information about Asperger Syndrome never seems preachy, but comes across in a natural and interesting way. Although Seb’s new friends don’t understand him, they are willing to stick by him, and as they learn about Seb’s Asperger Syndrome, the reader does as well.

Younger readers will be able to enjoy Haze because of the easy reading level as well as the fact that there is no violence. However, there are sexual references, cursing, and mention of drugs and alcohol that may make this book inappropriate for younger readers.    

Sexual Content 

  • When Seb is worried about going on a date, Guzzle said, “Go to the movies or something. You don’t have to talk and if she lets ya, you can touch her up in the dark.” Guzzle goes on to explain that touch her up means, “grab her boobs.”
  • When Guzzle sees Miss Adonia at a hotel with an older man, a group of her students speculate that they are “lovers” or maybe their teacher is a “sex slave.” Then a girl says, “maybe he’s her sex slave! She seems to like to be in control.”
  • Guzzle tells Seb that Kaziah is “easy” but a “bitch at times.” When Seb asks what easy means, Guzzle says, “shit, mate, sometimes you’re such a kid. She lets me touch her you know, do things.” When Seb asks if Guzzle has, “done it, all the way,” Guzzle says, “not yet. Close but.”
  • When Seb is kissed on the cheek, he thinks, “She kissed him. No fuss. No slobbery saliva. No expectations that he do anything. His first kiss. Not quite up to Guzzle’s standard. But this was better. He wouldn’t swap the world for that kiss.”

Violence 

  • On the way to school a group of boys beats up Seb. One boy tells the others that he feels, “like kickin’ butt” and he then begins to hit Seb. “Seb rarely felt the kicks and punches…but he felt humiliated. The futile anger. Couldn’t understand why they hated him so much. Didn’t know how to make them stop.”
  • When Seb gets upset at school he, “hit a couple of kids and then smashed a window with his bare fist.”
  • When Guzzle tells Seb he is leaving home, Guzzle says, “I’m pissing outta here.” Then later Guzzle explains why he is leaving, “Anus beat the shit outta mum last night. I wish she’d leave him. But she won’t. Says she still loves him.”

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • Guzzle goes to the park at night. Later Seb asks Guzzle if he was drinking. Guzzle replies, “A bit. Gotta live up to me name, don’t I?”
  • Guzzle goes down to the park and shares his last beer with Kaziah. “One kid was smoking cones through a cut up coke bottle. Kaz breathed deep on a joint, but Guzzle stuck to his cigs.”
  • Guzzle gets “rolling drunk” and talks about going to the shed, “where kids smoked, and teachers avoided duty.”
  • Guzzle says that Kaziah’s friends like to, “smoke dope and beat up anything they can get their hands on.”

Language 

  • The words “shit” and “damn” are spoken by characters.
  • When Seb tries to call someone in the middle of the night, a man answers the phone and says, “Goddam, who the hell is this?”
  • When Jen gets angry at Seb she yells, “Who the hell do you think you are?”
  • One of the characters asks her mother if she can go out with a group of people which includes boys. Her mother gets angry and says, “I knew that sleepover was a bad idea…Twenty four hours in some slut’s house and all your values fly at the window.”
  • When Guzzle’s mother’s boyfriend hits her, he yells, “filthy bitch…useless…deserve this…”

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content 

  • None

Endangered: A Death on a Deadline Mystery

Hayley isn’t a typical teenage girl. Rather than caring about prom or worrying about not getting her high school diploma, she spends her time working for her father’s newspaper.

While listening to a police scanner, she gets her first big scoop. Her hope is to discover whose blood is splattered all over a remote cabin. But instead of looking for clues, Hayley’s father forces her to participate in a research project to earn credits she needs to graduate high school.

Instead of investigating a possible murder, Hayley finds herself stuck on a boat doing research with only Ms. Cameron, a biology teacher, and Ernest, a social outcast, for company. Hayley and her group find the rare turtle they’re hunting for, but with it they find people illegally hunting it. When Hayley and Ernest try to protect the turtle, they find their lives are in danger. Now Hayley has two mysteries to deal with-and twice the danger.

Endangered: A Death on a Deadline Mystery is an enjoyable book. While the ending is no surprise, the story is engaging and interesting. Even though the bad guy is predictable, the ending is still satisfying and will make the reader smile.

Hayley is a loveable, realistic character the reader can bond with. Hayley has abandonment issues because her mother left her as a baby. She doesn’t do the “dating scene” because she’s not sure how to handle guys. She doesn’t have a normal family life. But when it comes to reporting, she is assertive and sure of herself.

Between the mystery, the hunt for an elusive turtle, and Hayley’s personal story, the book has a lot to love. Even though the story revolves around a possible death, the violence is not detailed or graphic. However, there are many references to drugs and alcohol that may be inappropriate for younger readers.

Sexual Content

  • Hayley is at work and wonders about her friends who attended prom. She was, “checking Facebook every ten minutes to see which of my friends were making out, breaking up, or getting hammered.”
  • When talking about a Herpetofaunal research project, Hayley thinks, “It sounded like a sexually transmitted disease.”
  • Hayley tells a boy she isn’t into the dating scene because, “You go to a club, or a party, and you’re out there dancing, and suddenly a guy you don’t even know comes up behind you and starts groping you. When did that become socially acceptable?” Later in the same scene, she says, “The point is, that’s what guys always say: ‘What’s the problem, baby? Why are you so uptight? It doesn’t mean anything.’ And then they expect you to have sex with them because, if it doesn’t mean anything, why should you say no. . . . And maybe it does mean something. The point is, why do guys think that they get to decide if it’s meaningful or not? When they’re not even the ones who are going to get pregnant if something goes wrong.”
  • When talking about when a girl really likes a guy, Hayley says, “Because then you sleep with him, and you put your heart into it, and half the time he doesn’t really care, he’s just using you.”
  • Hayley thinks about her father not being at home when she was little. “Dad was out chasing stories and whatever else grown men chase when they don’t have a wife at home . . . he never brought a girlfriend home. But he was late often enough. Let’s just say, it wouldn’t have surprised me.”
  • While Hayley is drinking at a bar, one of the men she is with leans toward her. “His hand, warm and heavy, landed on my thigh. I felt a throb go through my body—a throb I didn’t want to feel, not for Trevor. A burning sensation flushed from my legs through my pelvis, my breast, my neck, my lips…My body wanted to throw itself at Trevor-Forever.” Trevor kisses Hayley’s earlobe and then her lips. Drunk and upset, Hayley runs, grabs a cab, and goes home.
  • Ernest’s mother left him when he was eight. When Hayley sees Ernest’s father’s green lawn Hayley thinks, “Given the way his wife had left him for a life of probiotic lesbian farming, he probably felt sweet revenge every time he blasted a dandelion.”
  • When Alex’s thigh touches Hayley’s thigh, “a warmth spread through my leg that was more than just body heat.”
  • When Alex touches Hayley’s hand she thinks, “Every part of him I saw, I wanted to touch: the short, soft hairs at the nape of his neck, the stubble on the line of his jaw, the hair that fell in a fringe over his left eyebrow, the muscles that rippled in two long, smooth ridges down his back, on either side of his spine. I wanted to trace those ridges from the curve of his shoulders down to his hips…”
  • Alex kisses Hayley. “He cupped my cheek with his hand. His lips touched mine with a warmth that made my heart roll over and surrender.”

Violence

  • Hayley goes to the scene of a crime where “some cops had found a blood-splattered shack.” The story revolves around Haley trying solve the crime.
  • At one point Hayley thinks that the crime could have happened when a fight broke out because “someone was drunk or high or something.”
  • Hayley and Ernest get into a fight over a drill. They, “went tussling over the sand like a deranged parody of a teenage beach movie…I twisted my body to keep his pelvis away; the last thing I wanted was to feel Ernest’s groin pressed against mine.” Hayley then bites Ernest, who lets go of her.
  • Ernest and Hayley are scuba diving when they see a fishing boat trying to illegally catch a turtle. While Ernest is trying to cut the net to free the turtle, someone shoots at him. “Fragments of shot pelted through the froth. A red cloud tinted the water . . .His other arm dangled limp at his side, a ribbon of red streaming out from a spot a few inches below his shoulder.”
  • Hayley talks about covering stories about “near-fatal bar stabbings” and “drunk-driving accidents.” She said her father’s philosophy was that “if I saw the stupid tragedies that people got into with drugs and alcohol abuse, I’d be smart enough to avoid them.”
  • A woman describes how Tyler was killed. “I can hear Snake telling Gill how he just killed some kid down at the cabin…he just wanted to beat him up, teach him a lesson, and now the kid’s dead, and he needs to get rid of the body before the cops find out.”
  • An illegal exchange was taking place when two people accidently walk in. Snake is shot before he can kill anyone. “There on the flagstones beside the pickup truck, lay the drug dealer Snake. He was face-up on the ground and a dark stain spread over his chest. A handgun lay on the ground beside his outstretched arm as though it had been flung from his grasp as he fell.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Part of the story revolves around Hayley’s emotional issues because her mother was a drunken party girl and she, “couldn’t wait to get back to the party scene once I was born.”
  • When Hayley talks to two boys who saw the scene of the crime, the boys tell her, “we were kinda drinking.”
  • Tyler Dervish wanted to be part of the popular crowd, so he decided to sell drugs. One of the cops asks if Tyler sold, “E? Oxy? Coke? Weed?”
  • Hayley talks about being in a band with a couple of friends. The band fell apart when her friends, “discovered the joys of getting trashed after our gigs on vodka and party drugs.”
  • A fisherman said his grandfather, “made more money running rum. Prohibition times, it was.” He then goes on to explain how his grandfather got away with selling liquor during that time period.
  • While on a boat, Hayley thinks, “the wrong wave and it would throw us at the rockface, like a drunk smashing a beer bottle against the wall in a bar fight.”
  • Hayley goes to a bar to meet a young cop and his friend. The guys have a pitcher of beer and Hayley has a mixed drink. When one of the guys starts flirting with her, she flirts back. “The alcohol had apparently cut off my rational mind from the instinctual part of my brain.”
  • Hayley’s friend says, “I need a joint.” Hayley replies, “You need to get off that shit.” Hayley notices this friend has a mark on her arm that could be from a drug needle.
  • When going to the bad side of town, Hayley sees, “used condoms lay in the dirt beneath them. There were probably needles in there, too, but I didn’t stop to check.”

Language

  • As Hayley is trying to get information from a young cop she gives him a smile like, “Hey, I get it, my editor’s just as hard-ass as your partner.”
  • An angry fisherman tells Hayley, “You write this in your goddamn newspaper.” Later on in the story, the same fisherman uses the word “goddamn” again.
  • After getting drunk and flirting with Trevor, Hayley thinks, “Why did I have to go and make an ass of myself last night?”
  • When two boys found the crime scene they were scared “shitless.”
  • A woman calls her boyfriend a “bastard.”
  • When a fisherman tells someone that a turtle shouldn’t be taken out of the ocean, the man replies, “God, another fucking tree-hugger.”
  • Snake tells someone, “You heard him lady. Get the fuck inside!”
  • Profanity is used throughout the book, occasionally in Hayley’s thoughts, but mostly when the characters are in a stressful situation. The profanity includes holy shit, hell, shit, bullshit, goddamn, and bastard.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

No True Echo

In a strange twist of events that he doesn’t understand, Eddie relives the same day over and over. The first time Eddie lived through the day, his mother died when he was an infant and his only plan was to spend his school break climbing trees with his best friend and trying to find a way to talk to the new girl. As Eddie continues to relive the same day, he is also attempting to figure out what is causing the strange occurrence, why the new girl keeps asking about his dead mother, and if there is a way he can change the day’s events.

As Eddie navigates his unexpected time-travel, Eddie tries to figure out who he can trust. And in the end, he must decide if telling the truth is the right thing to do, even if it means losing someone he loves.

No True Echo weaves a gripping story that leaves the reader wondering what will happen next. The story revolves around Eddie (and others) being shot which adds suspense and intrigue. The shooting scenes are described with little detail which allows the reader to imagine as much or as little as they like.

However, what really drives the story is the characters. The story is told from Eddie’s point of view as well as a police officer’s point of view which adds depth to the storyline. The adults are not portrayed as perfect, but with problems of their own. Eddie’s best friend Angus adds humor. The new girl Scarlett adds suspense and a bit of romance. The interactions between the characters are realistic and emotional. In the end, the story shows that the connections people make are what really matter in life.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Eddie is shot several times, but it is not described in detail. The first time Eddie is shot, he jumps in front of a girl to protect her. “All I knew was the agony of the bullet ripping into my chest. And the shock. And the fear.”
  • Another time Eddie is shot, he “shut my eyes in agony as the bullet tore through my body, but the pain vanished as though it had never been there.” Later when discussing the shooting, he is told that “he (the shooter) knew that the timeline would be destroyed anyways, so I’m not sure that counts (as murder). He also knew I would save you.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Eddie’s mom has a “large glass of wine” with dinner.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • In this time period, people can time travel by going back into their younger bodies. At one point in the story, Eddie travels into his infant body so he can watch his mother’s death in order to determine if her car accident was an accident or a murder.

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Hider, Seeker, Secret Keeper

Lana has never been able to tame her rebellious streak, so she’s not surprised when she is not chosen to go on tour with the Bolshoi ballet company. Then her friend is in an accident and Lana believes her luck has changed. But when she gets to New York, Lana’s life takes an unexpected turn.

