Genre: Romance

All that Burns

Emrys’ job was to secretly guard the prince, not fall in love with him.  However, loving him was a choice—one she gladly made, even when she had to give up her fairy power and immortality to be with him.  The mortals distrust her because they think she cast a spell over the young prince.  Now they want her and her fairy sisters dead.

To make matters worse, an old prisoner of Mabb’s has escaped and is determined to kill the royal family.  No one knows who the prisoner is or what he will do.  When Richard is abducted, no one knows if the enemy is a mortal or a fairy.  Emrys and Richard’s sister try to figure out what has happened to him, but they must do it in secret, because in a world where fairy and mortals mix, it is impossible to know who to trust.

All that Burns is an interesting story that focuses on Emrys’ love and the loss of her power.  Richard is worth all she has given up, but she still questions everything—her decision to give up her power and her new place within the mortal world.  At times, Emry’s inner conflict overshadows the story’s action and suspense.  In addition, many of the characters have lived thousands of years and reflect on their life in Camelot.  Thus anyone who is not familiar with King Arthur and Camelot may be confused.  One bright spot in the story is Richard’s sister Anabelle who is fiercely devoted to finding Richard and returning him to Emrys’ arms.

Sexual Content

  • When Richard touches Emrys she says it, “reminds me—in a faint and aching way—of magic. The way a spell burned just under my skin.    Waiting to explode.  This is what his touch does to me.  Every time.”  And then they kiss.
  • Richard’s touch slides down Emrys’ collarbone, his hand sinks into her hair and they kiss. “Richard’s breathe scarves my neck and his kisses trail down, forging new paths all the way to my collarbone . . . Want rises inside me, like the first surge on an unleashed spell.”  When Emrys reaches for the zipper on her dress, Richard “goes rigid.”
  • Another time Emrys kisses Richard and her, “hand slides up his chest and draws him closer.”
  • When another man kisses Emrys, she compares his kiss to Richard’s kiss.

Violence

  • Emrys is plague by dreams of the fall of Camelot. She sees a field that has turned to mud and is, “churned and mixed with the blood of a thousand men.  Full of flailing horses, snapped spears, and knights carved each other to pieces with crude metal.”
  • A mob of angry mortals chase Emrys and are run off by a Black Dog, which is a soul feeder. The Black Dog, which eats mortals and fairies alike, corners Emrys, but doesn’t eat her.
  • Emrys and Richard are attacked by men in black jackets and ski masks. A man presses a knife to Richard’s face and puts a cloth over his face that makes him go still. Emrys escapes only to see a Black Dog coming to get her.
  • One of the king’s guards shoots the fairy queen with electricity, the only thing that can kill a fairy.
  • When the veiling spell is broken, Emrys and the princess are chased by detectives.
  • People burn an effigy of Emrys over a fire barrel.
  • Emrys and Richard are put into a room underground, where they are told they will die when the building above them is blown-up.
  • Emrys and Richard are chased by the Ad-hene, but someone comes to their rescue by using magic to slice a staircase in half. Then the palace of Westminster is blown up, crushing the Ad-hene.
  • In the end the fairies corner Morgaine le Fay, who runs into tunnels that loop and cannot be escaped.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Emrys is under a veiling spell, she describes her steps as, “if I’ve had too many gin and tonics. I guess I am drunk in a way, reeling under so much magic after so many months without it.”
  • When inviting an enemy to dine at her table, the princess said, “I was thinking more along the lines of spiking his drink.”

Language

  • Richard tells Emrys, “the thought of losing you scares me shitless.”
  • In a fit of panic the prince’s sister uses magic and then says, “Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
  • “Crap” is used once.

Supernatural

  • There are fairies, spirits, and spells.

Spiritual Content

  • None

All that Glows

Emrys, a fiery Faery, was sent to London to guard the prince from the Old One who is out to destroy the crown.  Emrys is to guard Prince Richard, “Britain’s notorious, partying bad boy and soon-to-be king.”  Richard’s wild ways attack soul-feeding Green Woman, but also Emrys.

In a move that goes against every Faery rule, Emrys reveals herself to Richard and finds herself falling in love with the mortal.  Now she is in a fight against time to discover who the Old One is so she can keep Richard safe.  And if she can keep him safe, she will have to make the ultimate choice—loving Richard or keeping her magic.

 All that Glows is an entertaining story that has suspense, love, and intrigue.  Although others see Richard as an unruly party boy, the reader gets to see the side of him that is unsure and lonely.  As the novel progresses, Richard becomes more and more likable as he grows out of his boyhood partying ways and into a man worthy of being king.

There are several fights between Green Woman and Emrys, and the story ends with a final battle between the faeries.  These scenes add suspense and the reader is allowed to imagine these scenes unfolding since they are described without graphic or gory details.  Like the fight scenes, the love scenes are also tame.   Richard and Emry kiss and Emrys admires Richard’s physique, and although there is sexual longing, the two do not act on this desire.

 All That Glows is an excellent story.  However, there is a fair amount of scenes that revolve around clubbing, alcohol, and sexual desire that may be inappropriate for younger readers.

Sexual Content

  • When Richard looks at Emrys she describes the feeling as, “the strange jolt that seized me when our eyes met.”
  • When Richard takes Emrys to a club, Emrys thinks, “I hate the way he’s looking at me, all slow and squinty, like he wants nothing more than to get his fingers on the zipper of my dress.”
  • Richard kisses Emrys. She describes it as, “a nameless desire in the way he kisses me.  I feel it rising in me as well, swelling like clear, triumphant notes.  He pulls me closer, his kiss growing deeper, a never-ending crescendo.”
  • When Richard kisses Emrys, “it’s so easy to lose myself in the feel of him. His tongue just barely grazes the edge of my lips.  My hands slide up around his neck, anchor in his shaggy hair, pull him closer.  With a single finger he traces the ridged pathway of my spine all the way down to the small of my back…It’s like being in another universe, a time apart.  Nothing else in the world matters but how he’s touching me, making me move.”
  • In another scene, Richard kisses Emrys and she savors, “the taste of him, rest in his warmth . . . he pulls me closer . . . our kisses grow bolder, deeper. Forging new ground . . . I lose myself in his kiss.  In its perfect glowing feeling.”
  • Richard, “leans in closer, so that I feel his breath grazing my check. Deliciously hot.  Here (away from the bed’s feathery sheets), I think it will be easier to stop.  I let our lips collide, press soft into each other . . . ”
  • In another scene when Richard and Emrys kiss, she describes it as, “it’s like I’m diving into him, swimming down, down and never coming up for air. And I never want to.  His tongue grazes mine, inviting me deeper.  To places I could never go in the presence of so many watchers.”

Violence

  • A Green Woman (soul feeder) tries to sink her teeth into the prince. “The teeth beneath her mottled lips grow ragged, meant for tearing tendon from bone. “ Emrys throws herself at the soul feeder.  She then uses her magic to throw the soul feeder, “back with such force that the stall door crumples around her body.”
  • While in the restroom, a man comes in and approaches Emrys. “He’s less than an arm’s length away when he reaches out, his fingers twitching and eager.”  Richard hits the man and stands, “over the howling drunk as he writhes on the floor clutching his face and his awful, running nose.” When the man again reaches for Emrys, the drunk prince knocks him out.
  • After the fight in the club, Richard shows his sister his injured hand. She replies, “Well, you must have had one hell of a good reason to hit him.”
  • When a Banshee (soul feeder) tries to seduce Richard’s friend, Emrys jumps at her, “only dimly aware of the scattering remains of beer glasses and sloshed whiskey.” Emrys throws a spell at the Banshee taking away her voice. Then Emrys’ hands, “envelope her (Banshee), crushing over her larynx.” As she is holding the Banshee, Emrys puts a spell on the soul feeder so she cannot talk about what happened.
  • A Banshee and a Black dog attack Emrys and another fairy. However, Emrys uses a banishing spell to make them flee.
  • Emrys goes into a club to try to question a Green Woman. The Green Woman throws a spell meant to kill Emrys.  Instead it hits a girl.  “The girl’s body lies close to my feet . . .  Her eyes are open—but there’s nothing behind them.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • The prince goes to a club several times through the story. In each club scene there is drinking.  In one scene, the bartender says, “All the girls buy him drinks, and he gets drunker than a jilted woman on her wedding anniversary . . . he’s gonna get us shut down for all that underage drinking.”
  • While at a club, the prince dances and, “amber liquid sloshes from the top of his beer bottle. . . ”
  • When Emrys tells Richard that his life is in danger he, “emerges with what he’s hunting for—a bottle of whiskey and a weighty crystal glass.”
  • After Richard’s father dies, Richard has a hard time coping. He says, “. . . just a few weeks ago I was at Eton and my biggest worry was whether or not the prefects would find my stash of booze.”
  • When the fairy queen asks Emrys to report on Richard’s behavior, the queen asks, “How’s the prince coping? Drowning in the neck of a liquor bottle?”
  • Richard gets so drunk that he passes out.
  • At a dinner party, champagne and wine, “flows abundantly” and, “the crowd of faces grows increasingly flushed and the laughter grows volumes louder by the hour.”

Language

  • Richard says “bloody hell” after being attacked by a soul feeder.
  • After a night of partying, Richard’s father yells, “I’ll go to hell and back before I let you spend twelve months pissing in the corner of some pub.”
  • When Emrys shows herself to Richard he says, “Shit. I’ve gone crazy.”
  • Richard and Emrys get into an argument. Richard yells, “Maybe that (being dead) wouldn’t be such a bad thing!  Then you’ll be free and you won’t have to babysit me and wipe my ass every second of the damn day!”
  • In an argument, Richard’s sister yells, “Like hell I am,” she huffs. “You don’t just get to tell me I have a flipping Faery godmother and that we’re being attacked by some old thing and then go traipsing off into God-knows-where.”
  • Damn and hell are used several times.

Supernatural

  • There are fairies, spirits, and spells. Throughout most of the book, Emrys uses a veiling spell, which makes it so mortals cannot see her.
  • Emrys uses a banishing spell to keep people away and a spell that wipes people memories. She uses a variety of other spells as well.
  • Emrys talks about Henry VIII and the ghost of his wives as, “disturbed, unrested souls—cluster around, haunting him in all their vehemence.”
  • There are Tower ravens, “prophets clad in black feathers” that warn Emrys that someone is out to kill all of the royal family. In another scene, several of the Tower ravens go to Emrys to warn her about the Old One. They tell Richard that the Old One is, “coming for your crown and head.”
  • Emrys explains soul feeders. “There are spirits whose powers are strengthen by a mortal’s death…They like to hunt in the cities, usually at night.”
  • Banshees suck out mortals’ souls with a scream. They can also shape shift into weasels, stoats, hares, and crows.
  • A Green Woman appears as a beautiful, green-clad blonde to seduce and kill men.
  • Emrys explains that royal blood contains blood magic that can be transferred, which is why the Old One wants to kill him.
  • Emrys explains that there are many types of supernatural creatures including Herne the Hunter, who is a very old spirit who guards the woods of Windsor.

Spiritual Content

  • There’s several references to “the Greater Spirit.” One of the characters tells Emrys, “may the Greater Spirit go with you.”
  • Emrys promises to erase a Black Dog’s memory and tells him, “I swear it by the Greater Spirit.”
  • After Richard’s father dies, Richard says, “Sometimes I wonder if he’s watching me . . . I wonder if he likes what he sees.”
  • Emrys looks at the Thames and thinks, “In dusk’s illuminating glow, the surface of the Thames looks less full of sewage and debris and more like the mighty brown god it once was.”
  • When a faery dies, Emrys says, “We do not know what lies beyond this plane. We can’t imagine where our sisters might be now—yet we know they aren’t gone.”

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

In a book that takes place in the time span of about a day, Hadley Sullivan misses her flight at the airport in a matter of minutes. Those minutes will change her life as she is forced to take the next flight, and meets Oliver, a tall and handsome boy from England. They instantly connect at the airport and on the plane, but after the flight, Hadley is left wondering if that is the end of their journey, or if fate will bring them together again.

Hadley is on her way to her father’s wedding, where he is marrying a woman she has never met, an English lady, who her father fell in love with while he was teaching at Oxford. Still upset by her parent’s divorce, and coming to terms with her father’s marriage, Hadley must battle with the mixed feelings she has for her father as she grabs the next flight to London.

Hadley is a very relatable character and her interactions with Oliver are sweet. The novel is overall fun and light, even though it touches on some heavy content with both Hadley and Oliver’s fathers. Hadley’s story is fun, fast, and touching. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight is a cute love story that navigates the emotions of a young teenage girl dealing with a broken home.

 Sexual Content

  • Hadley mentions that she is a part of an e-mail chain, where one of the things Charlotte and her bridesmaids talks about are, “lingerie preferences.”
  • Hadley and Oliver almost kiss, causing Hadley’s heart to skip around and the feeling of a “bolt of electricity” when their hands brush, but they get interrupted.
  • Hadley and Oliver kiss in the airport before they leave, and Hadley describes Oliver’s lips as, “soft and taste salty from the pretzel they shared.”
  • When she meets Oliver at the funeral home, they share an urgent and desperate kiss.
  • Oliver tells Hadley that his father has had multiple affairs.

 Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Rebecca Mondon

I Never

Janey King’s life revolves around school, friends, and her family. When Luke Hallstrom, a hot senior, notices her, Janey finds that navigating her first serious relationship can be tricky. Janey is trying to add Luke to her life, but not all of her friends are happy about their relationship. Janey isn’t completely sure that Luke will stay true to her. To complicate matters her parents are getting a divorce.

With Janey’s new relationship comes new complications. She must decide if she is ready to have sex, and if Luke is the person to give herself to. I Never gives readers graphic details of Janey’s experimentation with sex. The book’s message is “sometimes people need sex with no strings attached.” However, the story doesn’t address any of the negative and potentially dangerous sides of sex. The story seems to forget that not every boy is as respectful as Luke, and not every sexual encounter is satisfying. Because of the graphic descriptions of sex, this book should be picked up with caution.

Sexual Content

  • The story begins with the narrator contemplating her love life and thinking how other teens have already had sex, but she thinks, “sex should mean something.” Throughout the rest of the story, there are numerous hook-ups. The narrator talks about her friend’s sex life and her own sexual experiences in some very detailed scenes. Not all of the sex descriptions are recounted below.
  • As Janey is trying to figure out if she should have sex with her boyfriend, she and her friends discuss how sex should work, how to let a person know when you are ready to have sex, and about their own experiences.
  • Janey’s friend, Danielle, has a boyfriend who is always making out with her at school. After a two-week school break, Danielle’s boyfriend sees her. “Charlie turns her around, backs her up against the lockers, and starts kissing her with unbridled desire . . . It’s as though Danielle and Charlie are totally unaware of where they are and who’s nearby.”
  • Janey and another character discuss Danielle’s sex life. “I know they did it in her dad’s car while it was in the garage and her parents were watching a movie upstairs. . . They did it after school in the multipurpose room . . . they went to town on the table.”
  • Janey’s friend Sloan, “is the girl some parents would refer to as fast. She’s a virgin but loves to go to parties to ‘hook up’ with guys. In fact, her mantra is everything but.” Sloan went to a party and made out with two different boys.
  • Janey’s boyfriend Luke tells her that his parents bought him condoms, “and put them in my bathroom, but we never discussed it.” Luke also talks about how his brother “came out when he was a senior in high school.”
  • Janey and Luke kiss frequently. During their first kiss, “His tongue ever so gently finds mine, and our two tongues do a little dance. I am lost in him, in his soft lips, his smooth tongue, his yummy smells.”
  • After track practice, Janey and Luke make out on the pull vault mat. As they kiss, he takes her shirt off.  “. . . He’s lying on me, his legs between mine. . . I feel his whole body pushing against me. I can tell how much he wants me.”
  • Janey and Luke make out often. Once when they were making out, Janey describes Luke in his “black boxer briefs that hug his body and make his erection beyond obvious . . . It’s an entirely different matter to see a huge boner underneath a thin layer of back cotton. And that boner is pointed at me. It’s a turn-on, but also a little scary . . . My legs separate slightly and he fits snugly between them. I can feel the warmth beneath our underwear.”
  • Janey and Danielle go condom shopping. They discuss what type to use. When Janie asks why they are shopping for condoms, Danielle said, “Because if you show up for protection, he’ll know you’re ready . . . And trust me, it’ll be the biggest turn-on ever.”
  • Janey and Luke are kissing in the car.  “. . . I feel wetness between my legs the second his tongue enters my mouth . . . I feel weak, I moan, I get wet. . . it’s clear my body wants him desperately . . . I need to have sex with him. The same way I need food, water, and shelter.”
  • Janey and Luke make out naked in a hot tub. “His hands move down my back and explore my butt and my waist as he pulls me closer to him, pushing me against him. The kissing is constant, while I drop my hand to feel him. It’s smooth and the skin is soft, but the whole thing is so incredibly hard, much harder than I would have thought possible.” They stop when Janey decides she’s not ready to have sex.
  • Janey and Luke go back to her father’s house. Janey has decided she is ready to have sex, which is described over approximately five pages. “I put my hand on him feeling his hardness, knowing that it will soon be inside me . . . He spends significant time tickling and rubbing my boobs. . . sucking on my breast and flicking his tongue against my nipples . . . I wrap one hand firmly around the base and use the other to tickle the rest. I keep both hands moving, working in a rhythm. . . The moisture between my legs gets more obvious, allowing him to enter me push by push, millimenter by millimenter. . . My hands find his ass and squeeze while he moves up and down, in and out. . .”
  • Luke tells Janey she should masturbate so she knows what she likes. “Because if you know what you like, I can do it for you.”
  • While in the car parked outside of Janey’s house, Luke makes out with Janey and they make each other climax.
  • Janey walks in on her newly separated mom having sex with a man. “My mother is on her back amid her throw pillows, her legs splayed. An unknown man is on top of her, his back slightly hairy . . . His ass, also slightly hairy, knocks repeatedly against my mother, and with each knock, she lets out a little grunt . . . my mom is having raucous, furious, daytime sex in my parents’ bed with a man who most definitely is not my father.”
  • Danielle finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her and sexting. “He told her he wanted to squirt whipped cream all over her and lick it off . . . Charlie and I did that on Valentine’s Day.” Later in the story, Janey tries it with Luke. “. . . He delicately uses his tongue to make little waves in the white stream. I can barely stand it. I practically beg him to have sex with me.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Janey’s parents take her out and order champagne. “I know my mom will give me a sip of her champagne and it will tickle my nose and taste bitter. . . “
  • When Janey goes to Luke’s house for dinner, his parents have wine, but they won’t let Luke drink any.
  • Luke tells Janey about how his brother went out and drank beer and sang eighties pop songs.

Language

  • Profanity is scattered throughout the story. Damn is used six times which is the most.  Profanity includes, “ass, bitch, bitchy, crap, bullshit, holy crap, damn, dumbass, holy moly, hell, pissed shit, shitty, oh my god, and Oh my f-ing god.”
  • When Janey’s friend sees her kissing Luke in an empty classroom, he says, “what the hell. . . Maybe you didn’t tell me because you’re wasting your time with a worthless, arrogant guy who’s going to treat you like shit.”
  • “Charlie often sits with us because god forbid he miss an opportunity to put his hand on Danielle’s ass.”
  • Janey said her dad, “never seemed to notice a hot piece of ass nearby.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

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

Fever

Escaping with Gabriel was supposed to be the hard part, but as Rhine travels the country in search of her brother, she realizes that escaping the mansion was easy compared to what is coming next.

Captured by Madame, a woman of dubious sanity who wants Rhine to become one of her scarlet girls, Rhine starts to wonder if leaving the mansion was the right course of action. It seems there is nowhere she can go to reclaim her freedom. Would it not have been better to die in comfort at the mansion, forced to wed one man, than to spend her last years forced into prostitution in Madame’s decrepit carnival?

Hundreds of miles away, Housemaster Vaughn continues his twisted plans, in which Rhine unknowingly still has an important part to play.

While Fever’s pacing is not as smooth as Wither’s, interesting characters are introduced that will keep the pages turning. DeStefano does an excellent job at creating an atmosphere of urgency and weaving a perpetual feeling of captivity. Rhine struggles with many mature issues, such as how far she is willing to submit herself, sexually, in order to survive.

Sexual Content

  • Rhine is captured by Madame, who runs several scarlet districts. “Filthy girls are peeking out from a slit in the rainbow-striped tent, blinking like bugs. And I know immediately that this must be a scarlet district—a prostitution den.”
  • Rhine spins a lie to placate Madame. She says her husband was malformed, and she had an affair with her attendant. “He might have turned into a beast around me, but it didn’t matter. Nine times out of ten, he couldn’t do anything about it. And like you said, women have needs.”
  • Rhine and Gabriel are forced to have intercourse while being watched by Madame’s paying customers. This act is described briefly. “I didn’t let myself look outside my cage. Rather than the rustles and the murmurs, I focused on the brass music playing in the distance. After a while it all blurred together . . . Gabriel kissed me, and I parted my lips, closed my eyes. It felt like one short, murky dream.”
  • When Rhine stays the night in a stranger’s home, the man sexually assaults her. “He kisses me. It’s a hard, forceful kiss, his tongue prying my mouth open, attacking me with salt and cheap liquor and hot, coppery breaths . . . I feel like his tongue is slithering down my throat, choking me. His other hands moves past the drawstring of my sweatpants . . . gripping the fleshiest part of my thigh.”
  • Silas often brings girls home. In one scene, Rhine finds “Silas pressed against the wall and tangled in the arms of a new girl.” He asks Rhine, “Come to join us?”

Violence

  • When Rhine is captured by Madame, Gabriel is beaten. “The sick sound of bone hitting skin. Gabriel lands a perfect punch . . . but then there are others grabbing his arms and kneeing him from all sides.”
  • Madame beats and almost kills Maddy, a little girl, for ruining a sale. Her mother hides Maddy; she tells Madame her daughter died and her body was incinerated.
  • Madame’s son shoots a Gatherer who tried to steal Rhine instead of paying for her. “Then another shot, this time from Jared’s gun. For the second time in my life, I watch as a Gatherer crumples and falls down dead in front of me.”
  • Madame’s daughter and husband were killed in a bomb before the beginning of the book; this is mentioned in hindsight.
  • When Rhine returns to her home, she finds it has been burned. In the basement are dozens of dead rats.
  • Rhine sees a dead girl lying in a gutter. “It’s too late. I’ve already seen the dead girl lying face up in the shallow water, her eyes full of clouds . . . I do not see this girl’s features, the color of her hair. A bizarre thing happens. I see her bones instead. I see right through her skin, to the blood and tissue that’s blackened and still. I see the torn muscle that used to be her heart. That’s where the Gatherer’s bullet hit.”
  • Rhine attempts to cut Housemaster Vaughn’s tracker out of her thigh with the shard of a broken pitcher. “Hands try to stop me. My name is being shouted . . . it’s Cecily’s brown eyes I’m staring into. Blood on her shirt . . . she’s trying to take the glass from my fist, and then she’s trying to stop the bleeding with her open fingers.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Gabriel’s captors forcibly give him angel’s blood, which is a sedative. One of the prostitutes says, “It’s just a little angel’s blood. The same stuff we take to help us sleep.”
  • Rhine and Gabriel are exposed to aphrodisiacs by Madame to make them put on a show for her customers. “It’s making me greedy, making me tilt my head so that his kisses to my neck reach my lips, and making me take him with me as I lean back into the pillows that clatter with beads . . . the smoke of the incense is alive. It traces the length of us. The heady perfume of it makes my eyes water, and I feel strange.”
  • Rhine is drugged to keep her from fighting. “It feels as though the world is a giant bubble about to pop, spilling forth bees and words.” A girl tells Rhine that she was given “angel’s blood mixed with a depressant to keep you asleep.”
  • Gabriel goes through withdrawal from angel’s blood. “His rattling gasps are made all the more terrifying by the fact that I can’t see him. ‘Gabriel?’ The response is a pitiful groan . . . ‘It’s like someone wrapped twine around all my organs, and pulled.'”
  • Rhine starts dying from withdrawal from a treatment Housemaster Vaughn had been secretly giving her. She faints, feels weak, and vomits.
  • Housemaster Vaughn starts experimenting on Rhine. He pumps her full of drugs that cause her to hallucinate. “I lose the distinction between dreams and reality . . . I see my father, pale and lifeless, standing in the doorway watching me . . . I hear Rose in the ceiling start to scream.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Rhine sees a fortune teller, who says, “It’s a good card. . . It means everything will fall into place. Your world will come together.”

Spiritual Content

  • Some people think the human race is doomed, and there should be no more experiments on children to try to save themselves from extinction.

by Morgan Lynn

Sever

Back with her husband and sister-wife, Rhine can’t help but wonder if she has done the right thing. Jenna is dead, Diedre has been tortured, and she doesn’t know where Gabriel is. When Rhine sees Cecily with her former husband and Cecily’s child, and she feels more alone than ever.

Despite her doubts, Rhine is still determined to find her brother. After taking time to recover from her hospital stay, she sets north with the unexpected companionship of Cecily and Lindin. But once again, she discovers Housemaster Vaughn is one step ahead of her. And this time both Rhine and her brother will play a part in his search for the cure.

Sever’s plot is similar to DeStephano’s first two books, and reading it feels like Déjà vu. Also, the cure discovered for the Virus was not quite believable. Still, DeStephano writes a surprising ending to her trilogy, and the last chapter in Sever ties this world up with a bow and leaves her characters in a satisfying place.

Sexual Content

  • Cecily is now in the middle of her second pregnancy at the age of fourteen.
  • Rhine and Linden kiss. “His lips are familiar. I know the shape of them, know how to make mine fit against them. His taste is familiar too . . . I’m holding his life against my tongue, between my rows of teeth.”
  • Cecily has a violent miscarriage that nearly kills her. “Sliding down her thighs is an abundance of red. It’s pooling at her feet, from the trail of blood that followed her into the room.”
  • Rhine tells her former husband that she and Gabriel did not have intercourse while they were at the mansion.
  • It turns out Rhine and Rowan were created via a vitro fertilization.