Georgi, an old friend of Lana’s mother, requests to see her. Although Lana does not trust him, Georgi is her only chance to discover why her mother refuses to talk about her past. Lana is tired of feeling as if she’s been living in the dark. And when Georgi and his young bodyguard, Roma, tell Lana that they know who her father is, Lana can’t resist being drawn into Georgi’s web. Despite assurances that Georgi can be trusted, when another dancer ends up hospitalized, Lana isn’t sure if she can trust Georgi or anyone else.

 Hider Seeker, Secret Keeper is a fast-paced story that leaves the reader guessing. However, the book revolves more around Lana’s life and the mystery behind her mother’s past than around ballet. For those who pick up the book in the hopes of learning about the life of a ballerina, they will be disappointed.

Sexual Content

  • When Lana is retelling the history of Russian ballet, she describes the tabloids’ stories.  “Sure, a lot of it is sensational nonsense—like the story about Pavel Vartukh’s secret gay lover who came back from a sex-change operation in Belgrade ready to become a prima ballerina.”
  • A man approaches Lana on the street corner and tells her that his boss would like to take her to dinner, she tells the man, “I don’t know how long it takes for a Russian boy to grow American balls, but I really don’t want to see yours.”
  • Lana goes into a saloon and sees her artistic director tipsy. She explains, “It’s usually an occasion for hands a bit too low on the back, a nuzzle behind the ear. A suggestive joke. Dancers my age are expected to respond with a blush and light push. More senior dancers know to expect a straightforward proposition.”
  • Lana meets a boy. After they get to know each other better, “he takes my face again, this time in both his hands. It’s not even my face he wants now, though. He wants my lips. They’re his.”  Then later in the scene, he kisses her, “long enough to bring back the heat wave.”

Violence

  • At the beginning of the story, two characters are run over by a motorcycle. Although the accident is not described, the wounds are described.
  • Lana’s friend is hospitalized after she is given an old prescription drug in order to kill her. Her “recovery is uncertain.”
  • Lana gets into a confrontation with a man. She begins hitting him. In order to get Lana to stop, the man grabs her. “He has me by both arms. My head is on his chest. There is a deep scratch down his neck. His helmet and his gloves are in the gutter ten feet away.”
  • Georgi hired a man to scare a ballerina, but the man ended up hitting her with a motorcycle.  In a conversation afterward, Georgi said, “You get some money to that girl’s family or you can expect some new friends in prison who will teach you a thing or two about making mistakes in the dark.” The man replies, “—Da, Georgi Ivan-oh-bitch.”
  • Georgi tries to explain why someone was trying to frame Lana. “Anna figured a dead girl in New York would be more convincing than a roughed-up one in Moscow. She could pin one on you and one on your mother.”
  • Lana finds out that her grandfather shot Georgi, then held a gun to a girl’s head. Lana’s father killed her grandfather in order to save the girl.
  • Anna grabs Lana and drags her outside. Then Anna tries to push Lana’s mother into the path of an oncoming motorcycle.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Lana goes to a party that has “booze.” She tells her friend that she will go to the party and, “will drink two glasses of wine.”
  • Lana finds an article that suggests that her grandmother was an alcoholic and mentally disturbed.
  • A ballerina is given Dinitrophenol, a supplement that, “burns fat by turning your body into a furnace.”
  • In several scenes, the artistic director is drunk.
  • Georgi recounts a story about seeing someone in the airport. The guard was drinking, so he was able to talk to the man. “He tells me that Arkhipova’s the one who ratted Marina. I was impressed, if you wanna know. I underestimated that snake with tits . . .”

Language

  • Profanity is used often throughout the character’s conversations as well as in Lana’s thoughts. The profanity used includes: hell, damn, piss, bitch, limp dicks, jackass, bullshit, shit, crap, asshole, and fucking.
  • When Lana is thinking she uses words such as, “God-damn,” and, “Oh my God.”
  • Someone tells a joke. “What jumps higher than a man in tights? A man in tights with a BMW up his ass.”
  • In one scene, Lana tells her mother. “Ma, I don’t care about whoever he [her father] was . . . So I’m a bastard.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When Lana’s friend and another man are injured, she thinks, “It seems unlikely that God had much to do with it. Daniela is maimed, and Pavel Vartukh, artistic director and serial womanizer, will wave at the paparazzi and go back to work. That doesn’t strike me as divine will.”
  • When chosen to perform a dance routine, Lana gives the background of the dance. “. . . it’s meant to be the Chosen One dancing for her elders…And we know perfectly well that in pagan rituals, the Chosen One would have been a maiden—a virgin.”
  • Lana describes the Russians as, “God-fearing, blasphemous creatures.”

We Were Liars

Cadence is a Sinclair. A member of the beautiful, blonde American dynasty. No one is depressed, addicted, or a criminal. No one is greedy or drunk. They are the perfect family that spends every summer on their private island, Beechwood. The oldest of the Sinclair grandchildren and their best friend call themselves the liars. The four of them—Cadence, Mirren, Johnny, and Gat—are inseparable every summer. They share secrets, go on forbidden adventures, and uncover mysteries of their family as they grow up together in a world of money and privilege.

But the Sinclairs aren’t perfect. The aunts always fight over their inheritance and drink away their sorrows. Grandad is beginning to lose his mind and can’t cope with the loss of his beloved wife. Cadence herself can’t remember summer fifteen after she wakes up in a hospital with traumatic brain injuries and burns.

Cadence struggles to retain her memories as she returns to the island after two years of absence. Everything seems the same as it always was, but the closer she looks, the more she realizes how much the world she once knew has changed. As Cadence tries to put together the pieces of memories that led to her accident, she discovers that the secrets of summer fifteen might have been better left as they were.

We Were Liars is a gripping novel that will leave readers restless to uncover the truth. Suspenseful and surprising, this book is well worth the read as it is fast-paced and entertaining. The characters are realistic and ask questions that teen readers may also be pondering such as the existence of trust between family members and the necessity of faith. However, the intertwining timelines may be difficult to grasp for some readers, and the story contains some mature content that is not appropriate for younger audiences.

Lockhart’s writing style is also unique and takes some getting used to. The story is told from Cadence’s point of view, and the descriptions make it sometimes difficult to differentiate between imagination and reality.  Careful reading is necessary to determine if the event actually happened to Cadence or if it is a figurative description of her inner emotions.

 Sexual Content

  • Cadence’s parents get divorced because “my father ran off with some woman he loved more than us.”
  • Aunt Carrie’s husband left her with four children to care for, including a baby.
  • When the liars are having a conversation, Johnny asks, “Can’t we talk about sex or murder?”
  • Gat and Cadence fall in love. There are several kissing scenes throughout the novel, but they are never long and their relationship never goes beyond making out. “He touched my face. Ran his hands down my neck and along my collarbone. . . Our kiss was electric and soft, and tentative, and certain, terrifying and exactly right.”
  • Cadence and Gat are anxious to be near one another and often make physical contact. “He touched me whenever he could . . . As long as no one was looking, I ran my finger along Gat’s cheekbones, down his back.”
  • Mirren mentions her boyfriend during a conversation with Cadence. “I have a boyfriend named Drake Loggerhead. . . We have had sexual intercourse quite a number of times, but always with protection.” Their relationship is never described again and later in the story, it is revealed that Mirren made him up.
  • When Cadence and Gat are mad at each other, she longs to be with him. “I reach out and touch him. Just the feel of his forearm beneath the thin cotton of his shirt makes me ache to kiss him again.”

Violence

  • Cadence often describes events in her life figuratively and descriptively. When her father leaves, she says, “Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed.”
  • When Cadence discovers that Gat has a girlfriend, she punches the shower wall in anger.
  • Cadence often describes her emotional pain as blood dripping from her body. Although she is not actually bleeding, this description conveys the pain she feels inside. No one notices except her beloved Gat. “When blood dripped on my bare feet and poured over the book I was reading, he was kind. He wrapped my wrists in soft white gauze.” Her pain is described in this manner multiple times.
  • As a result of her brain injuries, Cadence feels immense pain that is sometimes depicted in disturbing detail. Her pain is often compared to violent situations in an attempt to help the reader understand what she is going She describes her pain as “a truck is rolling over the bones of my neck and head. The vertebrae break, the brains pop and ooze.” In another instance, a witch, “swings the statue again and hits above my right ear, smashing my skull. Blow after blow she lands, until tiny flakes of bone litter the bed and mingle with chipped bits of her once-beautiful goose.”
  • Aunt Carrie smacks Aunt Bess across the mouth as they are arguing over their inheritance.
  • The liars steal some of Grandma Tipper’s favorite expensive collectibles and smash them to pieces on a dock. They then wipe them away into the sea.
  • Near the conclusion of the novel, the liars decide to burn the Clairmont house (the largest house on the island) down to the ground as they are angry with all that it represents. The burning does not go as planned and several characters die in the fire. Their deaths are not described.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Cadence is anxious, she “drank wine I snuck from the Clairmont pantry. I spun violently into the sky, raging and banging stars from their moorings, swirling and vomiting.” She and the other liars sneak wine from pantries and other places several times throughout the novel.
  • Cadence takes medication to help her deal with pain. If she does not take the prescription medication, she suffers pain so unbearable that it makes her question her will to live. Although the drugs are habit-forming, she claims that she does not have an addiction.
  • The aunts often discuss wine and have chats during cocktail hour. They are also frequently drunk.
  • Cadence’s younger cousins often ask if she is a drug addict. One of them adapts the motto, “Drugs are not your friend.”
  • When making a joke to her aunts, Cadence says, “Nothing wrong with me that a Percocet and a couple slugs of vodka doesn’t cure.”
  • Cadence says that she is “high on Percocet half the time.”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently throughout the novel. Profanity includes: damn, God, fucking, good lord, ass, hell, stupid-ass, asshole, assface, bullshit, fuck, shitty, fuckload, and fucked up. The cursing intensifies when the liars get older.
  • Shut up is used several times in a conversation.
  • When attempting to recall her incident, Cadence says, “I suppose that I was raped or attacked or some godforsaken something.”
  • Gat discusses some of Grandad’s negative tendencies and behaviors with the liars. “The point is, Harris doesn’t like Ed’s color. He’s a racist bastard, and so was Tipper.”

Supernatural

  • When thinking about her feelings towards Gat, Cadence says, “I am not talking about fate. I don’t believe in destiny or soul mates or the supernatural.”
  • Cuddletown, one of the cottages on the island, is haunted, as the ghosts of the deceased liars remain there to help Cadence remember the events of summer fifteen.
  • Bonnie has an obsession with vampires and insists that they are real.

Spiritual

  • Cadence and Gat have a conversation on whether or not God exists. When Gat asks, “Do you believe in God?” Cadence responds, “Halfway . . . When things are bad, I’ll pray or imagine someone watching over me, listening . . . But the rest of the time, I’m trudging along in my everyday life.” After listening, Gat asserts that he no longer believes in God after witnessing the horrors of poverty in India.
  • One of Cadence’s aunts says, “Thank God you’re here.”
  • The liars think setting the fire on Clairmont is a semi-spiritual act. They see it as a form of purification as they cleanse their family of its past. Gat refers to the burning as “playing God.”

by Morgan Filgas

Backward Glass

For as long as anyone can remember, a skipping song has warned children about the dangers of Prince Harming. “Lover sweet, bloody feet, running down the silver street. Leave tomorrow if you’re called—truth and wisdom in the walls. Crack your head, knock you dead, then Prince Harming’s hungers fed.”

When Kenny moves to a new town, he is shocked when his father finds a dead baby hidden in the wall of the carriage house. But what shocks him more is the note that is found with the baby. “Help me make it not happen, Kenny. Help me stop him. Clive is dead all over again.”

Kenny embarks on a journey through different time periods with the help of his newfound friend Luka and a time travel mirror. The two teens hope to save the baby and figure out how the skipping song is related to the child’s death. They soon discover that Prince Harming is not just a fairy tale character, but a living man who is out to kill Kenny and anyone else that stands in his way.

Backward Glass is an interesting story. However, there are many different characters in different time periods, which makes keeping track of people and events a little difficult. In the end, all of the pieces of the story fall into place to give the reader a satisfying ending.

Sexual Content 

  • Kenny tells about his father’s first kiss. “Ten years old, and he chased her into a scrap yard and kissed her and she tripped him.”
  • When Kenny is saying goodbye to a girl from another time period she, “stepped forward, grabbed my shoulders, and kissed me square on the mouth. It was awkward, and it wasn’t a long kiss like you see in the movies, and maybe that’s all I’m going to tell you about it because maybe it’s none of your business. It was good, though.”