Violence

  • Cecily is convinced Vaughn wants to kill her. She says she will murder him before he has the chance.
  • It turns out that Rowan, Rhine’s brother, has bombed a few research facilities. He is called a terrorist. The “explosion comes . . . I can feel the heat of the flames . . . I turn around to watch the burning building that just moments ago was the Lexington Research and Wellness Institute.”
  • Rowan thinks Rhine was killed for science. “She was lured into some primitive makeshift laboratory . . . her heart began to palpitate first. And then her throat swelled shut; her eyes started to bleed. And when she died, several agonizing minutes later? Her body was dissected for even more“
  • It is discovered that Vaughn lied to Madame, telling her that her husband and daughter died in a car bombing by pro-naturalists. He then kidnapped the daughter and told her both her parents died in the same bombing, so she would have nowhere to run.
  • Rowan undergoes the same medical treatments as his sister, which includes having a needle inserted into his eyes.
  • Lindin hits his head during a plane landing. “Linden puts his hand to his temple, and it comes back bright with blood that’s trickling down the side of his face . . . and then he’s falling. I swear I can hear the sound of his bones hitting the dirt. Blood is frothing in his mouth, and his eyes are closed and he’s having convulsions.”
  • Cecily shoots Vaughn twice in the chest with a small gun. “A load crack splits the air . . . Vaughn puts his hand to his chest, and that’s when I see the dark stain of blood on his shirt. Another shot comes, and then he drops to the ground, astonished eyes open and unblinking.” Cecily and Rhine then make it look as though someone broke in and murdered him.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Reed smokes.
  • When Cecily asks Reed if he has enough formula to care for the baby, he jokingly says, “Formula? . . . A boy his age is ready for rum.”
  • Vaughn gives Rhine pills. “I’m barely conscious by the time we land . . . I see the oriental rug rushing toward me as I fall, and then someone is holding me by the arms and I’m eased into a wheelchair.”

Language

  • Cecily calls Reed a moron for smoking near her child. “I’m pregnant, you moron . . . and in case you’re blind, there is also a five-month-old baby sitting next to you.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Morgan Lynn

If I Stay

In an instant, everything changes for seventeen-year-old Mia. A horrific car accident kills her family and leaves Mia struggling for her life. As her injured body is taken to the hospital, Mia hovers between life and death. Mia sees herself and is able to walk through the hospital and listen to the living.

Mia roams the halls of the hospitals and listens in on family, friends, and others. As she contemplates her life, she struggles with the loss of her family.  In the end, she must decide if she will stay.  Can Mia face life with possibly crippling injuries? Is her love of friends and family enough to make her stay? Is her life worth living if her family is gone?

Readers will be captivated as Mia reflects on her relationship with her family, boyfriend, and friends.  Told from Mia’s point of view, teens will relate with her as she navigates the difficult decisions about college and boyfriends. If I stay is geared for older readers who are ready to read a book with mature themes and sexual material.

Sexual Content

  • Mia talks about her boyfriend. “. . . We hadn’t done much more than kiss. It wasn’t that I was a prude. I was a virgin, but I certainly wasn’t devoted to staying that way.”
  • Mia’s mom took her to Planned Parenthood to get birth control pills and told Mia to have her boyfriend get tested for various diseases. She gave Mia money to buy condoms.
  • Mia’s friend goes to a Jewish summer camp each year. Her friend calls it “Torah Whore, because all the kids do all summer is hook up.”
  • Mia’s mother talked about dating in high school. “There’s only so many times a girl wants to get drunk on Mickey’s Big Mouth, go cow-tipping, and make out in the back of a pickup truck.” Later on, the story talks about Mia and her boyfriend’s relationship. “It was nothing like the drunken roll in the back of some guy’s Chevy that passed for a relationship when I was in high school.”
  • A girl drops out of high school because she is pregnant.
  • At a New Year’s party, Mia’s boyfriend kisses her. “And I kissed him back so hard, like I was trying to merge our bodies through our lips.

Violence

  • Mia’s family is in a car accident. Her parent’s bodies are described in gory detail. Mia sees her father’s body. “. . . As I walk toward him, the pavement grows slick and there are gray chunks of what looks like cauliflower . . . Pieces of my father’s brain are on the asphalt.”  She also sees her own injured body. “One of my legs is askew, the skin and muscles peeled away so that I can see white streaks of bone.”
  • Mia and another girl fight. “She charged me like a bull, knocking the wind out of me. I punched her on the side of the head, fist closed, like men do.”  The two end up becoming friends.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Mia’s father would get “wasted” to help him deal with stage fright. Her father said, “I don’t recommend that for you. . . Social services frowns on drunk ten-year-olds.”
  • Mia’s boyfriend can’t get into the hospital to see Mia. His friend suggests he “fake a drug overdose or something so you wind up in the ICU.” He replies, “this is Portland. You’re lucky if a drug overdose does get you into the ER.”
  • Mia and her boyfriend go to a New Year’s party where he gets drunk. Mia has one beer.

Language

  • Profanity is used often and includes asshole, bitch, crappy, damn, dicking, goddamnnit, piss, hell, motherfucking, fucking, and shitty.
  • A medic said that they need to get Mia to the hospital quickly even if they “have to speed like a fucking demon.”
  • Mia’s boyfriend tells her, “I love that you’re fragile and tough, quiet and kick-ass. Hell, you’re one of the punkiest girls I know. . . “
  • Someone asked Mia about playing cello with others. “I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, but isn’t that how you get good? It’s like tennis, if you play someone crappy, you end up missing shots or serving all sloppy. . .”
  • When Mia’s friends are in the hospital, they ask about another patient. Mia thinks, “I’ve never heard any of Adam’s friends talk so PG-13 before. It’s their sanitized hospital version of ‘holy fucking shit.’”
  • Mia’s mom said, “Love’s a bitch.”

Supernatural

  • Mia is in a coma and can see and hear living people. She must decide if she lives or dies. Her living is “not up to the doctors. It’s not up to the absentee angels. It’s not even up to God who, if He exists, is nowhere around right now. It’s up to me.”
  • Mia describes memories that she has from before she was born. Mia thinks of her grandmother and, “that maybe I was there as an angel before I choose to become Mom and Dad’s kid.”

Spiritual Content

  • Mia’s grandparents talk about guardian angels. Mia thinks, “maybe I’ll tell Gran that I never much bought into her theory that birds and such could be people’s guardian angels. And now I’m more sure than ever that there’s no such thing.”
  • Mia thinks back to a funeral that she went to with her parents. The person giving the eulogy, “concluded by reassuring us that Kerry was walking with Jesus now. I could see my mom getting red when he said that, and I started to get a little worried that she might say something. We went to church sometimes, so it’s not like Mom had anything against religion, but Kerry did. . .”

 

Where She Went

Three years ago, Mia’s life changed forever. Mia lost her family in a devastating accident. And when she woke up from a coma, she decided to walk out of Adam’s life. Forever.

Now Mia is a rising star at Julliard and Adam is a rock star, with a celebrity girlfriend. They live on different sides of the country, but fate brings them back together for one night. As Mia and Adam spend an evening exploring the city that is now Mia’s home, they revisit the past. But is one night enough time to open their hearts to each other? Can they build a future together or will Mia walk out of Adam’s life one more time?

Told from Adam’s point of view, Where She Went focuses on Adam’s emotional state. After Mia left, Adam relies on prescription drugs and sex to cope with life. The story is emotionally gripping but darker than the first book in the series. Where She Went deals with many adult topics and not all readers will be ready to dive into the book.

Sexual Content

  • A reporter asks Adam about his girlfriend. “. . . Are you and Bryn Shraeder having a baby?”  Adam replied, “Not that I know of.”
  • Adam thinks about seeing Mia’s eyes, “in the eyes of every other girl I laid on top of.”
  • When Mia and Adam talk, she mentions staying the night at a man’s house. Adam feels “sucker-punched” and thinks, “You’ve been with so many girls since Mia you’ve lost count, I reason with myself. It’s not like you’ve been languishing in celibacy. You think she has.”
  • An actress was nominated for “The Best Kiss Award” but did not get it. She said, “I lost to a vampire-werewolf kiss. Girl-on-girl action doesn’t have the same impact it used to.”
  • Mia talks about her friend who would like to get married, but gay marriage isn’t legal in the state where she lives.
  • Adam and Mia go back to his place. “The minute the door clicked shut behind us, she’d pounced on me, kissing me with her mouth wide open. Like she was trying to swallow me whole . . . as she kissed me, my body had begun walking up to her, and with it, my mind had gone, too.” Before anything more serious happened, Mia started crying and then left.
  • Mia invited Adam to her grandparents’ place and she kissed him. “Not the usual dry peck on the lips but a deep, rich, exploring kiss. I’d started to kiss her back.” Adam remembered Mia’s tears the last time they were together and stopped.
  • When Adam is on the road with his band, he had sex with a string of different girls. One time, “. . . with Viv’s hand playing on the small of my back, I was rearing to go. I spent the night with her at her apartment. . .” The next morning one of his friends said, “Good thing I hit Fred Meyer for the economy box of condoms before we left.”
  • Mia and Adam have sex. The scene is described in detail over several pages. “I run my fingers along her neck, her jawline, and then cup her chin in my hand. . . And then all at once, we slam together. Mia’s legs are off the ground, wrapped around my waist, her hands digging into my hair, my hands tangled in hers. . .”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Adam takes an anti-anxiety prescription drug when he’s feeling “jittery” and sleeping pills.  However, he still has trouble sleeping despite “a medicine cabinet full of psychopharmacological assistance.”
  • When talking to a reporter at a restaurant, Adam orders three beers.
  • Adam thinks about famous rock stars who “drugged themselves into oblivion. Or shot their heads off. What a bunch of assholes. . . You’re no junkie but you’re not much better.”
  • Adam goes on a date with a girl and they “sat on the beach, sharing the wine straight out of the bottle.”

Language

  • Profanity is used often throughout Adam’s thoughts and characters’ words. Profanity includes: ass, crap, damn, dick, pissed, prick, shit, and fuck.
  • Adam thinks that “there is no fucking way” he will fly on Friday the thirteenth.
  • Adam gets angry with a reporter and yells, “This has fuck to do with music. It’s about picking everything apart.”
  • Someone calls Adam a “Prissy, temperamental ass.”
  • Mia said, “Your professor sounds like a dick!”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Deception’s Princess

As princess of Connacht, and the last of six daughters, Mauve’s life should be perfect. As she matures, rich and powerful men begin to notice her because of her beauty and dowry. After all, who wouldn’t want to marry Mauve and become the next high king?

But Mauve must learn how to keep her suitors at a distance without offending them. She must learn who can be trusted and who is an enemy.

When Mauve becomes friends with Odran, the son of a visiting druid, she learns what true friendship is. But she also learns that having a friend can lead to danger—both for herself and Odran. In the end, will Mauve stay loyal to her family or will she choose to follow her own heart?

Mauve is a feisty heroin with the spirit to go after what she wants. At times she can seem ungrateful and selfish. As she tries to figure out who she is, she often endangers herself and those around her. However, the reader can understand her struggle to find a path of her own.

The book is interesting, but it is not a page-turner because of a lack of action. However, because most of the violence is not described, the book is suitable for younger readers. Additionally, the ending is satisfying enough on its own that the reader can choose to end the series after book one or to continue on to read the second book, Deception’s Pawn.

Sexual Content
• The queen has asked the fosterlings girls to try to find out where Odran disappears each day. When Mauve finds out about it she thinks, “Our fosterlings girls aren’t hunters, and flirting with Odran won’t work, but what if they flirt with someone who is a hunter? A good one? There were any number of young men under our roof who fit that description and who would willingly trade their tracking skills for kisses and the promise of more.”
• Odran slips his arm around Mauve’s waist and they kiss. “His lips still held the taste of the bread I’d brought for us to share and had a faint savor of sweetness. I was so startled by his kiss that though I kissed him back, I stood like a stone in his arms.” After the first kiss, “He was about to gather me into his arms again, but I was quicker. Now I knew what I wanted, and I was the one who led the way. Oh, such a soaring feeling. So sweet, so free, and so wrapped in its own enchantment that we hovered in a moment outside of time.”
• In another scene Odran and Mauve kiss. “He moved so desperately fast that our teeth collided and my mouth was crushed . . . I thought I was going to die from lack of breath and I didn’t care…I yearned for him all the more and held him fast.”

Violence
• Mauve’s friend Kelan is killed because “he claimed he overheard my darling mutter that someone else deserved that damn piece of meat. False! False! He refused to hear my beloved’s oath that he’d said no such thing, challenged him to fight it out and killed him at the second blow.” Later on, Mauve finds out that her father ordered Kelan’s death because Kelan taught her how to use a sword.
• Odran’s father finds out that he has been helping injured animals. Odran’s father is so upset that he kills the animals. “The blackthorn stick lashed down. There was a sickening sound of impact and agonized yelp, and Muirín lay stretched dead of the floor. I was still frozen by the horror of that small broken body when Master Íobar strode to where the hare crouched, trembling, and destroyed her too.” When Mauve and Odran question Master Íobar, he strikes Ordan.
• It is hinted that one of the men hits his servants.

Drugs and Alcohol
• Often the king entertains guests. During the nightly feast there is mead. One evening the men are “overcome by all the mead and Gaulish wine they’d been drinking.”

Language
• Damn is used by one of the servants.

Supernatural
• None

Spiritual Content
• Because the story takes place in Ireland, there are references to the Fair Folk, the Otherworld, as well as important times of year such as, “Samhain, the time of shadows, the turning of the year from light to dark. The border between our world and the realm of the spirits grew as thin as frost on a blade of grass. Few dared to venture outside on that night for fear of meeting the fair folk or the dead.”
• A druid is a major character in the story. Maeve explains, “. . . druids and bards were often touched by Lugh, the god of poets.” Later in the story, the men plan to take a trip to, “watch horses run and men compete in countless athletic games to honor the god Lugh . . . ”
• Mauve’s father is afraid of a druid because “he is a man who can speak to the gods! He reads their desires and commands our sacrifices . . . he has the power to curse us down to the marrow of our children’s bones!”
• As Maeve takes a walk she thinks, ”this snowfall was a gift from the Fair Folk, from the gods, a magical spell that transformed familiar places with glittering enchantment.” Later on in the story, she thinks, “the gods seemed to listen.”
• Mauve becomes upset when an animal she was caring for dies. “I don’t know if he buried the body or left it for Flidais to find. Goddess of wild things, lady Flidais, take back your own, I prayed. Let the last gift of his body feed your other children. Let his spirit find peace.”
• Mauve keeps a piece of her dead friend’s sword. When she does she thinks, “At Samhain, when the dead bring their grievances to the living, no angry spirit came to haunt me. That was how I knew I’d done the right thing.”
• When Mauve’s mother becomes pregnant, “there was no counting the number of offerings my parents made to the goddess Brigid in her role as blesser and helper of childbirth.”
• Mauve’s friend Odran takes care of injured animals. His mother taught him how to care for animals. As he tells how he learned his skill, Odran explains that his father did not like the animals but, “Mother’s friend was there to remind him that he owed my life to Flidais, the goddess who cares for wild things.”
• When the king announces that he will not travel to Tara for the rites, a druid yells at him, “Are you so weak that you’d sacrifice the safety of your people, the fate of all Èriu, and the gods’ favor because you must cling fearfully to one woman’s skirts? I tell you, you will bring a thousand curses on everything you love if you follow any path that keeps you from your appointed place at Tara this Samhain. I know it for every one of those curses will come from my mouth and break over Cruachan like a thunderbolt mighty enough to shatter stone!”
• A series of pranks occur and the people blame it on the fair fokes. One man suggest that, “Lord Eochu’s druid ought to read the omens and see what he’s done to offend the gods.”

Emerald Green

The pieces are starting to come together, and the truth is terrifying. The Count is a powerful man who has killed many people in order to keep his plan in place. Gwen has her hands full stopping him, but her friends and family aren’t helping. Gideon’s behavior baffles and frustrates Gwen, who isn’t sure if she can trust or depend on him. And Charlotte’s jealousy of Gwen might unravel their entire family.

The ghost gargoyle Xamerius is one of the best parts of Emerald Green. Xamerius is realistic, humorous, and much better than a pet.

The trilogy remains strong with this final installment. Gwen is finally getting an idea of what she must do, but that doesn’t hamper the suspense in any way. The stakes are high, and conflicting motives create conflicts that will either bring about the end of mankind or save it.

Sexual Content

  • While Gwen and Gideon are talking, she thinks, “Now kiss me: I want to know if stubble feels prickly.”
  • Gwen and Gideon kiss several times. In one scene, “his left hand was buried in my hair and his right hand began stroking my throat, slowly wandering down.” The mood is interrupted when Gwen’s phone rings.

Violence

  • Gideon and Gwen are trying to escape from a man who intends to kill them. Gideon takes a heavy candleholder off the wall and throws it at the man. “It hit Sir Alfred on the head with a nasty sound, and he dropped to the floor like a stone.” Another man stabs Gwen.
  • When Gideon and Gwen travel back in time, they are in danger of meeting a former version of Gideon. In order to prevent that from happening, Gwen hits him over the head, knocking him out.
  • Someone shoots Gideon. “Gideon’s blood was all over the place. The hem of my dress was sucking it up like a sponge.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Gwen comes up with a plan to go back into the past and vaccinate the boy who is a ghost in her school thereby preventing his death.
  • One of the characters mentions a guard who had a hangover.
  • Several of the adults have a whisky when they are upset. Gwen’s grandfather has two whiskies and later in the book Gwen’s grandmother gives her son-in-law a whisky.
  • One of the characters takes “Alcott’s miraculous potion,” which makes him act strange. He tries to force Gwen to take the potion as well. As he talks, he says, “I’ll wager these lips have never done anything forbidden, am I right? A little of Alcott’s miraculous portion here will change that.” Gideon thinks the potion was opium.
  • After Gideon comes back from his time traveling, he is in shock and the doctor tells someone to get him a whisky.
  • At a teen’s party, someone spikes the punch, and many of the teens attending get drunk.
  • When one of the characters tries to get Gwen to take cyanide, someone hits him over the head with the butt of a pistol.

Language

  • When Gwen finds Gideon lied to her, she wonders, “why the hell she ever fell for the guy in the first place.”
  • The ghost gargoyle Xamerius calls Gideon a “bonehead.” Later, when someone tries to hurt Gwen, Xamerius calls the person a “bastard.”
  • Gwen, who is upset with Gideon, calls him a “bastard.”
  • Gwen tells her friend that she is “shit-scared of falling in love. . .”
  • Xamerius, the ghost gargoyle likes to narrate Gwen’s actions. In one scene he said, “and there was deathly silence in the room. . . All eyes rested on the girl in the piss-yellow blouse. . .”
  • One of Gwen’s friends calls someone an “ass-hole.”
  • Damn, shit, hell, and oh my god are used.

Supernatural

  • A ghost named James stays at Gwen’s school. She is the only one who can see him.
  • Gwen sees a ghost of a gargoyle who used to guard a church.
  • Gwen and Gideon have a gene that makes them time travel. A secret society has a chronograph that allows the two to have control over when and where they travel to.
  • When Gwen is stabbed with a sword, she dies. “I was hovering in the air, weightless, bodiless, rising higher and higher in space.” Later she finds out that her special power is that she cannot be killed by another person. She can only die if she chooses to sacrifice her life for another.
  • A ghost that thinks Gwen is a demon says, “I will never leave the side of this diabolical creature until I have fulfilled my task. I will curse every breath she takes.” Xamerius eats the ghost.

Spiritual Content

  • One of the characters, who is trying to kill Gideon and Gwen said, that the person helping him is doing it because he will gain, “the certainty that the angels in heaven will praise his deeds is worth far more than gold. We must rid the earth of demonic monstrosities like you two, and god will thank us for shedding your blood.”
  • A journal entry recounts a story of a girl who was said to be “with child by a demon.” The person writing the journal thinks the father would, “rather accuse his daughter of witchcraft than accept the fact that she does not comply with his concept of morality.” Later, the journal describes an “exorcism” that caused the girl to, “foam at the mouth, roll her eyes, and speak confusedly in tongues, while Father Dominic sprinkled her with holy water. As a result of this treatment, Elisabetta lost the fruit of her womb that same night.”

Ruby Red

Gwen was supposed to be the ordinary one, and her cousin Charlotte was destined to be extraordinary. When Gwen accidentally time travels, the reversal of fates leads to more trouble than anyone could have imagined. Everyone has their own motives and as Gwen begins to unravel secrets that are hundreds of years old, she begins to wonder if anyone is on her side.

To add to her trouble, Gwen is forced to travel with Gideon—a handsome, but insufferable boy, who doesn’t trust Gwen. As the two travel back in time, Gideon and Gwen must learn to help each other because danger hides behind every corner.

Ruby Red is an enjoyable read with a unique plot. Full of twists and turns, Gwen and Gideon’s journey through time has plenty of mystery, suspense, and adds a dash of romance. This rich story will keep you well up into the night and leave you wanting more. Sporadic violence may not be appropriate for children, but this young adult novel will be perfect for most high school readers.

Sexual Content

  • When Gwen travels into the past, she sees herself kiss a boy. “The girl who looked like me had planted her lips right on the boy’s mouth. He took it passively at first, then he put his arms around her waist and pulled her closer.”
  • Gwen thinks about a boy she dated who “wasn’t into kissing. What he liked was leaving love bites on my throat to distract my attention from his creeping hand . . . I was constantly trying to keep Miles’s hands out of my shirt.”
  • Gideon comes to Gwen’s school to talk to Charlotte. Gwen’s friend wonders if Gideon is gay.  And then they see him kiss Charlotte on the cheek.
  • While in a church confessional, Gideon kisses Gwen. “. . . when his lips touched my mouth, I shut my eyes. Okay. So now I was going to faint.”

Violence

  • Someone uses his mind to hurt Gwen. “Bewildered, I looked from his mouth to his hand. It was more than four yards away from me. How could it be around my neck at the same time? And why did I hear his voice in my head when he wasn’t speaking.” The character scares Gwen but doesn’t hurt her.
  • Gwen and Gideon are attacked and the fighting is described over six pages. The coach driver was shot and, “part of his face was missing and his clothes were drenched in blood. The eye of the undamaged part of his face was wide open, looking into nowhere.” Someone shoots at Gideon and then he has a sword fight with two men. Gwen describes the fighting from her point of view. “The man who’d been hit was now lying on the ground twitching and making horrible sounds.” In the end, the fight is ended when Gwen kills one of the attackers.
  • After the fight, Gideon and Gwen discuss what happened. Gwen was upset and said, “I didn’t expect it to be like . . . like cutting up a cake. Why didn’t that man have any bones?”
  • Gideon holds a gun to a woman’s head because he thinks the woman and her husband are going to try to hurt Gwen. When the butler gets ready to hit Gideon, Gideon and Gwen run away.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Gwen thinks, “I realized how pathetic I sounded—but what the hell, I was feeling pretty pathetic right now.”
  • Gwen is hiding in the bathroom stall at school. The door had scribbles that said, “Malcolm is an ass, life is crap, and other, similar remarks.”
  • “Damn” is used infrequently and “hell” is used several times. The profanity is only used in stressful situations.
  • Gwen thinks “Oh my God” often.
  • When Gideon is holding a gun to his wife’s head, a character calls him a “bastard.”

Supernatural

  • A ghost named James stays at Gwen’s school. She is the only one who can see him.
  • At the end of the book, Gwen sees a ghost of a gargoyle, who used to guard a church.
  • Gwen and Gideon have a gene that makes them time travel. A secret society has a chronograph that allows the two to have control over when and where they travel to.
  • Gwen’s aunt has visions. When trying to explain them, Gwen’s mother says, “I think Aunt Maddy really sees what she says she does. But that doesn’t mean her visions predict the future, not by a long shot. Or that it has to mean anything in particular.”
  • One of the characters can talk into people’s minds and as well as physically hurt them with his mind.
  • Several of the characters talk about Gwen having the “magic of the raven” but no one, including Gwen, knows what the power is.

Spiritual Content

  • None

Sapphire Blue

Gwen keeps hoping things will get easier, but it seems the universe has other plans. She and Gideon kiss, only to be interrupted by a gargoyle demon who imprints on Gwen and insists on following her everywhere she goes. If her new friend wasn’t enough, Gwen runs into her grandfather in 1948. The two bond and hatch a plan that may just keep Gwen alive.

Strong characters keep the Ruby Red Trilogy interesting. Gwen’s best friend Lesley uses the internet to run down leads for Gwen. James, a ghost (who doesn’t know he’s a ghost), teaches Gwen how to survive in the eighteenth century. Gideon is full of contradictions, which frustrates and confuses Gwen.

The second installment of the Ruby Red Trilogy, Sapphire Blue keeps the mysteries coming. Woven into action are dynamic relationships that make the characters seem real. Gwen’s relationships with her gargoyle friend and her grandfather are rich. A count, who could be evil, is thrown into the mix which will keep the reader interested in the story.