Violence 

  • Kenny and his father find a dead baby hidden in the wall, “like someone killed it and hid it there. With a note asking me for help.”
  • As Kenny and Luka step out of the time travel mirror, a man holds a gun and threatens to kill Kenny. Luka “reached for the gun, now pointed toward the ceiling, and covered both of the men’s hands in her own, but from one of them—I couldn’t tell which—came a sharp kick to her midsection that sent her flying to crack her head on the cement floor of the basement.” The two men precede to fight over the gun. Then Kenny is shot. The shooter says he had to kill Kenny because Kenny killed his wife. This fight scene continues for several pages.
  • Kenny is jumped by several teenagers. “I fought back like I had nothing to lose . . . When Boyd Fenton broke my nose, I stepped back, pulled it as straight as I could and asked if he was done yet.” In the end, another boy arrives and helps Kenny fight off his tormentors.
  • Wald carries a “wild man” who is tied up and gagged. The man breaks free and tries to hurt Kenny. “He thrashed frantically, trying to hit me in any way he could. His head slammed against mine, and some part of him dug into my stomach.”
  • When Kenny’s father was younger a man attacked him. “He twisted Brain’s arm, checking his lunge, and brought a quick fist down onto the side of his head, slamming him back against the corner of a brick. Brain slumped.”
  • Kenny pushes a woman into the mirror. However, he knows that this means she will die because the mirror in the other time period is under water. “I reached for her, but all I could feel was water and pain.”
  • A man goes back in time with the intent to kill his infant self. “All I need to do is never live. I kill the baby and its’ no crime. It’s suicide.” Later in the story, the man is holding his baby self when someone tries to grab the baby from him. The man, “gave her a push with his foot, sending her flying into a large chest.” Later the man, “began to topple back . . . cradling the baby, instinctively bringing it close as he fell . . . Little Curtis and his older self lay spread out on the floor, their hands close enough to exchange bright flashes. Both were convulsing slightly.”
  • A young boy tries to take a girl into the time travel mirror. “When she couldn’t pass in, he grew angry and smashed her head repeatedly into its unbreakable surface. She never recovered completely.”

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • One of the characters smokes a cigarette.
  • One of the characters gets stuck in a time period that is not his own when, “fed too much beer at a year-end celebration by a stranger . . . he came back to the mirror too late and found himself trapped ten years in his own past.”
  • Kenny talks about a vacant house that kids, “had been going there to drink or make out for a couple of years.”

Language 

  • When Kenny’s father finds a dead baby hide behind a wall he says, “Oh Christ, Oh Christ. Oh, Jesus, Kenny, look at the little thing.”
  • When Luka’s mother thinks she is on the phone, her mother yells, “Hell’s the matter with you?”
  • A character talks about how he found, “that goddamn diary when I was nine years old.”
  • When discussing time travel, a character says, “Christ. Time travel—and I wanted to sell comic books. Go on H.G. Wells. Take it. Save the baby. Maybe there’s a reason the damn mirror didn’t open up for me.”
  • Kenny tells a teen named Chuck that his sister will marry a Goldstein. Chuck replies, “You saying my sister’s going to marry a Jew?” When Kenny asks if he cares, Chuck replies, “Nah, but it don’t matter how welcome I am in the family, none of them better try cutting part of my pee-pee off.”
  • Holy crap and hell are occasionally.

Supernatural 

  • • None

Spiritual Content 

  • • Two characters discuss the rules of time travel and how people cannot get in contact with their other self. “It’s like you can’t mess up time,” Luka said. “Keisha says it’s God, but I asked her where exactly the time-travel mirrors come into the Bible. Melissa says it’s fate, but I don’t even think it’s’ that.”

Watched

Jesse’s life has been destroyed by a man he has never met. He doesn’t know what this man looks like, or what his name is. He only knows that his screen name is King. King makes a living blackmailing people, mostly kids, into committing sexual acts on camera. Jesse is one of those kids. And every time he tries to escape, the noose gets tighter.

Miranda used to work for King, until the guilt became so great that she defied his orders. Not one to take no for an answer, King has devoted himself to ruining Miranda’s life. King has posted nude pictures of Miranda all over the web and had her mom attacked. The horrors keep coming and coming, and Miranda believes taking her life is the only way of escape.

Both Jesse and Miranda are helpless in King’s net—until they meet each other. Together, they might have a shot of taking King down. But what will be the cost?

Watched is a well-written book with constant suspense. Written to educate on the dangers of virtual blackmail and cyberbullying, this book does not shy away from the sexual aspects of pornography, pedophilia, and the children that supply such people with their perverse desires. While Watched explores an important aspect of our world, this book is not suitable for anyone under the age of eighteen.

The Prologue starts with, “You don’t know what it feels like to hold a life in your hands, but I do. There’s nothing like it. Better than sex, it’s a rush that leaves you panting, wanting more . . . Your life will never be the same—you might die or you might keep living, but your life will always be mine.” This is a book with extreme adult content and should be read with caution.

Sexual Content

  • Jesse sees a fire and talks about pyromaniacs. “Some guys think fire is sexy . . . these guys are hanging out, staring, licking their lips, one hand shoved deep down the front pocket of their jeans.”
  • “Firemen talk like that, like fires are women, like conquering a fire is better than sex.”
  • There is mention of the sexual acts Jesse is forced to perform. “No one would ever believe what he was doing at three in the morning . . . she tried hard not to notice what was actually happening, what the Tokyo perv was making the kid so . . . ”
  • King asks Jesse to recruit a younger kid. He tells Jesse, “You’re getting too old for most of my clients. Unless they see you with other boys. Younger boys . . . I want you to have some fun. Like your uncle does with you.”
  • It is mentioned several times that Jesse has been sexually abused by his uncle. After a while Jesse realizes that “my uncle is still standing there, truly believing I wanted everything that’s happened to me these past few years, that I asked for, that I even . . . liked it.”
  • Miranda tells Jesse that King had been, “posting naked pictures of [her] all over [her] school’s website, sending them to [her] dad’s boss.”
  • King posted Miranda’s mother’s picture and information online, “along with a rape fantasy. Five thousand dollars to the man who made it come true and posted a video of it.” Because of this, she is attacked twice.
  • Jesse thinks about Miranda. “I want to be with her in real life, see her face, touch her hair, touch every part of her.”
  • Jesse’s uncle said he was taking him camping, but they “ended up in a slimy motel . . . he brought with him a bunch of kinky stuff . . . and the things he did to me that night . . . Even now, three years later, my insides drop out of me just thinking of it. Couldn’t walk after. Spent the next day on the floor of the bathroom, naked except for a blanket.”
  • Jesse’s uncle’s, “hand slides down my shoulder . . . he tugs on my belt with his other hand . . . he leans in, his gaze on my lips, hungry for more than dinner.”
  • Jesse thinks about what his uncle wants. “I realize what he feels for me goes far beyond sex, more like obsession.”
  • Miranda and Jesse kiss. “Our lips touch. The kiss is better than anything I could ever dream of.”

Violence

  • Jesse, the protagonist, sets small fires for fun. Setting fires gives him a sense of control.
  • Jesse remembers a video they watched in health class about cutting. “She said seeing her blood was like wrapping a chain around her heart, anchoring her to the real world . . . only by tearing into her own flesh, allowing the blood to escape, could she release the pain building up inside.”
  • King has someone with a knife follow Jesse’s little sister, in order to get Jesse to obey him. Jesse realizes, “He really will kill Janey or Mom, just to prove to me that he can—and he’ll get away with it.”
  • Jesse steals a “snub-nosed .38 revolver” from his uncle’s toolbox because “It’s time for me to man up . . . What other choice do I have?”
  • Miranda writes a suicide note, planning to kill herself before her next birthday. She had previously tried to kill herself twice. “They’d said she was lucky they found her before all the pills had gotten into her system. Miranda had decided adults had a warped idea of what lucky really was . . . That night was the second time she’d tried to end it all. A razor blade that time.”
  • Miranda talks about revenge porn, where “guys vote on the hottest or cruelest or most disgusting . . . the baby porn and the torture porn.”
  • Miranda wishes Jesse will kill King. “I even fantasized that I could make you kill him. For me. How sick and twisted is that . . . I’m a pathetic, selfish bitch.”
  • Jesse realizes that his uncle is an arsonist.
  • Jesse thinks about his uncle. “Punching him, pummeling him, pounding him into the ground would be so much easier and feel so much better. I fantasize about it, but I can never do it.”
  • When Jesse decides to confront his uncle, he thinks about needing, “tinder. Because if this goes wrong, I’ll need to get rid of the evidence.”
  • When Jesse confronts his uncle he, “slide[s] the snub-nosed revolver from my back pocket and jam[s] it under his chin, forcing his head back . . . I jam the gun up harder, and he makes a little squeaking noise like a rat with its leg caught in a trap. Tough choice. Chew your leg off or wait to see who comes to get you . . . [I] smash my foot into his face so hard his nose gushes blood.”
  • Jesse threatens to start fire to the house with his uncle locked in the garage.
  • A man with a knife tries to kidnap Jesse. “He takes my hand and twists it back hard . . . the pain is excruciating, lightning blazing up my arm.”
  • The remains of Jesse’s father are found buried on his uncle’s property. At first, Jesse is wanted for murder, but later his uncle confesses to having killed him.
  • Jesse’s uncle breaks into Miranda’s apartment, kidnapping Miranda and her mother. “‘Please,’ her mother begged, her words choked with blood from her split lip and broken nose . . . He jabbed the gun hard into Miranda’s temple, forced her forward.”
  • Miranda creates a suicide countdown to get publicity for her plan to take down King.
  • King kills a bystander who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. “King shot him in the chest. The sound echoed like thunder as she stood, stunned, the acrid scent of gunpowder mixed with blood filling her nostrils.”
  • Miranda gets ahold of King’s weapon and considers killing him with it. Jesse talks her out of it.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Jesse sees some drug dealers making sales and wonders why they even bother to hide, since, “no one seems to care.”
  • Jesse thinks about a girl who used to cut herself, then was locked up and fed drugs that, “turned her into a zombie telling other kids don’t worry; be happy.”
  • The first time Jesse built a fire he, “soaked it in a bottle of . . . booze—Old Grand-Dad, it tasted awful, burned all the way down . . . the booze must have been high test because the whole thing went up.”
  • When Miranda asks him if he is okay to drive, Jesse says, “I’m not drunk. Not high.”

Language

  • Profanity such as hell, shit, and damn is used frequently.
  • God, bastard, and bitch are used a few times.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When Jesse describes the fires he sets, he says, “But I know them. I am their God, their Creator, their Master.”
  • Jesse and Miranda discuss the morality of telling the truth versus hiding behind a lie. If they continue to lie, the perverts will, “keep doing this to other kids. They’ll think it’s okay to ruin our lives, to hurt us like we’re nothing more than dirt on the bottom of their shoes.”

by Morgan Lynn

Bang

Fear:  that’s what Sawyer feels. And Jules can understand why. After all, she is the one who gave the vision curse to Sawyer.  Now Sawyer and Jules must decide if they are going to risk their lives trying to stop a tragedy.

Book II of the Visions series adds more involvement from Jule’s brother Trey.  Jules loves her brother, and it’s easy to see why.  He’s good-natured, loyal, and teases his sister about her love life. The relationship between Trey and his sister adds depth and delight to bang.  However, both Sawyer’s and Jules’ relationship with their parents is dysfunctional and full of distrust.  Sawyer’s grandfather hits him, in the past, his mother had an affair, and Sawyer lies to his parent so he can spend time with Jules and try to solve the mystery of the vision.

At the beginning of the book, the language is mild with words like “crap” and “friggin.’” However, it doesn’t take long until the cursing (and the make-out scenes) increase in frequency and intensity. Another troubling aspect of the book is Jules’ sisters’ romantic relationship. Her sister decides to fly to New York to stay with a boy she met at soccer camp, all without her parents knowing about the trip until she’s left.

bang loses a lot of the suspense that was contained in the first book, crash.  Instead of focusing on the mystery of the vision, bang delves into Jules’ relationship with Sawyer as well as their family relationships.  Although Jules cares deeply about her siblings, she is disrespectful and deceitful to her parents.  None of the characters consider confiding in the adults in their life.  Instead, Sawyer, Jules, and Trey band together to try to stop a tragedy from happening.

 Sexual Content

  • Jules sneaks out of the house where she receives her first kiss which was the, “most weirdly amazing feeling.”
  • When Jules sees her boyfriend, he tells her that he’d like to kiss her but only, “runs his thumb across my lips and looks at me so longingly it hurts.” Later Jules presses, “a finger to his lips and watch his eyes droop halfway in response,” and, “his gaze lingers and burns.”  When her boyfriend leaves she thinks, “At this rate, we’ll have, like, nine babies by the end of our senior year.”
  • There are many scenes where Jules and her boyfriend make out, which involves kissing and caresses each other. In one scene Jules thinks, “I really want to see that chest once more.”
  • In another scene, the two make out and they are, “kissing and panting and touching each other, starving and lusty and steamy hot . . . he presses against me, his chest against my chest, our feet finding spaces every other, and his thighs squeezing mine. And suddenly, I realize that what’s pressing against me is not all thigh, and I am secretly amazed and a little shocked by it being there, doing that.”  She describes being, “intoxicated by his fervor and the overwhelming electric, psychedelic aching in my loins.”
  • While joking with his sister and her boyfriend, Trey says, “I’m not into incest, thank you. However…If you ever, you know, want to experiment.” Sawyer replies, “Maybe I could bang all the Demarco siblings.”
  • At school, a girl who likes Sawyer comes up to him and, “sticks her boobs out.” She asks him to Spring Fling and promises they can, “make out behind the bleachers like when we were a couple.” Sawyer tells the girl he is gay, and she gets upset and asks, “I made out with a gay?” and “Were you gay when we made out?”
  • Jules father asks her, “What do you want to say that I don’t already know? That you’re pregnant?”  Jules is angry that her father, “thinks I’m out there banging people left and right.”
  • Jules thinks about her father’s past affair, and she talks about it with others.

 Violence

  • Jules boyfriend talks about how his grandfather used to hit him.
  • Sawyer has a gruesome vision of a school shooting where eleven people are shot. He describes the scene of the shooting and how the “faces are blown into bits.”
  • A college campus was vandalized and someone spray paints a stop sign so that it reads, “Stop fags.”
  • The college campus shooting is describe in detail over four pages. Several people are shot.  One of the shooters jabs a gun between a boy’s eyes.  There is a fight between the gunman and several others, which is described.  “I kick the crap out of her arm that holds the gun, and I whack the shit out of her face with my cast . . . I kneel on her fucking head as she screams.”  Trey shows up and is shot.  Jules watches as he sinks, “to the floor, leaving s streak of red on the wall behind him.”
  • Trey says, “All I can remember is someone screaming ‘Die, fag!’ in my face, which really, you know, sucked. Then I took one look at the blood spurting out of my arm” and he passed out.
  • In the hospital, several characters discuss the events of the shooting and the injuries of the victims.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • While in the hospital, Trey is given morphine for his pain. He acts goofy and, “a little drunk on morphine.”  Later when Trey talks about going to a pricey private school that she knows her family can’t afford,  Jules thinks, “there’s always the power of morphine to make your forget about the minor details of your life.”
  • Jules, “scared the hell out of Trey when I tell him that he totally threw himself at a college boy while under the influence of morphine.”

Language

  • Cursing is frequent. The cursing includes crap, dang, shit, damn it, fucking and pissed.
  • Jules uses Oh my God and Oh Christ as profanity.
  • Jules wonders when she became an “insecure loser” and thinks, “back when I accepted the fact that I was a total psycho.”
  • A character says jokingly, “tell the two-timing lunch whore I said hey.”
  • When Trey is frustrated, he says, “for shit’s sake, Jules.”
  • Jules brother, Trey, is jealous that both of his sisters have a boyfriend and he doesn’t. When his sister talks about sneaking out of the house and flying to New York to see him, Trey says, “Fuck…Why the hell not.  Why the hell not.”
  • Jules’ sister jokingly tells her, “You ruin this for me, and I will ruin your face, bitch.”

Supernatural

  • Jules talks about, “the vision isn’t a total fix; it’s a chance to change a bad thing to something less bad . . . the vision’s gone. You did what you were supposed to do. Maybe . . . maybe those people needed to go through that experience in order to become the people they’re meant to be, you know?  Maybe the experience triggers something inside of them that will help them become great.”   Sawyer replies, “And maybe it’ll make them dependent on prescription drugs, or want to kill themselves.”
  • Jules asks Sawyer, “You think the vision gods, or whoever, gave us these changes so we can end up watching the people we save turn into drug addicts?”

Spiritual Content

  • One of Jules favorite sayings is, “thank dog for that.”
  • Jules finds a newspaper article that reports about a protest lead by a cult preacher who’s been, “shouting about gays taking over the government, and he’s been ragging on U of C lately because their rights group have been picketing the guy.” The preacher has been getting his followers and, “saying God wants his cult to rid the country of homosexuality.”  Sawyer asks, “So you think our shooters are some outsider cult followers of the raving lunatic, coming to campus to . . . do God’s will?”
  • When Jules talks about the news article she asks, “Who would want to believe in a God like that? If God is not, like, totally in love with all the people he created, why would anybody want to believe in him?  Five things a real God should be:   Not a hater.  2. That about sums it up.

Crash

Jules wonders if she is going insane.  After all, she sees a truck smashing into a building, exploding, and then nine body bags in the snow.  And one of the bodies is that of her childhood friend, with who she is in love.  As the vision comes more frequently, life gets complicated. Jules can’t warn her friend because of a long-standing family rivalry.  And even if she did tell him about the visions, would he think she was crazy?  After all, that’s exactly what Jules wonders.

 Crash is a fast-paced book that throws the reader into suspense from the beginning until the end.  The story is full of drama-family drama, school drama, and boy drama.  Jules doesn’t think she can trust her family with her fear about the visions so she lies and sneaks around.  And it turns out that secrecy is normal in her family; after all, her sister has a secret boyfriend, her father had a secret affair, and Jules secretly tries to figure out the meaning of her visions.

To add to the drama, Jules has been banned from taking to her childhood friend, who may end up in a body bag.  In order to save her friend, Jules is willing to do whatever it takes.

 Crash is an entertaining mystery with lots of unexpected turns.  Jules is a likable character who is easy to relate to because her life is so messy.   Her relationship with her brother adds to the book’s enjoyment.

One downside of the book is the cursing, which is common throughout the book, both in dialogue and the character’s thoughts.  Although the book is entertaining, it also contains some heavy topics such as hoarding, depression, dishonesty, and homosexuality.  Although the topics are not discussed in detail, it is clear that Jules does not respect her father because of his depression and his hoarding.  Also, there are so many characters keeping secrets from each other that honesty seems to be a trait that is not highly valued.

Sexual Content

  • Jules’ brother is gay. There are several times that Jules and her brother tease each other about liking the same boy.
  • When Jules begins acting strange, her brother asks, “You’re not pregnant, are you?” Her brother then tells Jules that he only asked because that’s what their father said.  During this conversation, Jules says she is, “the poster child for purity” because she still has her… Her brother finishes the thought with the words “cheery, and hymen.”  They also mention a chastity belt. During the same conversation, Jules’ brother asks, “You’re not having an alien Antichrist baby for the seed of Angotti?”
  • Jules’ sister is having a long-distance relationship with a boy she met at camp. When Jules asks about meeting him online, her sister replies, “. . . his online user name is Child Predator77.  I sent him pictures of my naked budding bazooms and he wants to meet me behind the Dumpster at Pete’s Liquor to give me candy.  Jeez, Jules!  Of course not.  I’m not stupid.”
  • When Jules’ crush walks into the room, he, “ducks his head in a shy sort of way, which makes my thighs ache, and not because of the bruises” and later when he smiles Jules’ “stomach flips.”
  • Jules’ mother tells her that her father had an affair.
  • Jules’ crush gives her an anxious, “hungry look” before he, “slips his fingers gently into her hair.” Then he leans her against a wall and traces her lips with his fingers. He kisses Jules, “but soon he’s pressing harder and I’m reaching for him and I can’t be bothered to think or remember anything at all.  I just need to be in it and try to breathe . . . “
  • During the kissing scene, Jules describes feeling the warmth of his back and how “his tongue finds mine.”

Violence

  • Jules describes a time when she was delivering a pizza and a guy came up behind her, grabbed her by the neck, and stole her money belt before he shoved her into a snowy bush. The thief held a knife by her ear.   Luckily a stranger tackled the guy and the mugger got away.  The police tell Jules the man was, “probably some meth addict who needed money for supplies.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • The narrator thinks about her grandfather who, “killed himself with I was little. ”  Although the grandfather’s death is mentioned several times, how he committed suicide is never described.
  • One of the character’s cousins, “takes a drag and drops her cigarette butt to the ground.”

Language

  • One of the Jules’ favorite sayings is, “Oh my dogs.”
  • The narrator describes a character as a “douche” and another as an “asshole.” Her car is a “piece of crap.”
  • The words dammit, hell, crap, fucking, son-of-a-bitch, and shit are used in dialogue as well as in Jules’ thoughts.
  • Several times when Jules is having a difficult conversation, she says, “Oh my God.”
  • In an argument, Jules says, “mother-fuh-lovin’ crap.”
  • In one scene, the narrator describes her feelings as “pissed.”
  • One of the characters yells, “Get your asses out there!” Another time she says, “Where’s the fucking phone book?  God!  I hate this stupid place.”
  • While talking to a friend, Jules yells, “But goddammit, Sawyer, despite all that, I’m going to save your fucking life anyway, because I love you, and one day you’d better fucking appreciate it.” After she hangs up the phone, she thinks, “You? Are bumblefucking nuts, Demarco.”
  • As two characters discuss a family member, one says, “He’ll bring out his whole tradition and honor bullshit and use that as an excuse to be a bastard.”
  • Jules’ mother tells her husband, “act your age once, will you.  We’re in a hospital, for Christ’s sake.”

Supernatural

  • Jules sees visions in billboards, television screens, and in windows. When she begins to get clues and figure out the pieces of the puzzle, the visions let up. However, when she is getting the meaning of the clues wrong, the visions become more frequent.

Spiritual Content

  • Jules’ parents will not discuss the fact that their son is gay. Jules and her brother don’t go to church because, “if their church won’t accept my brother, they can’t have me either.  Plus her parents, “religious fear runs deep.”

Gasp

The vision has been passed on to another, but who?  If Jules passed the vision curse to Sawyer when she saved him, isn’t it logical to think that Sawyer passed it on to another?  And is it Jules’ responsibility to help the next person since the vision curse started with her?

Jules and Sawyer go on a search to discover if the vision curse has been passed to another.  After searching and finding the next victim, all they want to do is help.  But the victim’s overbearing mother doesn’t believe in the curse and doesn’t want Jules and Sawyer anywhere near her daughter.  With few clues to go on, Jules and Sawyer attempt to prevent tragedy.  And in the end, they find out that the vision curse refuses to be ignored.

Gasp has enough twists and turns to keep the reader interested.  Jules and Sawyer, with the help of their friends, try to help the next victim of the curse which allows the author to throw many surprises into the storyline.  Unlike bang, gasp focuses more on the mystery of the curse, and less on the romantic relationships between characters, which makes gasp a very enjoyable read.

Sexual Content

  • Jules thinks that her older brother’s crush on a cute guy is “fun” to watch develop.
  • Trey said that a boy, “touched my face and kissed me.” Later in the book, Jules watched Trey kissing the boy.
  • When Sawyer kisses Jules she, “feels like the fire is inside me now.”
  • Jules’ sister asks her if she is ‘sexting.”
  • In one scene that lasts approximately three pages, Jules tells Sawyer to pull over the car. When he does she straddles his lap and then begins touching his face and, “nipping his lips with my teeth, drawing the tip of my tongue across his.”  They then makeup and she unbuttons his shirt.  “I guide his hand up my side and press it against my bra, and through the fabric his thumb stumbles over my nipple.”  In the scene, “his torso jerks and shudders and his gasp turns into a low moan.”  Then Sawyer said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t even know that could . . . you know, happen, without actually, you know. Touching it.”
  • When Jules’ mom asks where she’s been, Jules thinks, “I try to think of something other than Sawyer spooged his pants so we called it the night.”
  • Jules, Sawyer, and Trey are teasing each other when Sawyer says, “Aw, man. I thought Ben would cure you of this desire to force homosexuality on me for your own selfish whims.”
  • When Sawyer is putting on a wetsuit, Jules yells, “I can’t wait to see your package in that suit.”
  • Jules’ father asks her if she is pregnant.
  • Jules and her father discuss his affair.

Violence

  • The story reviews the school shooting that happened in bang. One of the victim’s wounds are described—“only her guts were ripped up, and the shreds sewn together. She still has tubes going into her arm—pain meds and antibiotics . . . ”
  • Jules thinks about the first vision when she saw Sawyer’s face in a body bag.
  • Jules, Sawyer, and their friends help the victims of a ferry accident.
  • Jules goes back to the scene where she was mugged and describes what happened.
  • Jules asks her father about the “years of never knowing if we were going to come home to find that you killed yourself.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • They talk about how the victim of the school shooting is “heavily medicated” by pain medication and that when Trey was in the hospital, the pain medications make troy “emboldened.” They say the medication makes a person “stoned.”
  • When walking on a boat, Trey’s walk is described as, “like a drunk.”

Language

  • Jules said spring break being over, “sucked balls.”
  • Rowan’s sister calls her a “grammar whore” and later said, “don’t be a douche.”
  • When Jules father can’t be found she thinks, “He’s a douche for making you worry. Maybe it would be best if he does just go kill himself, so we can get on with our lives.”
  • Jules wonders if her teacher thinks she’s “batshit crazy.”
  • When Jules thinks Sawyer is dead she goes to school where she doesn’t, “want anybody infiltrating it (her grief) with their fake-ass, digesting bullshit.”
  • Profanity is used often throughout the book. The profanity used includes the following: shit, fucking, Oh my God, damn it, pissed, holy shit, and Jesus futhermucker.

Supernatural

  • The story revolves around a person who sees a vision of a tragic event. The vision changes based on if the person is finding clues to help the potential victims or if the person is on the wrong track.

Spiritual Content

  • When Jules feels like she has failed the victim, her brother says, “You didn’t fail. The victim failed.  We are not God.  Or dog.”
  • Jules rolls her eyes to the Jesus in the sky.
  • The victim said, “I guess since you and Sawyer didn’t get shot, we figured you had some mystical protection or a guardian angel watching over you or something.”
  • When the group of teens is talking about the ferry accident, Trey said, “Hey, let’s not bring God into this.”
  • Jules’ parents will not discuss the fact that their son is gay. Jules and her brother don’t go to church because, “if their church won’t accept my brother, they can’t have me either.  Plus her parents, “religious fear runs deep.”

The Breathless

Ro’s body was found lifeless on the beach. No one knows what happened. All they know is that Ro’s boyfriend, Cage, disappeared the same day and hasn’t been seen since. The mystery behind her death turned Blue Gate Manor into a house of sadness and secrets.

One year later, Cage shows up looking for Ro with no memory of anything that happened in the last year. His confusion only adds to the mystery of Ro’s death because even though he was the last person to be seen with her, he has no idea how she died or if he caused her death. Ro’s sister, Mae, doesn’t trust him, but she decides that helping Cage is the only way to find out what happened to her sister.