Sexual Content

  • Ruby Red ended with Gideon and Gwen kissing, which is where book two begins. Gwen thinks, “Wow, could Gideon kiss! I instantly felt green with jealousy of all the girls he’d learnt to do it with.”
  • When traveling to the past, Gwen tries to explain how in her time period, she’s not too young to kiss a boy. She tells her grandfather that, “All the girls in our class are on the pill but me. . . Oh, and of course Charlotte won’t have anything to do with sex either. That’s why Gordon Gelderman calls her the Ice Queen.” When her grandfather asks, “What kind of pill?” Gwen thinks, “Oh, my God, in the year 1948, they probably had nothing but cow-gut condoms, if that.” They then decide that neither of them wants to talk about sex.
  • Gwen gets upset because she thinks Gideon is “snogging” with Charlotte and her at the same time. At the end of the argument, Gideon kisses Gwen. “His hand began stroking my hair, and then, at last, I felt the gentle touch of his lips . . . It wasn’t a gentle kiss anymore, and my reaction surprised me. I had no idea how, but at some point in the next few minutes, still kissing without a break, we landed on the green sofa, and we went on kissing there until Gideon abruptly sat up. . . ”
  • Charlotte is jealous and tells a boy that Gwen’s best friend isn’t “very discriminating. Particularly when she’s had a drink. She’s done the rounds of almost all the boys in our class and the class above us. I’d rather not repeat what they call her.” The boy asks, “The school mattress?”
  • When Gwen travels back in time to attend a party, a woman talks about Lady Brompton, who is flirting with Gideon. Lady Brompton is a widow who, “found consolation long ago in the arms of the Duke of Lancashire, much to the duchess’s displeasure, and at the same time she’s developed a taste for rising young politicians.”
  • At the party Gwen attended, she is surprised when one of the men, “made a grab for my décolletage from behind.” Later, the same man, “was unashamedly groping Lady Brompton’s bosom, on the pretext that she had a stray hair lying there.”
  • When someone offers Gwen alcohol at a party, she thinks, “My only experience with alcohol date to exactly two years ago.” She then remembers how a drink that consisted of vanilla ice cream, orange juice and vodka. She recounts the different effects it had on different people.
  • At breakfast, Aunt Maddie tells the group, “You can always leave out breakfast and save the calories to invest in a little glass of wine in the evenings. Or two or three little glasses of wine.  The gargoyle ghost replies, “A liking for the bottle seems to run in your family.”
  • Gideon kisses Gwen and she thinks, “the kiss was more intoxicating than yesterday’s evenings punch. It left me weak at the knees, and with a thousand butterflies in my stomach.” Later in the book, Gideon kisses Gwen several more times.
  • One of the characters tells Gwen that Gideon’s goal was to make Gwen fall in love with him. Then the man tells Gwen that Gideon is with Lavinaia who “is one of those delightful women who enjoys passing on the benefit of their experiences to the opposite sex.”

Violence

  • At the beginning of the book, a character kills a man, but the murder is not described.
  • When Gideon goes back in time, someone hits him over the head, but he is not seriously injured.
  • Gideon sees men fighting with swords. When Gideon recognizes one of the men, Gideon jumps in to help him. Gideon, “ran the man through the chest with it. Blood spurted from the wound, flowing profusely. . .” The remaining man runs away.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • A journal entry tells Gwen about a time when two people went to a party and, “had unfortunately landed in the goldfish pool after the excessive consumption of alcohol.”
  • In a journal entry, a novice went missing and when he reappeared, “unsteady on his feet and smelling of alcohol, suggesting that although he failed the test, he found the lost wine cellar.”
  • When Gwen and her grandfather pass a sleeping guard, Gwen’s grandfather said, “I’m afraid he’ll never make the grade to Adept if he goes on drinking like a fish. . .”
  • When Gwen travels back in time to attend a party, a woman offers her punch saying, “No one can endure this fully sober.” At first Gwen “sipped the punch hesitantly,” but then she proceeds to get drunk.

Language

  • When running across a river, a character said, “Bloody hell . . .We must run if we don’t want to fall into the middle of the river.”
  • During an argument, Gwen tells Gideon that he is “such a shit.”
  • A gargoyle ghost yells at Gideon, “Leave her alone. Can’t you see she’s unhappy in love, bonehead?”
  • Profanity is used in the book, usually in times of emotion. The profanity includes: hell, damn, and shit.

 

Supernatural

  • Gwen can see ghosts. A gargoyle ghost, Xemerius, explains how he is different than a ghost. “Ghost are only reflections of dead people who for some reason or other don’t want to leave this world. But I was a demon when I was alive. You can’t lump me in with ordinary ghosts.”
  • James is a ghost who Gwen can see. However, James, not realize he is a ghost, thinks he is sick and having “fevered fantasies!”
  • Xemerius gets angry when someone calls him a ghost and yells, “I’m a demon. . . A powerful demon. Conjured up by magicians and architects in the eleventh century, as you reckon time, to protect the tower of a church that isn’t standing any more these days.”
  • When Gwen goes back in time, she opens a book with the picture of “a demon of the Hindu Kush, who brought disease, death and war.” Gwen is surprised when the demon begins talking to her. They have a short conversation. When Gwen turns the page, the demon disappears.

Spiritual Content

  • One of the people that Gwen meets in the past said, “There is nothing the church fears more than the discovery by human beings that God is not sitting far away in heaven, determining our fate, but is within us . . . It is always refreshing to discuss such blasphemous notions with you children of the twenty-first century, who do not bat an eyelash at the thought of heresy.”

Landry Park

Madeline has lived a life of comfort and luxury; however, she has been given little control over her life. Life in the United States is ruled by the rich gentry, and the seventeen-year-old is expected to find a rich husband and run the family estate. Only Madeline has no desire to marry. Her one desire is to attend university.

When one of Madeline’s friends is attacked at a party, Madeline is determined to discover the truth behind it. As Madeline leaves the family estate, she discovers that people are not always what they seem, and the life of the servant class, the Rootless, is not what she envisioned.

As Madeline tries to secretly help the Rootless, she accidently discovers that gentry boy David Dana has secrets of his own. Although she is attracted to him, he is promised to another—but that doesn’t stop Madeline’s heart from wanting.

Soon rumors of war and rebellion break out, and Madeline finds herself in a dangerous web of secrets and lies—and David may be the only person who can help.

Landry Park takes the reader into a world where slavery still exists. The gentry want to keep the Rootless under their control, and anyone who tries to help the Rootless have a better life is seen as a threat to the Gentry. Madeline is trapped between her desire for a comfortable life and her desire to help the Rootless. As the reader enters the world of the Rootless, there are some graphic scenes of sickness and death.

Although the story is interesting, Madeline’s desire to have her comfortable life and her unwillingness to take necessary risks make her less likable. The ending has a few surprises that will delight the reader.  However, because of the disturbing themes of death, slavery, and marriage, this book is not suitable for younger audiences.

Sexual Content

  • When Madeline and her mother are discussing marriage, her mother tells her she can’t marry Jamie because he’s too poor. Madeline thinks, “Jamie wasn’t interested in marriage. At least, not with me or any other girl.”
  • Madeline reflects on a childhood friend who, “dared a servant boy to kiss her on the mouth and then watched without emotion when the boy and his family were removed to a distant farm.”
  • Madeline explains that “gentry boys and girls dated—and often did more than just that—before their debuts, but strictly speaking, both parties were expected to arrive at the marriage bed untainted and untouched.”
  • Madeline’s father has a mistress. Madeline’s mother and father fight and the mother yells, “How dare you skulk around with Christine when it was my family’s money that kept your precious estate alive? My money is the reason you didn’t marry that whore and then you went and wasted it all away.”
  • Madeline has a crush on David and when he looks at her she thinks, “I felt the ghost of his kiss on my lips, felt the ghost of all the kisses I had craved and desired, and all the kisses I had yet to dream of, and then his mouth parted slightly and I wondered if he was dreaming of those phantom kisses, too.”
  • At her debut, Madeline kisses her date, Jude. “He took my whole face in his hands, so gently that his fingertips tickled my jaw, and kissed me harder, his mouth firm and warm. It felt nice, in a distant, premeditated sort of way. I wished I was kissing David.” Later as they are dancing, Jude kisses her again.
  • Madeline discovers her friend, “pressed against the wall, kissing someone with ferocious intensity.”
  • A character describes how, “no matter how many women I bedded or how much I drank, I felt as if this life were tenuous.”

Violence

  • In the beginning of the book, a girl was attacked and the girl’s screams are heard. Madeline tries to discover the truth behind the “attack.” Later in the story, Madeline discovers that Cara was attacked by her mother. “She hit me and I fell into the brambles nearby. She hit me again and again.”
  • A character talks about when he realized the servant class, the Rootless, had terrible lives.  He talks about how the penalty for stealing gentry trash is death. “And the bodies strung up on the estates numbered in the hundreds.”
  • There is a battle between the military and the Rootless. David describes his experience. “. . . I’ll tell you what it’s like to watch the man next to you blown to bits and to see your friend’s hand shot off by an armor-piercing round and to have a mouth so full of char and dirt that you can’t taste food for weeks.”
  • In a later scene, David describes the battle with the Rootless. “There was one man, good as dead, holding his innards and trying to crawl to safety. I thought he was an Easterner, so I left him behind. But when we collected the bodies, I recognized him. He was one of ours and I had left him there to dies like a beast in the mud.”
  • When Madeline’s father threatens to make a child swallow “gibbet food,” a radioactive tablet that will kill him, the Rootless attack. Madeline’s father is attacked and, “they [the rootless] pinned him down and forced the gibbet food inside his mouth for several minutes. Not enough to kill him, but enough to burn his mouth. Enough to give him severe radiation poisoning and probably cancer. . . the lower half of his face was unrecognizable—dark brown with blisters covering his lips and tongue. Bloody ulcers were beginning to form at the corners of his mouth. . .”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Throughout the book, the characters are seen smoking opium. In one scene, Madeline talks about how the Gentry boys, “spent most of their days playing golf or tennis while working their way through hundreds of dollars of whisky and opium.”
  • When a girl is attacked, a doctor gives her sedatives.
  • At parties, the characters drink whisky and spiced wine.

Language

  • Cara says she feels “like shit.”
  • Hell is used several times. For example, when Madeline accuses a boy of hurting Cara, he asks, “Why the hell do you think I would do something like that?”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Stone in the Sky

Years ago, Tula was left for dead on a remote space station. During her time on the space station, she has made a home for herself. When a spacecraft crashes on the abandoned planet below, the pilot discovers a rare and valuable plant. Soon others flock to the planet and the space station in hopes of becoming rich. Along with masses of aliens, Tula’s old enemy Brother Blue appears on the space station. And he hasn’t forgotten that Tula knows too much about his past.

Soon Tula must flee the Space Station in hopes of proving that Brother Blue is not who he claims. As Tula travels, the reader is taken on an incredible adventure through space. Away from the space station, Tula soon discovers that there are some who can be trusted and some who need to be feared. And in order to help the people she loves, she will have to take risks that may lead to her own death.

Stone is the Sky is an exciting and well-written story. The story brings back some of the same loveable characters that appeared in Tin Star. The story contains several surprises that make Stone in the Sky worth reading. Like the first book, the violence and sexual content is relatively mild.

Sexual Content 

  • Tula kisses two different characters.
  • Tula is thinking about a rush on the planet below the space station. “The rabble had come first, but when the truth of it had spread out to other systems, more sophisticated types came to the Yertina Feray with dreams of making a fortune down on Quint. And with them, came the people who saw a fortune to be made in the supporting of those heartier types. Gigolos and whores. Seedy merchants. Con artists. False prophets. Robot vendors.”
  • Tula has a romantic relationship with an alien, Tournour. In one scene, Tula, “cupped his hand and took the moment in. . .his arms encircled me, and I leaned my head on his shoulder. This was as close as we got, and it felt good. But I couldn’t deny that it was different than being physically with Reza. That was what my body longed for now that Reza was so close. I wanted to talk to him with my body.”
  • In one scene Tula describes a romantic moment. “Then he put his arms around me and pulled me to him. I could feel my body tense and then relax until I leaned my head on his strong chest and slowly slid my arms around him. He held me all night, and I marveled at the pure astonishment of skin and heart.”
  • Tula and Tournour are having a discussion when “my mouth was so close to his antenna that my lips brushed them. He shuddered. I couldn’t tell if it was with pleasure or disgust, but he held me tighter.”
  • At the end of the story, “Bitty and Myfanwy were closer than ever, and I knew by the way that Myfanwy gently rubbed Bitty’s back, or the way that they would whisper to each other, that something was growing between them. One day they would be more than friends. It made me feel better that the reason why Myfanwy had never cared for Caleb was a matter of attraction and not the fact that she had never seen what a good-hearted person he was.”

Violence

  • Tula and a group of humans are kidnapped on a spaceship. While on the ship, pirates invade and a fight ensues. “Bitty jumped in front of me and slashed a Hort’s appendage off. The Hort screamed at a pitch that I couldn’t hear, but I could feel. Dark liquid spilled to the floor, making it slippery. Bitty shoved the Hort to the ground and with a battle cry sunk her knife into its chest.”
  • Brother Blue shoots a character who crumples to the floor dead.
  • At the space station, two people can fight in a hotch. This is a way to settle disagreements.  During a hocht, Brother Blue pulls a knife and stabs Bitty. “There was blood everywhere, and the blood was not mine…/Bitty was clutching her side, holding the stab wound to staunch the blood.”
  • Tula finally gets her revenge on Brother Blue. They fight and then Tula sets the self-destruct button on a robot. “Sparks shot out of Trevor (the robot) arcing towards anything that could conduct electricity, including Brother Blue who crackled and lit as he was surrounded by light. He convulsed and his skin turned from pink to gray. His eyes bulged. His lips burst. His body swelled . . . Brother Blue fell in a heap to the floor, a mess of charred, melted skin. He was dead.”

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • Kitsch Rutsok’s bar is a popular hangout place on the space station. Tula thinks, “If people wanted the hard stuff, to get intoxicated, or to find comfort in the arms of someone for the night, they went to Kitsch Rutsok’s.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Tin Star

Left for dead at a space station far from Earth, Tula is focused on getting revenge. Revenge for the beating Brother Blue gave her. Revenge for the death of her family and the other members of the group who had hoped to colonize a planet. In order to get revenge, Tula must first learn to survive in the underguts of the space station.

Luckily, an alien named Heckleck befriends Tula. Heckleck teaches her how to trade with the natives and gives her a desperately needed friend. Just when life on the space station began to seem normal, three humans crash land on the station, and Tula wants to use this opportunity to get her revenge. She soon discovers that taking down Brother Blue may mean the end of Earth. Should she take this opportunity to destroy her greatest enemy or protect the planet that she loves?

Tula and Heckleck are loveable characters that show that friendships can grow despite physical differences. Even though Tula trades with questionable people, she has an honorable code of ethics that she lives by. This code allows other characters to trust and respect her.

Because the story is written from Tula’s point of view, the reader has the opportunity to feel her pain, understand her desire for revenge, as well as see her desire to do what is right. The author uses vivid description to bring Tula to life and make the reader care for her.

Although the book has some violence and sexual content, these scenes are not described in detail, and they are in the book to advance the plot, not merely to add to the entertainment factor of the book.

Overall Tin Star is an entertaining book that gives readers a glimpse into a believable space world, where different species learn to care for each other despite the harshness of life.

Sexual Content

  • At the space station, two people can fight in a hotch. This is a way to settle disagreements.  Tula is forced to fight one of the humans in a hocht. During the hocht, Tula thinks, “I had never been this close to a man . . . his mouth was near my ear, his breath hot. He had some stubble on his cheek. His skin was warmed. His smell filled me . . . I wanted to both pull away and also pull in closer but my eyes kept going over to Reza, who was watching from the side. I stumbled backward. Wishing that I was doing this dance with him.”
  • When Tula is talking to an Earth boy, she describes, “His lips were just inches away from mine. I was on fire. As Reza spoke, I could feel his breath on my face, and I opened my lips hoping to catch his words in my mouth.” Later in the same scene, Tula thinks, “Every part of me reached for him. I ran my hands through his hair. He smelled kind. I had no words for pain, for despair, for loneliness. I put my lips on his. Our hands found each others’ skin. My body trembled. I had to stop before I exploded . . . I had gone hungry at times during my time here, but truly I had been ravenous for touch. I knew that I would not be able to survive without it anymore. It was nourishing, intoxicating, and addictive.”
  • When a female Earth girl is trying to manipulate Tula, the girl uses physical touch. “She put her hands on my shoulders. She kissed me. It was a warm kiss. Full of affection and softness. But it was so different from Reza . . . She kissed me again. The kiss was electric, but had no warmth to it. No love. She was trying to manipulate me, and to get what I wanted I would have to go with it . . . After a while we stopped kissing. I held her in my arms the way that I held Reza, but it was far from the same.”

Violence 

  • Brother Blue punches Tula in the face. “He hit me again, and now I was too stunned to scream. He did not stop until I was limp . . . It was only when he thought that I was dead that he moved away from me. . .”
  • Heckleck, a bug-like alien, uses his tongue that, “looked like a sharp pointy bard” to injected Tula with nanites, which gave her the ability to understand Universal Galactic as well as breathe the air on the space station. After Heckleck injects her, she feels ill and wonders if he was, “calmly waiting to finish me off at his leisure, picking off parts of me when needed.” She then goes on to think, “Maybe this insect-like alien had done me a kindness. After all, I had just thought about killing myself and had been too cowardly to do it.”
  • Heckleck gives Tula a cloth that contained a digit from someone’s crew member. Tula is instructed to, “tell him to give you the item, or I’ll send the rest of the crew member to him in pieces.” He then threatens to kill Tula if she betrays him.
  • Tula thinks back to her childhood fights. “There was hair pulling with my friend over a doll we both wanted. There was a slap and a push I gave to my sister, Bitty, when we were fighting.  There was a kick to the groin I’d given a boy at school who had tried to paw me at a party.  Then I turned my thoughts to the fights I’d witnessed. My father, drunk over the holidays, fists in front of him, always jabbing at my equally drunk uncle, face covered with his arms but his stomach getting pummeled. I remembered the bully from school, Mika, fighting the scrawny Stan: Mika moving quick from side to side while Stan crouched low, always hitting Mika’s spleen. And of course Brother Blue, standing over me and kicking in my ribs.”
  • Tula and an Earth boy fight in a hotch. They push and hit each other, and at one point Tula, “brought my knee up to his groin.” In the end, Caleb allows Tula to beat him.

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • Kitsch Rutsok’s bar is a popular hangout place on the space station.

Language 

  • None

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content 

  • While discussing the dead, Heckleck said, “But the dead, they have ghosts. Ghosts are very useful for haunting. Never forget the dead, Tula. They have their function. They sometimes speak at the most useful or inopportune times.”
  • Tula likes to go to the Gej temple. The Gej were a highly spiritual race who are no longer at the space station. When Tula had an item that she did not know how to trade she would, “bring it to one of the shrines and place it as an offering. I liked making offerings to gods I did not know. It seemed somehow more pure. Did the Gej have one god or many? Were they even gods at all?  I wasn’t certain. But when I put a cracked gem down or a burned a sole stick of incense, it called me as if I was wishing on fallen and forgotten stars. Perhaps I’d given a gift to a deity who cared only for love. Perhaps I’d placed a trinket on a devil. I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t care.”

Crossed

Cassia has risked everything.  The Society sent Ky to the outer providence, and Cassia is determined to find him.  When the chance comes, she sneaks onto an air ship to be used as a decoy in a war against an unnamed enemy.  However, Cassia and another girl, Indie, are soon able to escape, and they go on a dangerous trek through the Carving to search for Ky and the Rising.

Ky will fight for life and for his chance to find his way back to Cassia.  When the society takes him back to the land of his childhood, he runs for the Carving.  However, he is not alone. He has his friend Vick, a young boy named Eli, and an enemy chasing him.  Ky knows the Society is his enemy, but are the inhabitants of the Carving enemies as well?

As Ky and Cassia search to find each other, the point of view changes back and forth between the two characters.  Even though the top of each chapter is labeled with the character’s name, the characters’ voices aren’t distinct.  Instead of hearing the characters, the reader only hears the author’s voice.

Unlike the first book, Crossed is not as suspenseful or enjoyable.  The Society is clearly fighting an enemy; however, there is very little action.  The reader only sees the fighting through the dead bodies left behind.  Besides having little action, it is not clear who the enemy is or what they want, which makes it hard to decide if the enemy is someone to feel sympathy for or to hate.

Cassia gave up everything to find Ky—her family, her home, her place in society—yet Ky still doubts her love for him.  Ky has a secret about Xander that he thinks will make Cassia reevaluate her love for both of them.  He worries that she still loves Xander even though she has proven that she will go to any lengths to be with him.  Instead of creating suspense, the love triangle feels forced.

In the end, Ky and Cassia must split up to make it to the Risings Camp.  Even though Ky is only days behind Cassia, when he arrives he finds Cassia has joined the Rising and been sent back into the Society so she can help their cause.  It seems unrealistic that Cassia would leave Ky after having risked everything to be with him. Instead of leaving the story with a satisfying ending, the author sets it up for another sequel.

Sexual Content

  • There are several scenes with kissing.

Violence

  • Air ships come to kill the inhabitants. The deaths of the people are not described in detail.
  • Ky teaches the Aberrations how to use gun powder in their guns. When the air ships come, they fight back. This is when Ky and two others decide to run to the canyons and try to escape.  The fighting is not described in detail, but they hear the others scream.
  • Ky thinks back to the time the air ships came and killed his entire village.
  • Ky remembers how the Officials came to take him from Patrick and Aida. He had to be gagged.  He remembers having, “blood in my mouth and under my skin in bruises waiting to show.  Head down, hands locked behind me.”
  • In the previous book, an Anomaly killed Ky’s cousin. His death is referred to, but the details are not discussed.
  • An air ship sends bombs into a river, damming it. They then inject poison into the water.  During this time, one of Ky’s friends is killed.  “Whatever fell hit with such impact that it looked like it sent Vick flying; his neck was broken.  He must have died instantly…I look at those empty eyes that reflect back the blue of the sky because there is nothing left of Vick himself.”
  • One of the characters talks about how many people in his village have died. “People died that way. They dropped like stars.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • The teen and adult citizens must always carry a “tablet container,” which holds three pills. The green pill makes people feel calm.
  • The society has told people that the blue pill gives nourishment if they need to go without food for some reason; however, it contains something that will, “stop you. If you take one, you’ll slow down and stay where you are until someone finds you or you die waiting.  Two will finish you outright.”
  • The red pill people only take when the government tells them to; the citizens do not know what it does, because it wipes people’s memories.  They do not remember the last 12 hours of their day, which includes the part of them taking the pill.
  • Xander stole blue pills to give to Cassia in the hopes that if she were hungry, she would be able to use the pills to survive.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When Ky buries a body he thinks, “part of me wants to believe that the flood of death carries us someplace after all. That there’s someone to see at the end.”
  • Ky and Cassia find a picture that they think shows angels. Ky said, “Some of the farmers still believed in them.  In my father’s time anyway.”
  • One of the characters recites a poem.  “. . . They perished in the Seamless Grass-/No eye could find the place-/But God can summon every face/On his repealless-list.”  He then goes on to say that some of the villagers believed in life after death; however, he does not.

Matched

Every aspect of Cassia’s life is perfectly planned out for her—her profession, her future husband, her dwelling. If she follows the path the Officials have planned she will be happy.  Or so she thought.

During Cassia’s matching ceremony, she is ecstatic to find out that her perfect match is her best friend Xander.  But in a strange twist of events, when she opens a file that is supposed to contain facts about her matched, Xander, another’s face appears. The face of a boy named Ky, her first matched, who was discarded by the Officials as an aberration. It only takes an instant to plant doubt into Cassia’s mind about whom she will choose to love—Xander or Ky?

As Cassia struggles to choose between Xander, who will give her a perfect life, and Ky, who can give her passion, she begins to question the foundation of her society.  Is it as perfect as it appears?  And can she live in a world where every choice and every freedom—including the freedom to choose love—is taken away?

 Matched is an entertaining book that revolves around Cassia’s discovery that her society is not all that appears.  She soon discovers that although she loves Xander, she feels a passion for Ky that cannot be matched.  The book also incorporates Cassia’s relationship with her parents into the story.  It is clear that Cassia’s parents love her and want what is best, even if that means going against the Officials.

Cassia struggles with her conflicted feelings for Ky and Xander, which is a topic that teens will be able to relate to.  Because Cassia generally cares for both boys, her decision is that much harder to make.  However, the plot does not only revolve around Cassia’s love triangle.  Instead, the author includes Cassia’s family’s and friend’s experiences to show that the Society isn’t always what it appears. Unlike many teen books, Match portrays a two-parent family that is not dysfunctional. They genuinely care for each other.   The violence in the book is not described in detail, which makes this book suitable for younger readers.

 Sexual Content

  • There are several scenes with kissing. In one, Cassie can, “feel is arms around me and the smoothness of the green silk as he presses his hand against the small of my back and pulls me closer, closer . . . his lips meet mine, at last.  At last.”

Violence

  • In the past a boy was murdered. Although how it happened is discussed, it is not detailed or graphic.  However, Cassia wonders if they, “let that Anomaly (murderer) out on purpose? To remind us?”
  • There is film that shows a, “sinister black aircraft appear in the sky and the people run screaming away . . . One of the actors falls on the ground dramatically. Garish red bloodstains cover his clothing.”  Some of the viewers laugh, and it isn’t until later that Cassia finds out that the scene was footage of an actual event.
  • When a boy is taken away from his family, his adoptive parents make a scene. The father tells people, “the war with the Enemy isn’t going well.  They need more people to fight.  All the original villagers are dead.  All of them.” Then two officials pin their arms behind their backs, gag them, and take them away.  Afterwards, the officials make the citizens take a pill that erases the entire scene from their memory.
  • One of the characters draws the scene of how his village was wiped out by ammunition falling from the sky. “His parents died. He saw it happen.  Death came from the sky, and that’s what he remembers every time it rains.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When people turn eighty years old they die. Most people do not realize that the reason they die at that age is because their food is poisoned.
  • The teen and adult citizens must always carry a “tablet container” which holds three pills. One pill makes people feel calm.  One pill gives nourishment if people need to go without food for some reason. The other pill people only take when the government tells them too; the citizens do not know what it does, but later in the story Cassie finds out that it wipes people’s memories.
  • When a character has an anxiety attack she takes her friend’s “green tablet” because she had already used her own. “Almost immediately, her body relaxes.”
  • In a dream, Cassia’s friend takes a green tablet, then a blue tablet. Cassie then gives her friend a red tablet.  Her friend falls down dead.  “Her body makes a heavy sound when it falls, in contrast to the lightness of eyes fluttering shut…”
  • Cassia considers taking the green table to calm herself down, but she decides against it.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When Cassie thinks about how the Society doesn’t have the death penalty, but they kill the elderly, she thinks that people survive because of natural selection, “with the help from our gods, of course—the Officials.”
  • When Cassie has a choice to make regarding another person she thinks, “If I get to play God, or angel, then I have to do the best I can for Ky.”

Reached

The Rising was supposed to be the answer.  It was supposed to be the cure for the Society’s ills.  It was supposed to bring Cassia, Xander, and Ky choice.  But so far, all the Rising has brought the Society is a deadly plague that has the power to kill millions.