Then Mae finds a little green book that belonged to Ro. She hopes the book will unlock the secrets behind Ro’s death. As she follows clues in the book, she discovers her family is hiding a dark secret about her ancestors. Danger lurks around every corner as Mae hunts for answers that might be better left undiscovered.

The very first sentence of The Breathless grabs the reader’s attention and never lets go. Graphic descriptions bring this creepy Gothic tale to life. Full of magic, love, and loss, The Breathless is a captivating story that will give sensitive readers a fright they will not soon forget. This is not a good book to read for those who are prone to nightmares.

Sexual Content

  • Cage is watching a girl on the beach. The girl, “licks her fingertips before she turns the page and he wants to be that book.”
  • While sleeping, Ro’s boyfriend thinks about a time when she “pulls him down next to her and leans into him, all oil and legs and her red bikini top loose. He holds his breath as she unties her top, lets it fall.” He wraps his arms around her in the dream and then wakes up.
  • One of the characters is in love with a girl and they kiss. “She leans forward and kisses him and his stomach drops and then the world drops way until her lips finally leave his.”
  • When Mae starts to cry, Cage hugs her. Then he thinks about kissing her. “He was going to kiss her, it was all he wanted, and the next thing he knew she was pulling out of his arms, and stepping back.”
  • When Cage is burning with fever, Mae undresses him. When she goes to take off his pants he said, “Mae, we can’t.” She replies, “Cage, that’s not what I’m doing.”

Violence

  • Cage wakes up in a hospital, unsure of why he is there. He climbs out a window to escape. When a security guard tries to stop him, Cage hits the man. “His fist collided with the man’s face. The security guard crumpled to the ground.”
  • Elle points a rifle at Cage. At first, Elle thinks she hit her sister when she fires because “The house was bleeding. Thick, dark red droplets were splattered across the floor.” However, Elle only shot the red polish in Mae’s pocket.
  • Grady’s girlfriend, the “witch’s” daughter, has his child. When Grady’s father discovers Grady’s secret, the father sets the house on fire and Grady’s girlfriend dies. Then Grady kills his father with an ax. “The first thud makes his ears ring, and they’re still ringing as he drags his father’s body from the house . . . He feels like his lungs are going black, his heart too. But there’s no stopping now.”
  • Elle hits a deer with her car. Mae “knelt down beside the deer, taking its head in her hands, watching its lungs going fast as it panted, a shard of glass in its neck. Its heartbeat thudded against her, echoed inside her, fainter and fainter . . . The deer’s blood was slick in her hands and she stared at the shards of glass in its neck.”
  • One of the characters tries to raise Ro from the dead. In order to complete the ritual, he drugged his sister and then put her into a lake to drown. She is saved. Later the character intends to kill her so she can’t tell anyone what he did, but “he realized he couldn’t do it. Not when she was blinking up at him, asking questions.”
  • Mae’s father shoots Cage. “And then came the blast that thundered in his ears and he was falling, the gravel rising up in front of him. . .”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Mae’s father often drinks whiskey.
  • In a flashback, Ro is smoking a cigarette. “It’s slender and smells of cloves.”
  • A character steals pills from his mother’s supply and gives them to his sister.
  • When Cage is on his way to see his mother, he doesn’t want to . . . “meet her new boyfriend but what he really doesn’t want to see are those pill bottles of hers, the way they make her angry. She’s angry that she’s sick, always has been.”

Language

  • “Shit” is used often throughout the book by several different characters. In one scene, Mae’s father said that there are “plenty of pieces of shit around these days.”
  • “Hell” is used several times. When Mae is caught spying on her sister, Elle says, “What the hell, Mae.”
  • Mae’s father says “goddamn” several times. One time he swore when he almost hit a girl with his truck.

Supernatural

  • The story revolves around Mae trying to understand a book that Ro had owned. The book has several spells, including one to bring back the dead. “Besides the raising ritual, there were other spells: some for curses, some for love, so many she hadn’t been able to get through them yet.”
  • Mae finds a room that has jars of animals used for rituals. In one jar “chunks of a hairlike substance were at the bottom. Floating inside the jar was a pale cat skull.” Another jar had a bird claw and a horse’s hoof. “Bits of tissue swirled into the murky water, and long dark hair was layered at the bottom. . . A hank of what looked like the horse’s dark mane fluttered at the bottom, next to bone.”
  • Mae remembers a time when her sister tried a ritual. When her sister turned around, “her dress had been a different color. . . Dark, dark red, steaked with blood.”
  • Mae discovers that the raising ritual requires the payment of a “human life for human life.”
  • A “witch” and her family live nearby. They use a ritual that can bring the dead back to life.

Spiritual Content

  • None

Take the Key and Lock Her Up

Death is no stranger to the royal family of Adria. Centuries ago, the royal family was murdered, which changed the political landscape of Adri. However, the infant princess survived and was hidden; those who hid the child wanted her to take her rightful place as queen. Now, two hundred years later, there are still some that believe the princess’ descendent should sit on the throne.

Grace discovers that the princess’s blood runs through her veins. If people find out that Grace is a lost princess, the news could spark a revolution. Some people want to use Grace as a pawn, others want to silence her forever. Grace must figure out a way to save herself and the people she loves. Danger and deceit hide around every corner, and if Grace fails, she will pay with her life.

Take the Key and Lock Her Up is the exciting conclusion to the Embassy Row trilogy. The third book in the series ramps up the suspense because Grace isn’t sure who wants to help her and who wants to kill her. The romance heats up, but the kissing scenes are tame and appropriate for younger readers. Even though the book is written for readers as young as twelve, there are some readers that will not be ready for the more mature themes. For younger readers, the content may be disturbing because there are several scenes that focus on a mental institution and how the drugs affect the patients. In addition, Take the Key and Lock Her Up has more violence than the first two books because there are several factions that want Grace dead. The ending of the story is a bit predictable, but that doesn’t detract from the story’s enjoyment.

Sexual Content

  • Grace and Alexei kiss five times throughout the story. The first time, Grace brings “my free hand up and weave my fingers into Alexei’s dark hair, pull him close, and kiss him. Like maybe it’s the last thing I’ll ever do.”
  • Alexei kisses Grace. “. . . Alexei’s lips are on mine, and I’m not aware of anything anymore. It’s different from the kiss on the bridge. There’s no urgency now. . . This is about now—right now. No future and no past.”
  • Alexei and Grace kiss. “. . . His lips are on mine and my fingers are in his hair and everything fades away, the streets and the darkness. . .”

Violence

  • After Grace is drugged and taken to an unknown location, she escapes. “I just pick up the candlestick and throw it over my head as hard as I can . . . I can hear the chaos behind me, cries of pain and fury and fear.”
  • Someone is trying to capture Grace. In order to help her, Alexei throws a man over a bridge.
  • When a man tries to grab Grace, Alexei fights him. Grace watches “him twist, launching himself over the bigger man, and in a flash Alexei has his arms around his neck and he’s squeezing . . . The orderly slumps as Alexei cuts off his . .” At the same time, an orderly tries to drug Grace, and she throws her “hands up, catching his wrist with both hands, pressing up as he presses down.” She makes the man put the syringe in his own leg, and she and Alexei are able to escape.
  • Grace’s friends blow up a car. “Flaming debris fills the yard. Windshields are smashed. Tires are flattened.” No one is injured.
  • For no reason, a woman attacks the prince. She “slaps him hard across the face and starts kicking and clawing.” Several people pull her off of him.
  • Someone poisons the king, and he “pitches awkwardly forward and crashes down the massive staircase. . . (he) has landed, limp and broken, on the polished parquet floor.”
  • When Grace discovers a secret, someone hits her, knocking her out. Later, this person shoots a man in the chest, “and he drops to the ground.”
  • When a woman attacks Grace, her son shoots her. “The gun is tumbling from his hand as his mother crumbles, blood-soaked, to the floor.” The woman survives.

 

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Grace drugs someone’s tea. When Grace drugs the person, “she slumps slowly to the ground, getting mud and grass stains all over her pretty white suit.”
  • A guard drugs Grace. When it happens, she feels “a pinch in my neck. I turn to see a guard behind me holding a syringe.”
  • While walking down the street, Grace passes some drunk people and goes by a café where people are drinking wine.
  • Alexei’s mother was in a mental institution, where she was prescribed drugs. Grace thinks, “I don’t know what they were giving her at that facility, but I can imagine. I know better than anyone that the medicine can be far worse than the disease.”
  • A woman is put in a mental intuition where she is given a vial of medication. Grace thinks that the medicine is “supposed to feel like peace, like bliss. But to me they always felt like your heart was covered with frostbite. They made me so numb I actually burned.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

See How They Run

Finding the truth about her mother’s murder was supposed to bring Grace peace. But the past still haunts her. Grace realizes that her mother carried secrets of her own, but there are those who want those secrets to stay buried. And there is someone who is willing to kill to make sure the truth never comes out.

Grace knows there are century-old secrets surrounding her family. The only thing she doesn’t know is who to trust in her search for the truth. And when a U.S. citizen is murdered on Adria soil, Grace realizes that death is just a tool that a powerful person isn’t afraid to use.

Full of suspense and intrigue, the second installment of the Embassy Row series will captivate readers and pull them into the mystery surrounding Grace. See How They Run focuses less on Grace’s friends, and their absence makes the story less interesting. Grace doesn’t trust her own decision-making skills, and often refers to her “crazy” nature. Her complicated character adds suspense to the story. The addition of Adria’s history and the murder of a royal family creates an eerie atmosphere.

For those who enjoyed the Gallagher Girls series, See How They Run will not disappoint. However, See How They Run focuses on the death of a royal family and the murder of a young man. Even though the violence is not described in detail, the story makes it clear that someone is willing to kill innocent people.

Sexual Content

  • At a party, a boy kisses Grace. “He is leaning closer and closer. I close my eyes and feel his lips brush mine.” The kiss ends when she shoves him back.
  • Alexei and Grace kiss. The first time they kiss, Grace thinks, “Spence kissed me. But this is more. More intimate. More gentle. More emotion pounds through my veins than anything any boy has ever made me feel.”

Violence

  • An integral part of the plot revolves around a revolt that happened 200 years ago. During the revolt, “The king, the queen, two princes and a baby girl who wasn’t even a month old yet. Five of them. They pulled them from their bed, and they killed them.” The family was murdered and their bodies were hung from the palace.
  • When Alexei finds out that Spence kissed Grace, Alexei “turns and pulls back his arm in one smooth motion, dropping Spence to the ground with a single blow. . . They tumble and twist and brawl closer and closer to the party.” The fight lasts over several pages, but no one is seriously hurt.
  • When Jamie finds out that his friend kissed Grace, he “doesn’t say a word of warning. He just hits him.” Spence’s head jerks but he stays on his feet. The boy doesn’t hit back and Jamie leaves him with a warning to leave his sister alone.
  • During the festival, a drunk man recognizes Alexei. Then a mob of people attacks him and Grace. “The first fist that hits Alexei knocks him nearly off his feet. He doesn’t see it coming. . . I can feel myself getting pushed, almost knocked to the ground. I lash out, kicking a man in the knee as he lunges at Alexei. But two other men are already upon him.” During the attack, Grace is stabbed in the side.
  • Someone bombs a car. It is unclear if the driver was killed in the explosion or if the vehicle was unoccupied.
  • Someone stabs Jamie. “. . . I see blood that covers Jamie’s shirt. He’s trying to press against the wound with his free hand, but it’s not working. My brother is going to bleed to death, die right in front of me.” A helicopter arrives to take him to an Army hospital in Germany. It is unclear if he will survive his wounds.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • In the past, Grace has been given medication for anxiety. When she has a bad dream, she blames it on “the meds that I’m not taking.”
  • During a festival, a man walks by Grace and her friends. She comments that the drunk’s “breath smells like liquor.”
  • When Grace is stabbed, someone tends to the wound and then gives her “a small glass bottle” with medicine in it to help with the pain.
  • Grace does not want Alexei to turn himself into the authorities, so she drugs him. “His hand goes limp . . . His legs wobble. But thankfully we are out of view of the street by the time he passes out completely and falls, sprawling on the weeds.”

Language

  • A character, “mumbles something that I think must be the Russian equivalent to Oh my freaking goodness.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

All Fall Down

Three years after her mother’s death, Grace is sent to live with her grandfather, a powerful ambassador who is too busy to spend any time with her. Thrust into a new situation, Grace isn’t sure who to trust. Grace has never been close to her childhood companion, Megan, and wonders why she would want to help her. Her new friend Noah claims to want to be her best friend. Her brother’s best friend Alexei says he’s watching out for her out of obligation. Are they really her friends or do they have other motivations for staying close to Grace?

Grace wants to keep out all thoughts of her mother’s death, but visions of her mother keep appearing.  While Grace’s grandfather wants her to put on a pretty dress and attend functions at his side, Grace doesn’t seem to be able to stay out of trouble. When the mysterious Scared Man from her past appears, Grace overhears his plans to kill. Convinced that the Scared Man is responsible for killing her mother, Grace goes on a mission to stop him from killing again.

Grace narrates her own story, which allows the reader to see into her troubled mind and understand her terror. Grace believes that others think she is crazy because she witnessed her mother’s death; despite appearing completely normal, she struggles with panic attacks and visions of her mother. Grace saw her mother being shot in the chest, so why does everyone say the death was an accident?