Cassia still seeks to find her way back to Ky.  However, her main goal is to show others that they have something of worth—the ability to paint, to sing, or to write.  As Cassie tries to find her way back to Ky, she struggles to know who to trust.

Xander is quarantined in a hospital, trying to treat those affected by the plague as well as trying to help find a cure.  However, time is running out. The plague has mutated, and the cure that the Rising was supposed to deliver is no longer working.  People are dying and Xander is determined to help them.

Ky and Indie are piloting a plane, taking the cure to those in need. However, Ky wonders if the Rising can be trusted and if he will ever be reunited with Cassia. The rebellion has started.  But will it change Society for the better or destroy everything?

 Reached jumps from three different character’s points of view: Cassia, Xander, and Ky.  As the point of view changes, the reader is able to see all sides of the rebellion.  Although it is clear that Xander cares for people, he still has very little medical training, which makes it is hard to believe that the Rising comes to rely so heavily on him to find the cure for the plague.

Xander still hopes to win Cassia’s heart.  This part of the plot seems forced, especially since Cassia made the decision to love Ky in book one.  Xander knows this and yet, he still wonders if they will end up together. The conclusion of Reached, leaves the reader with more questions than answers.  However, the book is good for junior high readers because most of the violence is not described and the sexual content contains only brief kissing.

Sexual Content

  • Two teenagers are having an argument when “over his shoulder he says something crude to Indie—what he’d do to her and with her if she weren’t crazy.”
  • Indie kisses Ky. “Her hand slides into my hair, her lips press against mine.  Nothing like Cassia.  I pull back, breathless…”

Violence

  • When a man discusses his job, an Army officer comes in and drags him away. “His mouth is gagged and his words unintelligible, and above the cloth his eyes meet mine.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of the characters describes disease-proofing tablets that are given to babies when they are seven days old. The tablets keep the babies safe from illness and infection.
  • The Society has a red pill that is given to its citizens to make them forget the last 12 hours. Cassia and a group of workers are given one to swallow.
  • The Society has been affected by a plague; Xander, as well as others, are giving patients medicine and hoping to find the cure.

Language

  • Ky thinks, “I have to keep running in this damn cure even if it means I can’t get to Cassia as soon as I like.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Ky wonders about what happens when people die. “I don’t know what happens when we die.  It doesn’t seem to me like there can be much past this.  But I suppose I can conceive that what we make and do can last beyond us.”
  • Ky thinks, “long ago people used to say what they wanted out loud and hoped that someone would give it to them. They called it praying.”
  • The Society stores DNA samples of its citizens in the hopes that one day they will have the technology to bring people back to life.

Blazing the Trail

As the school’s Valentine’s Day dance approaches, Zoe gives quiet and steady Derek a chance to win her heart. The only thing is, Zoe’s not sure her heart doesn’t already belong to rocker boy Jared. However, Jared is the king of mixed messages, ignoring Zoe one minute and then appearing out of nowhere to protect her. However, this time when Jared shows up, he puts the alliance that Zoe has carefully built in jeopardy. And with the Mages out to eliminate all shape shifters, Zoe needs the help of everyone—human and shapeshifters alike.

Zoe is a feisty character who is trying to do what is right. But her heart and her mind don’t always agree on the right plan of action. However, she is committed to keeping her friends alive. This proves to be a difficult task. Even if Zoe knew how to defeat the Mages, she isn’t sure if she can overcome her fear and take action when her life may be the final sacrifice.

Although Blazing the Trail loses some of its appeal, Zoe seems destined to trust those who are not trustworthy and fight the same battles. Although Zoe is likable, the fact that she repeats many of the same events of the earlier books makes her actions, and the book as a whole, more predictable.

Sexual Content

  • Kohana kisses Zoe.
  • Zoe kisses Derek several times in the book. In one scene Zoe, “leaned closer to him, touching my lips to his cheek. I felt him melt. It was strange, realizing that I had some ability to affect his thinking with just a little touch, and it gave me an uncomfortable sense of power.”
  • When Zoe and Derek kiss, “I felt the weight and heat of his hand on my shoulder, the touch of snowflakes melting on my face, the press of his body. And then his tongue met mine. I felt as if I’d touched an electrical wire and pulled back, my breath coming in gasps.”
  • Derek tells Zoe that they must make a union. Zoe knows that “he was talking about sex.” Derek then said that they could start by going steady.
  • One of the characters tells Zoe, “You’re sixteen. I haven’t been for a while. That makes you jailbait, and I’m not going to have any more dealings with cops ever again.”
  • At the end of the story, Jared kisses Zoe “hard. It was every bit as thrilling as the first time.”

Violence

  • While performing a ceremony to invoke the ShadowEaters, the ShadowEaters jump their constraints and, “feed on the third guy like a pack of vultures. . . I saw their teeth flash as they bit and snapped. When they retreated just seconds later, smacking their lips, he had collapsed on the ground.”
  • During a Mage ceremony, a girl’s throat is slit.
  • In a battle, Zoe slits a person in half. Then the person loses “the spell light that had filled his skin.” The shape shifters use their singing to destroy the Mages.
  • One of the Wyrd sisters finds the dead and eats them. “She hopped onto his chest in her raven form and ripped his flesh open with her beak. When she tore into his body cavity, presumably looking for that liver, I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
  • One of the Mages tricks Zoe into going with him. When they get to an isolated location, he “Kicked my feet out from beneath me. . .” Using a spell the Mages trap Zoe and intend to use the NightBlade to “cut the shadows away from the bodies of the victims, the better to offer sacrifices to the ShadowEaters.” Kohana saves Zoe, but another boy’s throat is slit. “Blood spurted from his throat.”
  • When a girl takes a picture of Zoe changing into a dragon, she and Zoe get into a fight.
  • In the dream world, one of the Wyrd sisters shows Zoe a battlefield where her friends lay dead.  “I gagged when I saw the eyeball impaled on the end of her knife. She laughed at me, then ate it off the tip of the blade, chewing with gusto.” Zoe also sees her own corpse.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Profanity is used often in both the character’s thoughts and words. The profanity includes: hell, holy shit, shit, fuck, bitch, bitchy, and ass.
  • Zoe said she, “was in a pretty crap mood when I got to English class late.” Later she said she was, “feeling a little bit pissed.”
  • When Zoe makes an error, she thinks, “this was a colossal fuckup on my part and I had to try to make it right.”
  • A girl calls Zoe a “bitch.”

Supernatural

  • In her dream, Zoe sees the Wyrd sisters who give her clues on how to defeat the Mages.
  • The Mages invoked the ShadowEaters “to feed them the shadows of their sacrificial victims.” The ShadowEaters hope to gain enough power that they can transcend into another form. “When ShadowEaters ate a shifter’s shadow, the shifter died. It was like the shifter ceased to exist, because he or she couldn’t cast a shadow—or because in eating the shadow, the ShadowEaters stole the shifters ability.”
  • The Mages use “glamours” to hide what is really there.
  • “Mages recruit humans with an innate musical ability. This power—called spellsinging—allows those gifted humans to enchant other humans with their music or their songs.”
  • Zoe’s dead brother appears and helps her find clues to defeat the Mages.
  • Zoe attends the birth of a cat shapeshifter. During the ceremony, the cat ancestors appear, but no one can see them except Zoe.
  • One of the Wyrd sisters gives Zoe her shears which can be used to cut spells.

Spiritual Content

  • None

Flying Blind

Zoe has dragon powers. . .or so she has been told. Zoe is the Wyvern of the Pye: the only female dragon shapeshifter and one with special powers. However, Zoe hasn’t been able to harness those powers and isn’t sure she is special at all. Zoe feels like a normal girl, and she’s struggling because she can’t tell her best friend Meagan about the changes that are about to happen.

Zoe hasn’t yet begun to understand what it means to be the Wyvern or how to change into a dragon, but when her best friend is bullied, her inner dragon makes an appearance. Suddenly Zoe is sent to boot camp with her shape-shifting friends. What Zoe hoped would be a time of learning becomes a time of fighting and her friends are beginning to turn against her. Zoe must learn to master her powers and stop the Mages from eliminating her and her friends—but first, she must convince her friends that she is not the enemy.

Zoe tells her story in a humorous manner, which shows the confusion of being a teenage girl. She isn’t the confident girl she dreams of being, but she’s working on believing in herself. The story contains suspense, action, and a lot of dragon fighting. Even though the fights often cover several pages, the wounds are not described in detail. In the end, Zoe is a very likable character who learns that believing in her capabilities is an important step towards becoming the Wyvern.

Besides the frequent profanity, the only other downside of the book is that Zoe is boy crazy. At the beginning of the story, she has a crush on one boy. On the same day, a young man drives her to boot camp. On the drive, she has sexual longings for him and kisses him on the cheek. Then when she gets to boot camp, she is again contemplating the hotness of a boy at camp.

Sexual Content

  • Zoe goes on a motorcycle ride with Jared. When he helps her with her helmet, “his fingers were warm on my chin as he fastened the strap, and I got all shivery at his touch. . . It was hard to say anything with my heart lunging around my chest as if it were trying to break free.”
  • Several times in the story, Zoe has a sexual longing for Jared and thinks about kissing him. In one instance she thinks, “. . . but he was hot. Having him so near me made bits of me tingle that I hadn’t even known I had.”
  • When Zoe thinks about almost kissing Jared, she thinks, “It would have been educational. An experience. A new sensation. That was the only reason I was curious.”
  • Zoe sees two of the characters, “making out like they’d invented it.” Later the same couple was, “locked into one hummer of a kiss, one that seemed to go on and on forever.”
  • When Zoe goes into her dad’s memory, she is careful. “I didn’t want to poke around too much there, certainly didn’t want to learn things I’d rather not know about my parents—I mean, they must have had sex, right? At least once?”
  • When Zoe asks if two people “did it”, her father “inclined his head, too diplomatic to speculate on anyone else’s sexual relations.”
  • Zoe wonders if she will lose her powers when she loses her virginity. “I was already fond of my powers, such as they were, but not excited by the prospect of lifelong celibacy just to ensure that I kept them.”

Violence

  • Two girls corner Zoe and her friend Meagan in the P.E. shower. During the confrontation, “Yvonne hooked Meagan’s ankle with one foot, jerking it hard. Meagan fell quickly, cracking her jaw on the tile floor. She didn’t move. And there was blood running toward the drain.” Zoe begins to turn into a dragon which scares the girls away.
  • Zoe becomes jealous of another girl and, “was tempted to throw a rock at her head.”
  • Two of the dragons fight. “He slashed, and Adrian flinched as one talon tore at the side of his face . . . Adrian went after him, striking him twice more, than giving him a wallop with his tale. He didn’t cut him; he didn’t burn him—he just thumped him.”
  • While drunk, several humans change into dragons and fight. One dragon is hit with dragonfire while trying to protect Zoe and, “I felt him stiffen in pain. I smelled his scales burning. And I heard the rhythm of his wings falter. Just before we fell out of the sky. Shit.”
  • In a dream, Zoe sees a boy hung lifeless from a tree. The boy begins talking to her, which scares her “shitless.”
  • Zoe turns into a dragon and fights with a shapeshifter. “I slashed at him with my talons, caught him across the snout, and ripped the skin from the corner of his eye to the edge of his nostril. He bellowed in pain, then belted me.” The fight continues for several pages with other dragons joining in. Because they are under a spell, several of the dragons try to kill Zoe and she only escapes because she turns into a salamander.
  • Over several pages, a fight between Zoe and another dragon is described. She “slammed him in the cojones with my tail at the same time that I punched him under the chin. Then he was the one reeling in pain.”
  • One of the characters explains how the Mages want to eliminate all other shapeshifters. In order to take a shapeshifter’s power, a Mage must eat them, “right to the last shred and drop.”
  • The end of the story has a dramatic fight between the dragons and the Mages. The fight includes trying to cast and break spells. Although the dragons use their fire, there is not a lot of description of the damage. When a Mage turns into a snake, Zoe, “stepped on it, hard, and ground my heel down into the floor . . . his scream was very satisfying.” During the fight, a dragon causes an earthquake and the building falls down hitting a Mage in the skull. “It was his blood under the rubble, and I couldn’t feel a lot of regret.”

 

Drugs and Alcohol

  • A group purchases sparkling wine, a case of beer, and a bottle of bourbon. Later, the group gets drunk and begins to fight with each other.

Language

  • There are frequent curse words used throughout the story. The profanity that is used includes: holy frick, bullshit, holy shit, badass, shit, and smart-ass.
  • There are several times that Zoe says or thinks about her emotional state as being “pissed off.” She also thinks that she doesn’t want to “piss off” her father.
  • Zoe’s mom ran a “crapload of red lights.”
  • Once when Zoe talks about rules, one of the characters says, “Fuck rules.”
  • During a fight, Zoe calls a girl “bitch.”
  • When someone loses the dragon’s scales, another character says, “You fucked up.”