Full of suspense, interesting characters, and plot twists, All Fall Down is an entertaining story that will leave the reader reaching for the next book in the series. For those who enjoyed the Gallagher Girls series, All Fall Down will not disappoint. However, All Fall Down has a more serious tone with more violence. Although the violence is not described in gory detail and is appropriate for younger audiences, Grace’s mother’s death is described in a detailed flashback. Even though the book is written for readers as young as twelve, as the series progresses there are some readers that will not be ready for the more mature themes.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Feeling overwhelmed, Grace runs from the house. As she backs out of the door, a “hand grabs me from behind” and she lashes out. “A cry rises up my throat, primitive and raw, and then I’m pushing and lunging. Falling. As I land in the rosebushes, I can feel the thorns of a rosebush tearing into my skin, clinging to my clothes.” In her panic, she hit the Russian ambassador, giving him a bloody nose.
  • While Grace is sleeping, a boy sneaks into her room and tries to wake her up. Startled, “I wrench the boy’s hand farther back, holding his thumb with my other hand.” After they talk, they sneak out of the house to attend a party.
  • Grace is told a story about a royal family that was murdered. The person speaking says, “The people stormed the palace and dragged Alexander and his family from their beds.” No other description is given.
  • Grace thinks that the Scared Man is going to kill the Russian president so she jumps off a balcony. When she jumps, “everyone is watching as I hurl myself over the railing. Even the U.S. Secret Service can do nothing but watch as I fly through the air and crash onto the Scared Man’s back.” Later she finds out that the Scared Man was holding a cell phone, not a gun.
  • Someone tries to kill Grace. “There’s a fence at my back. I can’t move any farther, and that is when the prime minister lunges for me, grabbing my arms in his massive hands, squeezing like a tourniquet. . . I can’t think anymore, so I just start kicking, screaming.” She struggles with her attacker, “when my elbow makes contact with his nose, I hear a sickening snap and feel the warm gush of blood on the back of my neck.”
  • Grace witnessed her mother’s death. “. . . I am standing there, watching my mother fall, bloody and broken. . .” The person who tried to help her was injured. “Blood rains down his face. His left eye is swollen shut. And the skin on his left cheek is almost black with blood, singed skin, and a rugged cut that runs from brow to jaw.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Grace takes prescription pills that help her deal with anxiety. Several times she refers to the pills. When she has a panic attack she doesn’t want anyone to find out because, “It will be just like after (her mother’s death). With the pills and the shrinks and the looks.”
  • After Grace jumps off a balcony and lands on the Scared Man, she is given more medication. The medication makes her act differently. The medicine makes Grace shake “my body like a pendulum that can never quite stop moving.”
  • Someone drugs Grace so that she will go to sleep. After she takes the drugs, she thinks, “I want to argue and demand answers, but it is all I can do to focus on the glass that is falling, shattering on the floor. Two seconds later, I follow.”
  • Grace’s grandfather “pours himself a drink, I can tell it isn’t the first of the night. The way things are going, it almost certainly won’t be his last.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Haunted

Phoebe isn’t sure what is going on. She keeps jumping; one minute her life is perfectly normal, and the next she is in a different location with different people. Phoebe jumps from time and place, which frightens and confuses her (and the reader). Phoebe wonders if she has a mental disorder or if she is truly jumping back in time. It is not until later that Phoebe realizes that she is in fact dead.

To add to the confusion of the story, Phoebe is trying to discover the secrets behind her parents’ move to the family mansion in England. As Phoebe learns about her ancestor, Madame Arnaud, she discovers that her sister is in grave danger. Madame Arnaud has a devious plan. With the help of Miles and Eleanor, Phoebe tries to find a way to defeat Madame Arnaud and save children from dying.

Miles’s character adds a little bit of romance and mystery, which teens will enjoy. Even though Phoebe and Miles like each other romantically, the story focuses on how they defeat Madame Arnaud.

Although Haunted has an interesting and frightening backstory with Madame Arnaud, the beginning of the story is confusing and difficult to follow. Because of Phoebe’s confusion, she comes across as an unreliable narrator, which makes it harder to sympathize with her. Haunted might be a difficult book for struggling readers.

Sexual Content

  • Phoebe meets Miles and they kiss. “His tongue was warm, but his lips were cold from the pool, a combination that made me crazy with arousal. My nipples hardened against his bare chest, with my swimsuit a scant barrier between us.”
  • Phoebe fantasizes about Miles. “Soon I’d be kissing him for all I was worth, burrowing my fingers into that beautiful, black hair. I’d take my time and lick a slow trail down his neck into the follow near his clavicle.”

Violence

  • While in a trance, Madame Arnaud enters Phoebe’s body and writes about a maid trying to kill her. The murder is not described.
  • Madame Arnaud wanted to live forever and she thought drinking a child’s blood would allow her to live longer. “If she drank the blood of a baby, she got to drink its future, all the decades it was expected to live.”
  • In order to steal the life of children, Madame Arnaud would, “gently lift the child’s arm, or whatever limb had been cut, to her lips and suck away the blood. . . And not just for a few seconds, once the child got used to it. No, she’d take a full suckle like a baby at its mother’s breast. She drank her fill.”
  • Phoebe thinks about kidnapping a child for Madame Arnaud. Phoebe thinks if she does this, Madame Arnaud will leave her sister alone.
  • Phoebe leads Madame Arnaud to a lake where she has set a trap for her. Phoebe watches Madame Arnaud drown.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Madame Arnaud tells Phoebe that when she lived in France, “we drank champagne like it was water.”

Language

  • When Phoebe’s mother sees a puncture wound on Tabby, she says, “My god! How’d you do that? A nail on this goddamn crib?”
  • Phoebe’s teacher thinks she is depressed and gives her the number of a suicide hotline. She thinks, “He actually thought I could do it. He was giving me a goddamn suicide hotline number.”
  • Phoebe cusses occasionally throughout the book. She says crap, goddammit, and damn.
  • A boy tells Phoebe, “I try my best not to be an asshole.”

Supernatural

  • Phoebe sees a vision of a woman whose “Decayed skin revealed the muscles underneath. Her right index finger had decomposed so much that just one long bone stuck out at the end.”
  • Phoebe mysteriously jumps back in time and she’s not sure if she time-traveled or if it was just a weird memory.
  • Phoebe talks about an Ouija board and automatic writing. “Basically, you sit with pen and paper and invoke a spirit . . . you invite them to use your body, and while you’re in a trance, they write their message as fast as they can.” Later in the story, Madame Arnaud enters Phoebe’s body and writes her story.
  • The mansion where Phoebe’s family lives is full of ghosts, including the ghost of the babies who Madame Arnaud killed.
  • A character tells Phoebe about a woman named Elizabeth Bathory who “Bathed in the blood of virgin peasants to keep her skin fresh and youthful. She also, if the victim was beautiful, drank the blood.”
  • In the end, the ghosts are “released” and go on to the afterlife.

Spiritual Content

The story contains a pagan yew tree that has a Rune on it. The tree aids in killing Madame Arnaud. Phoebe believes that “the house is malevolent. But something brought us together, something kept sending you to your car and me to the pool. It wanted us to figure things out and fix things.”

Bet Your Life

Jess Tennant wants to stay out of trouble, but when Seb is found on the side of the road with serious injuries, she is pulled into the drama. At the request of Seb’s younger sister, Jess tries to find out what really happened to Seb, but the more Jess discovers, the more complicated Seb’s story becomes.

In Bet Your Life Jess enters the party world of the popular rich kids. However, she soon learns that the party scene isn’t glamourous, but dangerous. As Jess learns about Seb, she finds that most people think he had it coming and nobody wants the truth to come out.

Bet Your Life explores the topic of rape. Although the rapes are not described in detail, bits and pieces of the victims’ experiences are uncovered. One of the girls talks about how the police would not believe her story because she could not remember exactly what happened. Even though Jess knows that Seb was drugging girls, she decides not to tell anyone with the hope that being beat up and left for dead will cause him to change his ways.

Unlike the first book in the series, How to Fall, the second installment of the Jess tenant series contains more sexual content and the kissing scenes are described in more detail. The sexual content may be disturbing for some teens.

Sexual Content

  • Ryan unexpectedly kisses Jessie on the mouth. “My lips were parted and it was startlingly intimate, even if it was quick.”
  • Jess watches Will and thinks, “I wanted to run my hand across his broad shoulders and down his back. I wanted him to turn around and press his body against mine. I wanted to remind myself what it was like to kiss him. . .”
  • Will and Jess kiss several times.  In one scene, Will sneaks into Jess’s house and surprises her. “I slipped my arms around his neck and he stepped between my knees, closing the distance between us . . . and then we were kissing and it made the room spin as if we were on a carousel. . . he dropped kisses down my neck. He trailed his fingers along my spine and I felt it in the pit of my stomach . . . He pulled the material off my right shoulder and leaned in to kiss my collarbone.”
  • Jess discovers that a boy was drugging girls and then having sex with them.  In one scene, a girl wakes up and is unable to move. The boy strokes her face and then she passes out.  Jess finds the boy’s cell phone which has pictures of some of the victims. “The lighting in the picture was terrible, but I could see a girl lying on her back on a rumpled bed, one arm over her face. She was topless. I was also fairly sure she was unconscious.”
  • While looking at a boy’s cell phone, Jess discovers pictures of him and his step-mom. “. . . in the picture he’d taken of the two of them kissing. And he was pretty obviously naked too, so it didn’t take a genius to work out what was going on.”
  • A girl went to the police to report that she had been raped, but the officer said, “no jury would ever take me seriously, especially when I don’t’ know where it happened or even what happened.”
  • A boy tells Jess that he was drugging girls so he could have sex with them. When she said it was rape, he replied, “There were no consequences for her. She didn’t even know it had happened, and neither did anyone else. I wore a condom. I was respectful. I didn’t take pictures or video. I didn’t make fun of them.”

Violence

  • At a party, Ryan and Will fight, presumably over Jess. The fight takes place over several pages and neither is hurt badly. When Ryan is hit in the mouth and begins to bleed, the fight ends.
  • Someone drugs Jess, locks her in a pool house, and then sets it on fire. She is able to escape without being seriously injured. However, the person who set the fire ends up dying.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Jess goes to a party where alcohol is served.

Language

  • When talking about a boy who was beat up, someone said, “There’s no justice in half killing someone because they’re a dick.”
  • Profanity is used rarely. Profanity used includes damn and ass.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Hide and Seek

Unapologetically curious—that’s Jess Tennant. So when her classmate, Gilly Poynter disappears, Jess decides she must investigate. With only Gilly’s diary as a clue, Jess finds out that Gilly’s home life wasn’t happy, and her social life was a mess. As Jess tries to find out what happened to Gilly, she discovers that the police and her boyfriend want her to keep clear of the case. But Jess is convinced that she can help find Gilly and unlock the secrets that want to remain hidden.

Although most of Hide and Seek revolves around the mystery of Gilly’s disappearance, it also delves into the complicated relationships between people. Jess’s boyfriend is back in town for Christmas break, but instead of spending time together, they are arguing. To add conflict to the story, Jess’s dad is in town trying to win over his ex-wife, which Jess is hoping doesn’t happen.

Jess Tennant is a charismatic character who has the reader running with her from the start. Hide and Seek contains mystery, suspense, and complicated relationships that keep the reader guessing. The characters in the book are complicated and real.

For teens who like mysteries, Hide and Seek tells a good story without adding graphic images of sex and violence. Instead, the author creates interesting characters that drive the action and keep the reader interesting.

Sexual Content

  • One of the characters is seen kissing his girlfriend. “She grabbed hold of him and kissed him back, pressing her body into his. One of his hands slid down her back, his fingers spreading, digging into her flesh.”
  • Jess’s boyfriend’s father lectures her on, “taking the appropriate precautions.” Jess is upset by the talk because, “it wasn’t even relevant, currently. We hadn’t. We hadn’t even talked about it.”
  • Jess kisses her boyfriend several times throughout the book. In one scene, “his mouth tasted of cinnamon and his hand was warm on my neck. His thumb stroked the skin just under my ear and I shut my eyes, lost in him.” Another time, Jess “found myself pinned against the wall. He kissed me, hard, and my heart took off, fluttering in my chest like a hummingbird.”
  • In her diary, Gilly described having sex with someone in the disabled toilet near the staff room. “We ended up on the floor . . . And it felt amazing. . . But the main thing is that it felt RIGHT.” Later it is revealed that the person Gilly had sex with was her history teacher.
  • When Jess was trying to figure out who Gill had sex with, another character goes through a list of possible people. Jess “thought of quite a large group she’d left out. The girls.”
  • Nessa talks about how her parents think she is a lesbian, but she hasn’t made up her mind yet. Later someone defends Nessa asking, “Why do you care if Nessa likes girls anyway? Why does it threaten you?”
  • The teacher kisses Gilly twice. He “turned his head and kissed her, his tongue probing her mouth.”

Violence

  • At a party, a group of girls confronts Gilly. One girl grabbed onto Gilly’s wrist. Then Gilly grips her glass so hard that it breaks. “Liquid started to seep between her fingers—wine mixed with oozing red blood that trickled down the backs of her hands and slid along her forearm, branching out as if her veins were suddenly, shockingly, on the outside of her body.”
  • Jess sees blood in Gilly’s trash can and assumes it was cutting. “I knew plenty of girls who did it, slashing their skin to ribbons in neat lines down arms or thighs, because physical pain was better than the emotional kind.”
  • A girl attacks another character. “Nessa grabbed him by the throat . . . Max was choking, his face red, and Nessa let go . . . I couldn’t tell if it was planned or not, but her knee collided with his nose. He jerked his head back, and a spray of blood splattered the fake snow . . .”
  • Two of the boys fight and the description lasts for several pages. “It wasn’t a pretty fight. It was punching and shoving and gouging eyes. It was a kick to the thigh that wrung a string of curses from Will.” Will’s father shows up and breaks up the fight.
  • Gilly and the teacher tie Jess to a latter and then lock her in a house that is about to be crushed by incoming waves.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Jess goes to a party where alcohol is served.
  • Jess goes to talk to Gilly’s mother who was acting strange. “I didn’t know if she’d been drinking or if she’d taken something, but there was no way she was sober.” Later Jess discovers that Gilly’s mother had been drugged.
  • Jess used to live in North London, “where you could buy pretty much any drug you wanted just outside the train station.”
  • One of the character’s wife is ill. He tells Jess that she, “just stays in her room, popping pills and waiting for the end.”
  • Gilly wrote in her diary that she wished she were like everyone else, “getting drunk, having fun.”

Language

  • Hell is used several times. For example, when Jess thinks someone is spying on her, she asks, “What the hell are you doing?”
  • When Will’s father breaks up a fight, he asks, “Do you want to tell me why you and this idiot are hitting seven kinds of crap out of each other?”
  • When Jess is asking too many questions, she is told to “piss off.”
  • One of the characters calls someone a “twisted little dyke” and later someone refers to another character as a “dick.”
  • In her diary, Gilly uses, “Oh my God, OMFG, and F*****G.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

How to Fall

Fraya is gone, but Jess is determined to discover how Fraya ended up dead at the bottom of a cliff. However, everyone just wants Jess to stop asking questions. After all, Fraya is dead and nothing will bring her back. Despite the obstacles, Jess is determined to follow the leads and find out if Fraya’s death was a suicide, like some believed, or if there was something more sinister at play.

How to Fall is an action-packed story that will have the reader on the edge of their seat to find out what will happen next. As Jess tries to unravel the secrets to Fraya’s death, she meets Ryan and Will. Both boys hate each other, and both want Jess as their own. This budding love triangle is expertly weaved into the story without taking over the mystery of Fraya.

Teens will relate to Jess because she is a likable character who isn’t afraid of the popular mean girls or being an outcast. Jess’s confidence in herself is refreshing in a character. Even though Jess is sure of herself, she doesn’t come across as smug. The romance and language are teen-appropriate and, although there is profanity, it is used sporadically. How to Fall is an enjoyable book that shows how bullying can quickly spiral out of control.

Sexual Content

  • Jess is going out with a boy, so she can find out what he knows about her cousin’s death.  Her friend tells her to wear “Skanky jeans” so the boy talks to her.
  • Someone started gossiping about Jess’s cousin Freya and telling people she was a “slut.”
  • At the end of the story, a boy kisses Jess. “I had spent days imagining what it would be like to kiss him, but I hadn’t even come close. He kissed me like it was the start of something, or the end, and I couldn’t work out which it was, but I didn’t want to ask.”
  • Someone tells Jess that a boy likes “dirty girls.”
  • Jess goes to a party with a boy and he kisses her. “He pressed his body against mine, and with the kiosk behind me I had nowhere to go, but I didn’t have enough air to complain.”
  • A policeman gives Jess a ride home. Before she can get out of the car, he grabs her arm.  “Slowly, deliberately, he stroked my wrist with his thumb, trialing it across the veins where the blood ran close to the surface. . .” He then wipes off her smeared lipstick. “Before I could stop him he drew his thumb along my lower lip, staring into my eyes the whole time.”

Violence

  • Natasha is upset that Jess has been spending time with Natasha’s ex-boyfriend. They argue and Natasha grabs Jess. “Before I could move, Natasha shot out a hand and grabbed a handful of my hair.” Natasha then tries to throw her over a cliff, but is stopped.
  • A character retells a story about when he and a friend were being bullied. Eventually, his friend was attacked and broke an arm.
  • A group of girls was bullying Freya. One day at school, “a whole group of girls cornered Freya and held her down so Natasha could cut off her ponytail.”
  • The story begins with Fraya running and falling off a cliff. As the story unfolds, the reader discovers that Fraya had been bullied, which eventually lead to her death.
  • Someone tries to kill Jess by throwing her off a cliff.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • A character retells a story about a boy that was “smoking dope.”

Language

  • Jess and another girl were arguing. The other girl tells Jess, “Don’t think you can do better than me at being a bitch.” Several times throughout the book someone is called a bitch.
  • Jess’s friend surprises her. Jess says, “God, Will, you scared the crap out of me.”
  • Someone tells Jess, “Don’t tell anyone, but I am shit-scared of heights.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

The Girl with the Wrong Name

Her memory is gone. All that is left from The Night in Question is the scar. Because of that one night, Theo is hiding from life. She spends her summer at a café secretly filming random people. That all changes when the same boy begins coming in every day at the same time. Theo tries to remain an observer, but soon she is caught up in the boy’s story.

The boy, Andy, is desperate to find Sarah, a girl who promised to meet him at the café but never showed. Andy is convinced that something bad has happened to Sarah. Caught up in Andy’s love for the mystery girl, Theo embarks on a quest to help Andy find Sarah. However, as she encounters others she is warned to stay away from Andy. In a desperate attempt to find Sarah, Theo realizes that some people will do anything to keep their secrets hidden forever.

The Girl with the Wrong Name follows Theo’s journey. The story is told from Theo’s point of view, which adds mystery and suspense. It is clear from the beginning that Theo is not completely emotionally stable, however, this does not diminish her likeability. Theo’s concerned for Sarah’s wellbeing is real which allows the reader to also feel concern for the missing girl.

The story is fast-paced and interesting. Since the story is told from Theo’s point of view, the reader doesn’t fully understand the other character’s reactions; however, instead of being confusing, this adds to the story’s suspense. The book has several surprises which are revealed and a sweet conclusion. In the end, the book gives a clear message about the dangers of keeping secrets.

Although the story’s recommended reading age is 14+, there is mature sex that some readers are not ready for. The ending, while interesting, may be disturbing, especially to those who have not read more mature content.

Sexual Content

  • One of the characters is described as “smelling like sex.” Theo thinks, “That’s disgusting. Not to mention impossible. ‘What could sex possibly smell like?’ I’d ask. ‘Cigarettes and cheap vodka? Latex and Axe body spray? Prom corsages and shame.’ But now I swore I could actually smell it. Like sarin gas permeating the entire room. Toxic and sticky. Acrid and humid. Warm, pubescent bodies in a can.”
  • Thoe’s friend is “superglued . . . via her ass to the crotch of Mike ‘Me Like’ DeMonaco.” Later a friend explains the friend’s behavior. “We’ve all been slaves to the same social structure since at least junior high, right? Mike could never hook up with a girl like Lou because the Sharks would have given him shit. Same for Lou . . . imagine what you would have done to her if she’d ever confessed her scorching pelvic desire for a dude who endorses butt chugging.”
  • One of the characters meets a girl, falls in love with her, and has sex with her all in one day. The sex is never described. However, Theo tells the boy that the girl disappeared because, “she’s drowning so deep in embarrassment, she can barely breathe. Not because she feels like a slut, but because she’s one hundred percent certain that you think she’s a slut.”
  • Theo writes “A Declaration of Romantic Intent” for her friend to give to a boy. She playfully writes, “I really, really, really, really want to have vigorous sexual intercourse with you, preferably in the back of a smelly taxi, or perhaps in one of those pee-stained bathroom stalls in the boys’ locker room or the girl’s locker room, if you think that is hotter. I’m cool either way.”

Violence

  • When Theo confronts a woman at a party, two men grab her and take her into the restroom.  They have an argument. A girl interrupts and takes Theo outside.
  • Theo goes to a wedding and then flees. As she leaves, someone follows her so he can talk to her. As he tries to help her, “I whirl and kick him, barefoot, in the crotch. As he doubles over, I sprint down the street.”
  • Theo finds a video of her sister’s death. After her sister secretly marries, the two go into a room to have sex. When the girl is eager to consummate the marriage, the boy gets angry and yells, “Jesus. . . Have you done this before? Do not fucking lie to me. . . Are you PURE? Or are you a slut? Because if you want it like a slut, I can do that.” He then jumps on top of her and hits her until she is unconscious. As they struggled, candles are scattered and the room catches fire. The boy leaves the girl, who dies in the blaze.
  • Years later when the above boy grows up, a similar situation arises. After he marries another girl, he gets upset and wants to know “Are you pure?” He attacks the girl. Theo races in trying to stop the man. The woman had, “blood on her chest, blood on her bare stomach. She was only wearing panties and a camisole.” During the struggle, the man was killed.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Theo takes Lezapro to help her deal with stress. In one scene she thinks, “So now it’s just me and my dear frenemy Lexapro. Sometimes I just call him ‘Lex.’ He halfheartedly wards off my depression and anxiety all day, but then keeps me awake all night so I can dream up more depressing and anxious scenarios for him to ward off come dawn. It’s the neurotic circle of life!”
  • Theo goes to a club and “Douchey-but-Harmless” asks to buy her a drink. Theo asks for water. Later, he takes her into the bathroom and, “pulls out a small plastic baggie filled with white powder.” Theo freaks and is kicked out of the club.
  • Theo goes to a bridesmaid party that she wasn’t invited to. While there she drank campaign. “The champagne hits my tongue with a sweet, delectable fizz, and I down the first glass without thinking.” After three glasses, she thinks, “I need to stop; I’m not here to get shit-faced.”

Language

  • Profanity is scattered liberally throughout the book. The profanity used includes WTF, shit, ass, asshole, dumbass, pissed, fuck, hell, and crap.
  • When Theo walks into a restaurant, she was “bitch-slapped by a foul odor.”
  • When Theo sees her friend sitting on a guy’s lap, she asks someone, “Okay, what the hell is going on with Lou?”
  • Theo tells her friend, “Jesus, I was at the Trout this afternoon, remember I saw the whole thing.” Her friend replies, “Oh, God, was I that obvious.” Jesus and God’s name are used in this manner several times in the story.
  • Theo meets a friend a day after the appointed time. She thinks, “After all, I’d risked serious injury to surprise him with my heroic return from Alienating New York Bitchhood.”
  • While in a bathroom stall with a boy, Theo tells him, “Open the goddamn door.” When she tries to get out, he drops his stash of drugs and growls, “What the fuck?”
  • A man shows up at a woman’s shelter and begins yelling, “BITCH, GET YOUR SHANK ASS DOOWN HERE, GODDAMIT!”

Supernatural

  • None

 

Spiritual Content

  • None

Glow

Julie’s future plans of going to New York for college have died. Julie is frustrated with her mother’s financial problems, a dead-end job, and a best friend who is moving on without her. When she discovers a series of antique paintings in a thrift store with hidden glowing images, her curiosity is piqued. As Julie looks for clues to the artist’s identity, she finds more paintings with increasingly nightmarish scenes hidden in the daylight.

Lydia’s story comes to life as she writes to her beloved who is on the front lines of the Great War. One hundred years before Julie’s time, Lydia is excited to join the girls in the factory painting luminous watch dials for soldiers. She is hoping that her factory job will help her struggling family, but when girls from the factory become seriously ill, Lydia wonders if there is danger lurking in the factory’s new scientific paint.

As Julie’s obsession with the paintings mounts, she discovers the truth about the Radium Girls. As she learns about the paintings, she also learns that relationships are more complicated than she thought. In the end, Julie realizes that when life’s obstacles destroy your plan, there can be a new path to finding your goal.

Megan E. Bryant tells a beautiful story of love, friendship, and broken dreams. Julie’s story is told in the first-person point of view, which allows her range of emotions to be highlighted. As Julie grieves the loss of her college dream, she also struggles with feelings of resentment towards her mother and envy over her best friend’s future. Teens will be able to relate to Julie’s frustration because life doesn’t always go as planned. However, in the end, Julie learns valuable lessons about the secrets that people keep.

Lydia’s story is told in letter format. Every other chapter of Glow focuses on Lydia’s life and concerns. The reader will learn about how life was for a young woman who lived during World War I. Lydia’s only wish is to have her soldier come home safely so they can be reunited. The unexpected ending of Lydia’s story is heartbreaking and will leave the reader in tears.

Glow captures the reader’s attention from the very beginning. The mystery of the paintings, as well as the captivating characters, make Glow a difficult book to put down. Although Glow is written for readers as young as 12, younger readers may be disturbed by the gruesome descriptions that are found hidden in the paintings. The story describes the horrific effects of radiation poisoning both in the paintings and in Lydia’s older sister’s slow death. Although there is very little sexual content, the story does show the shame of being diagnosed with syphilis during the early 1900s.