Supernatural

  • Much of the book deals with the dragon culture. For instance, each dragon has a unique ability such as being able to see into the future, being able to communicate with the earth, being able to fix a dragon’s scales, etc.
  • If someone can take a person’s clothing while they are changing into a dragon, the dragon must fulfill three wishes.
  • Zoe has dreams that are more like visions. During one dream, a woman shows Zoe that if she shuts her right eye, she can see supernatural elements of the world.
  • Zoe has a rue stone which is, “kind of like tarot cards for Vikings. They carved symbols on small stones, then used them to tell the future.”
  • Zoe has a range of dragon powers such as being able to give people dreams, as well as being able to use her mind to locate where people are.
  • Dragons can beguile humans, “essentially it’s a kind of hypnosis that works on humans.” Usually, dragons use it to make humans forget they saw a human transform.
  • Mages can cast spells, but Jared uses his voice to conjure a spell to break the Mages’ spell.
  • Two ghosts appear to Zoe to show her how to break a spell and win the fight against the Mages.

Spiritual Content

  • At one point, Zoe prays, “to every deity I’d ever heard of. One of them must have listened.”
  • Zoe and her father discuss reincarnation. Her father says that Donovan’s named his son Nick. “It wasn’t just to honor a lost comrade. Donovan believed that Nick was Nikolas reborn.”

Winging it

It’s tough enough being the only girl dragon shifter, but when Zoe is forbidden to tell her best friend, Meagan, about her powers, Zoe realizes that living in two worlds is complicated. When Meagan begins to question Zoe’s friendship, tensions heat up.

When Zoe’s father grounds her, her mother leaves her father, and Meagan makes a new friend, Zoe doesn’t think things can get worse. Then she discovers that the Mages have laid a trap to destroy the shape shifters. Zoe must find a way to help her friend Meagan as well as save the dragon shifters without revealing any dragon secrets.

Winging It begins building suspense from the first page and will keep the reader interested until the last battle. Teens can relate to Zoe because she is smart, strong, and truly cares for others. Like any other teen, Zoe isn’t always sure of herself, but she always strives to do what is right, even if that means keeping secrets from her parents and her best friend Meagan.

The second book of The Dragon Diaries brings in interesting new characters—Derek, a shape shifting wolf, Jessica, a shape shifting jaguar, as well as Sigmund, Zoe’s dead brother. Sigmund brings a bit of humor to the story because even though he’s dead, he likes to tease Zoe as well as help her. Zoe spends more time in the supernatural world in Winging It, however, the setting is clearly fantasy and does not resemble real life in any way. The only down side of the book is the frequent and colorful profanity.

Sexual Content

  • Zoe has a crush on a twenty year old man. Her father tells her, “You are thinking of love and romance. Jared is thinking of now, he is thinking of sex, and he almost certainly does not have your welfare at the forefront of his thoughts.”
  • One of the characters said that a boy, “seems to think that love, romance, and sex are the same thing.”
  • Jared kisses Zoe. “That barest touch filled me with yearning and made me shiver. My heart was thundering, doing that crazy thing of matching its beat to his. Our noses were almost touching, his hands framing my face and I didn’t want to step away from him. Ever.”
  • One of the character’s said that he’s dating a girl, but, “It’s no big deal.” His friend thinks they are dating for the sex.
  • One of the characters kisses her boyfriend “with enthusiasm.”
  • At the end of the book Zoe kisses a boy. “It was sweet and lingering, and an entirely different kind of kiss than I’d had with Jared. Our lips clung a bit and I bumped his nose with mine when I stepped back.”

Violence

  • Meagan is attacked in the school bathroom. Suzanne punches her and breaks her glasses. Zoe turns into a dragon and the girls flee.
  • Kohana and Zoe shape shift and fight. When Kohana throws a thunder bold at Jared, Zoe stops it by throwing herself in its path.
  • At a party, the Mages attack Zoe and her friends with a spell. Zoe slams two Mages’ heads together and knocks them out. One of the shapeshifters, Jessica, is trapped. “I could see Jessica’s limp form on the floor, her shadow in tatters and her body motionless, the golden swirl of spell light illuminant.”
  • The Mages trap Zoe and her friends in a drainage pipe and use a spell to try to drown the group.
  • There is a fight between Kohana and Zoe’s friends. Derek is hit by a lightning bolt. Zoe rips out some of Kohana’s feathers because, “there was power in the feathers.” The fighting ends when Kohana and Zoe transport to the dream world.
  • The Mages plan to sacrifice someone during a ceremony. The fight scene that follows goes on for several pages. During the fight, the ghosts of all Wyverns past appear and Zoe sees where the past Wyverns made a mistake which caused the current situation. During the fight, Kohana “tackled the woman and she screamed as she fell. I saw that he had ripped out her eyes with his claws, then left her writhing in anguish and bleeding in the snow.” The fight ends when Zoe goes into the Mage’s memories and uses her dragon fire to destroy them.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • After the dragon broke up a fight in the school bathroom, some of the kids are debating if Suzanne was “smoking something.” They also refer to a “toke.”
  • Zoe and her friends go to a party where there is alcohol, “pot, incense, and cigarettes.”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently throughout the book. The profanity includes: bullshit, damn, ass, crap, holy frick, hell, fuck, piss, bitch, shit, and holy shit.
  • When Zoe upsets her friend, she thinks, “Meagan is not a bitch—that I made her sound that way said more about me than her.”
  • Later in another fight with her father, Zoe yells, “You should give us the chance to not fuck up our lives by trying to make your stories come true.”
  • Zoe calls the girl who attacked Meagan an “uber-bitch.”
  • When Suzanne’s boyfriend breaks up with her, she said, “Trevor just dumped me for that slut.”

Supernatural

  • The Mages want to eliminate all shape shifters in order to gain the others’ power. Mages can also gain power by consuming other people’s spells. “Mages recruit humans with an innate musical ability. This power—called spellsinging—allows those gifted humans to enchant other humans with their music or their songs.”
  • One of the characters can read minds as well as cast spells.
  • The dragon shapeshifters can beguile others. “Beguiling is kind of like hypnosis and it’s a dragon trick . . . We conjure flames in our eyes; the humans look closer; we make suggestions.”
  • Zoe’s father uses dragonsmoke as a protective barrier. “Humans can cross easily, but a dragon can cross the dragonsmoke of another with only explicit permission.” Zoe’s father uses it to ground Zoe and makes sure she doesn’t leave the house.
  • In her dream, Zoe sees the Wyrd sisters who give her clues on how to defeat the Mages.
  • Meagan mentions her mom’s visionary sessions, and later in the book her mother said she will do a visioning for Zoe’s mother.
  • Kohana, another shapeshifter, can appear in Zoe’s dreams.
  • One of the Wyrd sisters tosses Zoe into the land of the dead, where Zoe meets her dead brother. Later in the story, he appears in the real word. When he appears, Zoe is the only one who can see him.
  • One of the characters uses tarot cards to help Zoe.
  • Zoe jumps into her mother’s memories and, “poked around, stirring a few things that seemed evocative of when she’d met my dad, and then I hoped for the best. And got the heck out of there before I learned too much.”
  • One of the Wyrd sisters blows kisses to a statue and it comes to life.
  • Zoe’s dead brother appears and helps her find clues to defeat the Mages.

Spiritual Content

  • One of the characters has been reincarnated; however, she does not remember anything from her past life.

How to Say I Love You Out Loud

Jordyn has a secret to keep. When she moves to an elite new school, Jordyn knows that her secret cannot get out. When charming Alex Colby kisses her, Jordyn demands that they remain “just friends.”  When her best friend tries to get Jordyn to open up, Jordyn pushes her away.

Suddenly, Jordyn’s life takes a turn for the worse when her autistic brother is forced to attend the same school as Jordyn. Can Jordyn keep everyone from knowing that the crazy new kid is her brother? And if her friends find out the truth about her brother, will they alienate her?

Jordyn must decide if she should show others her true self and risk revealing the truth about her complicated family life. If she decides to let others in, will she lose Alex and her best friend?

Jordyn’s fear of rejection is something that every teen can understand. Jordyn struggles with the conflicting emotions of loving her brother but being embarrassed by his behavior. Even though Jordyn’s family life is messy, how to say I love you out loud portrays a loving, two-parent home that sticks together and does the best they can; this is rare in teen literature today.

Another positive aspect of the book is that although it deals with teen issues, there is nothing that is too shocking. Even though the teens in the book cuss often, it is nothing that a typical teen isn’t exposed to in a high school hallway. How to say I love you out loud is an enjoyable romance that shows the importance of showing people your true self and realizing that no one’s life is perfect.

Sexual Content

  • There are several references to people hooking up. The term is used, but not explained.
  • Alex’s girlfriend gives him a “quick, flirty kiss.”
  • In the school hallway, “Leighton’s back is against the wall and Alex has one arm above her head, keeping her in place, his body pressed against hers . . . their mouths mashed together.”
  • During a swim party, Jordyn and Alex go into a supply closet looking for bug repellent and end up kissing. The kissing scene lasts for about a page. “. . . We had no trouble finding each other. His hands fell to my hips like they belonged there. I felt myself being pressed against the rickety wooden shelves, the firm, warm heat of his bare chest against my damp skin.” After the kiss, Alex apologizes, “Didn’t mean to be a dick.”
  • Jordyn thinks about Alex. “I want to hold his hand. I want to touch his face. I want to memorize his expressions when he’s sleeping, all over again. I want to feel the pressure of his lips against mine. I just want him.”
  • Jordyn and Alex hide in a coat closet and kiss. “Alex raises his head, finding the other side of my neck with his lips. He plants the smallest of kisses there and I hear my breath vibrating in the air between us . . . my hands running over the planes of his strong back as I claim his body with no fear of the consequences. We fumble in our attempts to get close enough, determined to close the distance that never should have existed in the first place.”

 

Violence 

  • Jordyn’s autistic brother gets upset and takes off running, taking off his clothes as he runs. It takes three staff members to control him.

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • When Jordyn goes to a staff party, her friend asks, “Did Petersen show up really drunk again? Hit on any of the lifeguards who aren’t even legal yet.”
  • Jordyn and some kids from school go to a party where they drink alcohol and some of the kids smoke pot. Jordyn drinks, “hot chocolate that has been spiked with a liberal dose of peppermint schnapps.”

Language 

  • Profanity is scattered throughout the story on a regular basis. The profanity includes crap, pissed, hell, and bullshit.
  • Most of it appears in the teens’ conversations. For example, “. . . it would have been really nice to actually feel like I have my shit together before walking in there.”
  • Jordyn thinks that she, “sure as hell is not trying to steal anyone’s spotlight.” Later she describes her day as “long-assed.”
  • Jordyn’s in Advanced Placement U.S. History and, “the essay tests are rumored to be a bitch.”
  • A teen boy describes Jordyn’s brother’s behavior and said, “Dude, it was fucking nuts.”
  • When Jordyn and her mom get into an argument, Jordyn thinks, “I can feel the acid in the pit of my stomach . . . when I’m being a bitch.”
  • Alex asks Jordyn, “Jesus Christ, Jordyn, can we please have an honest conversation for once? My God, don’t act like you don’t know.”
  • A girl calls Jordyn a “slut.”

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content 

  • None

 

Broken Crowns

Interment is falling out of the sky. If the king on the ground can’t be stopped, he will destroy Internment. Morgan and Pen must come up with a plan to save their home, even if they can never return themselves.

Broken Crowns is the third and final installment of the Internment series. For readers who enjoyed the first two books, Broken Crowns will keep them enthralled with Morgan’s story. The relationships between the characters drives the story.

The story has several surprises and ends with a satisfying ending. The story isn’t as fast-paced as the first two, but the character’s voices shine through. DeStefano creates characters that the reader will wish they could invite into their homes for a visit.

Sexual Content

  • Judas and Morgan discuss when they kissed in the previous book.
  • The prince is attracted to other men.
  • There are several references to “attraction camps” where people who are attracted to the same sex are sent. It is implied that the people are tortured. The prince takes Morgan to the camps and sees some of the patients who have had surgeries on their brains.
  • Pen’s father sexually abused her when she was younger. It is not talked about in detail. However, when her mother found out about the abuse, her mother used a tonic to “drown her thoughts.”
  • Basil and Morgan kiss. “Somehow, one of his hands has made it to my thigh, and I feel the fabric of my dress moving up and up and he knots the fabric in his fist . . . He kisses my neck, and I wrap my arms around his neck to draw him nearer still.”
  • The princess knows that her father would have, “made me have a termination procedure if he’d known about this baby in time to stop it.”

Violence

  • The king slashes Pim’s throat. He then attacks Morgan. “. . . The knife is hovering over my face, shaking uncertainly, as though the blade itself isn’t sure which of us to kill . . . I grab the knife from the king’s faltered grip and I plunge it into his throat.”
  • The prince said he was afraid that his sister would be sent to the camps because of her petulance. “I thought that if she resisted, she’d be whisked off to one of those camps and that her brains would be scooped out with a spoon until she was nothing but a blubbering mass of compliance.”
  • Nim’s father and grandfather are killed, but the deaths are not described.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a party, guests drink “tonic.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Nim burnt his car as an offering to save his sister. When Nim’s sister recovers, Morgan thinks, “It makes me wonder if their god is real. It makes me wonder if any god is real, or if it’s only easier to believe in that than the arbitrary series of events that make up all our lives.”
  • When one of the characters is about to die he wonders, “if his spirit would be taken to the tributary, or if he’d go to whatever afterlife the ground believe in, or if there was nothing at all.”
  • The people from Internment believe in the god of the sky.
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