Sexual Content

  • Julie makes a wisecrack and then wonders if it made her sound “slutty.”
  • Lydia’s boss takes “liberties” with the girls.  “A leering smile here, a sneering remark there, even a pinch from time to time . . . I do not smile when he is near, lest he think I encourage such behaviors.” Later in the story, Lydia discovers her sister and her boss, “locked in a tender embrace. His thick and calloused hand, pressed to her chest. . . “
  • A doctor diagnoses Lydia’s sister with Syphilis. Lydia “has never heard it spoken out loud before, just in whisper-hisses hidden behind hands when an uncharitable rumor spreads from girl to girl.” According to the doctor, Lydia’s boss said he had an affair with her sister. The doctor said, “We also understand that your sister is known for dangling her favors before a great many men. . .”
  • When Julie is upset, her friend Luke tries to comfort her. “I just leaned up and kissed him. His lips were as soft as I imagined they would be. . . his kisses were so good, just what I wanted, just what I needed, my fingers ran through his hair, and it was so soft, so silky. I couldn’t help pulling his face closer to mine, and I think he liked it. . . I tugged at his jeans, fumbled for the button, for the zipper. Luke was poised above me. I was ready. He was ready . . . He pulled away.”
  • Julie thinks back to her time with Luke. “When I thought about how ready I’d been to sleep with him, in the mud, on the worst night of my life, I wanted to pull my hair over my face and hide. I wanted to die of shame.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Lydia’s sister breaks her leg, she is given morphine for the pain. After an operation, Lydia’s sister is again given morphine for the pain.
  • Julie remembers a time when she and her friend “got wasted.”

Language

  • Profanity is used rarely throughout the book. Profanity includes crap, holy crap, damn, goddamn
  • Julie uses Oh my God, God and Jesus as an exclamation often.
  • Julie tells her friend, “I have been to hell, and it is Triple-B on a Sunday in August. God, can you imagine?”
  • When Julie touches a painting, her friend yells, “Come on, Julie, you know this. Don’t touch the goddamn painting.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • In a letter, Lydia writes, “I send my greatest hopes that the Almighty will protect you.”
  • When Lydia’s sister has surgery, Lydia thinks that “God willing the procedure will . . . offer a cure.”

Sanctuary Bay

Sarah thought Sanctuary Bay was her ticket to a better life. She was wrong.

When Sarah receives a scholarship to an elite school, she thinks she’s finally found a place where she can fit in. No longer seen as a foster kid, Sarah is soon initiated into a secret society, the Wolfpack, where she no longer feels like an outsider, but part of the family. Her roommates, Izzy and Karina, who are also members of the Wolfpack, show Sarah that being one of them can lead to a life of luxury—after all, the students who attend Sanctuary Bay come from affluent families. They want Sarah to be one of them.

As the mission becomes more intense, Sarah must ask herself how far is she willing to go to remain part of the group?  When her roommate suddenly disappears, Sarah wonders if she is missing or murdered.  In a race to discover what happened to Karina, Sarah must decide who to trust. And in the end, she discovers that danger and deception hide around every turn.

Suspenseful and full of surprises, Sanctuary Bay’s graphic description brings the setting alive. The reader will be at the edge of their seat wondering how the strange events all come together. The story comes alive because it is told from Sarah’s point of view and the reader gets to experience Sarah’s wonder, fear, and confusion as the plot unfolds.

Set on an isolated island with no contact with the outside world, Sanctuary Bay leaves the reader wondering if this high-tech school could be real. Add into the equation that there is an abandoned WWII POW camp and an abandoned insane asylum, and the reader must work hard to believe some of the aspects of the story. The ending is even more far-fetched than the setting of the story.

The sexual content, language, and violence, which is described in detail, is not meant for the younger reader and many older readers may not be ready for the graphic images in the story.

Sexual Content

  • Sarah was in foster care. She liked her current foster home because “no one tried to slide into bed with her. There’d been no hitting or screaming.” Later, Sarah thinks about when “a foster dad came after her a couple of times when she was seven and another place a foster kid had tried some stuff when she was eleven.” However, nothing else is said about the events.
  • In the cafeteria, Karina’s boyfriend kisses her. “Not just a quick hello. A kiss. It went on so long a couple of guys at the nearby table started to hoot encouragement.”
  • The students get a video sent to them, “At first Sarah thought somebody had managed to send a porn clip to everyone, but then she realized that the woman she was looking at was a teacher she’d seen in the halls. And the other woman getting down and dirty with her was Maya. . . One student comments, “What is it about a freckled ass? It makes me want to play connect-the-dots with my tongue.”
  • As part of a mission, Sarah must kiss Karina’s boyfriend. “Sarah slid her hands up his back and knotted her hands in his hair—so thick and silky—then pulled his head down to meet hers. . . his tongue was already brushing against the seam of her lips, urging her mouth open, then his tongue was inside, tangling with hers, his hands on her waist, pulling her body flush against his.”
  • At a party for the secret society, the students play a game. “Guys grab the end of a strip with a knot in it and tie it around your wrist. Girls do the same, except use the end with no knot. When you find out who’s tied to you—well, you take it from there. . . Girls who want girls, use the green, either end. Guys who want guys, same with the red. Experimentation, as always, is welcome.” Sarah in paired up with Nate. “Sarah knelt behind him, spreading her legs so that she held his body between them. His neck . . . she still hadn’t finished exploring it. She lowered her mouth and ran her tongue across the edge of his hairline, loving the faint taste of his sweat . . . Sarah gave him a little nip, enjoying the give of his flesh under her teeth.” The make-out scene is described in detail in three paragraphs.
  • Karina’s boyfriend strides up to Sarah and, “He didn’t say a word when he reached her. He just grabbed her butt and jerked her tight against him, then bent his head and kissed her.”
  • Sarah and Nate kiss. “He deepened the kiss, his tongue exploring her mouth slowly. It was nothing like the hard, demanding kiss Ethan had given her that night after the movie. . . She let her tongue flick against his, pulling him closer against her.”

Violence

  • Sarah’s parents are killed when she is young. “Mommy on her knees facing the hotel room wall. The finger pulled the trigger of the gun . . . Mommy collapsing on the floor. Red spilling out.”
  • When Sarah spies on her roommates, she sees a group of students burying someone alive. “As they moved across the clearing past Sarah’s hiding spot, she heard a scratching, scrabbling sound, followed by a muted scream. . . Sarah’s eyes darted back to Izzy, Karina, and Nate. They just stood there. No horror on their faces. No cry of protest.” Later Sarah finds out the person that was in the coffin is fine; burying him alive was just a prank.
  • When Sarah is found spying on her roommates, she is gagged, tied up, and thrown into an old underground Nazi prison cell.
  • Sarah is taken into a strange meeting room, where, “One of the maroon-robbed followers approached and held a clay bowl at the base of Sarah’s throat. . . Even when the blade pierced her flesh, and a trickle of her blood ran down her neck and into the bowl, she still didn’t die.” The group then asks Sarah to join a secret society.
  • Izzy tells about a time when she was date-raped. “It was going too fast for me. But he wouldn’t stop . . . I just wanted him to get off of me.” He fell and hit his head on the side of a coffee table. “There was blood everywhere and I couldn’t stop it. It happened so fast. Suddenly he was . . . dead. He was still warm and everything, but his eyes were empty. He was gone.”
  • As punishment for breaking the rules of the secret society, Grayson is branded. “. . . Revealing Grayson Chandler tied down on a filthy mattress. Naked. Her flesh covered with goosebumps, nipples erect. Eyes wide with terror. . . Sarah’s stomach gave a slow, sickening roll as she saw that the rough rope had rubbed away the skin on Grayson’s wrist and ankles, leaving the flesh raw and bleeding. . . hearing the sizzle, from smelling the smoke and the frying-meat scent of Grayson’s burning flesh.”
  • In order to bring the Wolfpack closer together, the group sacrifices one of their own. “Using a strip of black leather, they tied her wrist to an iron ring that had been screwed into the thick, dark trunk, high over her head.” Nate offers a gun to the group, asking who will pull the trigger. Karina’s roommate, “Izzy snatched the pistol. She took a step away from the group, turned toward Karina, raised the gun, and fired. . . Sara stared down into Izzy’s eyes. They were expressionless and empty.”
  • Sarah and Ethan find Izzy strapped down to a hospital bed with a port connected to the back of her head.  When she is released, Izzzy attacks a guard and bites Ethan in an attempt to get away.
  • Nate begins talking to himself. “He pushed his hand into his short dark hair and managed to grab a hunk of it. ‘Stop!’ he yanked his hand away, hair and skin and blood coming with it.” He then steps off a cliff. “Far below, on the jagged black rocks in the water, lay Nate. Blood poured from his head. His body was shattered, limbs protruding from the robe at horrifying angles. He was dead.”
  • As Sarah and Ethan are trying to discover what happened to their friends, they sneak into a secret facility. When a nurse sees them, “Sarah punched her in the face. When the woman hit the floor, Ethan jumped on top of her, covering her mouth with his hand.” They gag the woman, tie her up, and put her outside where someone will find her later.
  • A fire breaks out and Nate and Sarah begin taking the restraints off of the people. “Izzy had gotten free of her restraints, and she was beating a nurse with an IV pole. The guy was on the floor already, and his head was bloody.”
  • A man attacks Nate and Sarah. Izzy soon appears. “Izzy snarled, tearing at him with one hand, stabbing him with the other . . . the scalpel plunged into him again and again, and Sarah stumbled away, Ethan by her side, as blood spurted into the air.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Sarah meets her new roommates, she is offered a cocktail. Sarah turns down the cocktail because she, “didn’t plan on meeting the dean . . . drunk off her ass.”
  • At the school one of the teachers “does impart some insane weed” and there are parties where students drink and make out.
  • During the secret societies events, the members drink “blutgrog” which she is told has, “ground bone from the POW prisoners, and their dried blood.” Sarah’s blood is also added when she is joining the group. The drink magnifies every sensation and makes people lose their inhibitions.

Language

  • When Sarah meets a girl, the girl complains about missing shopping. Sara thinks, “That’s what we call a first-world problem, bitch.”
  • When Sarah sees her new school, she says, “No fucking way.”
  • After seeing the dean, Sarah’s roommate asks, “What kind of shoes was Farrell wearing? She’s such a shoe whore.”
  • Karina is told that her, “boyfriend is kind of an ass. . . Nice butt though.” Later, Sarah wonders, “Why is Karina with this asshole?”
  • When talking about Karina’s boyfriend, her roommate says, “And you’re like one of those battered women who stay with their abusers . . . because you loooove them. All heart and no brain.” Karina gasped and says, “Fuck you, Izzy.”
  • Sarah is watching Karina’s boyfriend and thinks, “goddamn those perfect lips of his.”
  • Sarah thinks about an upcoming Wolfpack ceremony. “Three days before I’m supposed to help kill someone, and I’m drinking a beer at a bonfire. How fucked up is that?”
  • The teens in the story use profanity habitually. The profanity includes: hell, pissed, crap, badass, ass, shit, fuck, and bullshit.

Supernatural

  • Sarah has memory waves where she is back in the memory, but she can remember everything, including taste and smells.

Spiritual Content

  • None

Took

When Daniel and his sister move to rural West Virginia, Daniel doesn’t think things can get any worse.  The students at his new school torment him. The teachers are indifferent. He has no friends. His parents are unhappy. And to make matters worse, his sister spends all of her time talking to her doll.

When Daniel hears stories of Old Auntie, who kidnaps a girl every 50 years, he thinks it’s just an old tale used to frighten children. But then he feels someone watching him. He sees strange shadows. And when his sister suddenly disappears, Daniel is convinced Old Auntie isn’t just a story.

As Daniel’s parents lose themselves in grief, Daniel decides he must face his fears and bring his sister home. With the help of his neighbor and one of Old Auntie’s descendants, Daniel fights for his sister’s freedom.

Right from the start, Took: A Ghost Story will capture the reader’s attention. Young readers will be able to relate to Daniel, who feels as if all of life’s decisions are out of his control. Although Daniel clearly cares for his parents and sister, his frustration with them is understandable. Daniel is a likable character, who faces his fears and in the end, brings his family back together.

The story is primarily told from Daniel’s point of view but has several chapters told from Old Auntie’s point of view. This adds suspense to the story and helps develop the creepy mood. This is not a book to read with the lights out. Because Old Auntie and Bloody Bones are described in such realistic, vivid detail, readers will be entertained and frightened.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Bloody Bones kills someone. “Tore him clean apart with the panther’s teeth and ate him up. Then he dug his grave with the bear’s claws and brushed the ground smooth with the raccoon’s tail.”
  • The kids at school are mean to Daniel. They “accidentally” hit him and kick the back of his seat on the bus.
  • When Daniel and his sister, Erica, are in the woods, Daniel sees something and forces Erica to leave with him. They get into a fight. “. . . She struggled harder to get away from me, crying and screaming . . . she managed to bite me twice and scratch my face.”
  • Bloody Bones is going to throw Daniel off of a cliff, so Eric throws rocks at him. “Bloody Bones plunged over the edge of the cliff, screaming as he bounced from rock to rock, his bones flying apart and scattering as he went.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Daniel and Erica’s parents are seen drinking wine. When Erica is “took,” their parents drink even more. “There was an empty wine bottle on the table and an ashtray full of cigarette butts and ashes.”
  • When Daniel goes to a friend’s house, his friend’s father smells of beer and cigarette smoke.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • The story revolves around Old Auntie, a “conjure woman” who takes a girl every 50 years. When she takes a girl, she returns the one that was “took;” however, the girl is the same age as she was when she was first “took” and has no memory of her former life. Auntie weaves spells to influence people’s decisions.
  • One character describes Old Auntie as “a haunt come back from her grave.”
  • Old Auntie takes the form of a girl, so she can talk to Erica without scaring her. Auntie also uses a doll to convince Erica that no one loves her except Auntie.
  • Auntie has a razorback hog, called Bloody Bones, which she called back from the dead. “His bones put themselves together and rose up on their hind feet. His skull jumped on top of the bones, and off he danced.”

Spiritual Content

  • The townspeople are mean to the new family because they do not join the only church in town. “We weren’t only outsiders, we were godless outsiders.”
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