Icon: AR Test

Raging Star

DeMalo has established his borders. New Haven is expanding and its subjects appear to be thriving. At a quick glance, this land is exactly the paradise DeMalo proclaims it to be.

But at its border, a small token of resistance remains. Saba and her family have pledged themselves to destroy DeMalo and all he has built. But what can so few hope to accomplish against a united nation?

The final installment of Young’s trilogy focuses on the struggle taking place within Saba. Every time she attempts to leave the Angel of Death behind and find a non-violent solution to the rebel’s problems, a crisis gets in the way. Her sister is growing up and discovering new talents, DeMalo wants Saba for his wife, and there is a traitor among her small group of trusted friends. The path Saba takes is filled with surprising twists, and the suspense continues to grow in this gripping tale.

 Sexual Content

  • DeMalo asks Saba if she’s pregnant.
  • Saba starts kissing Jack and undressing him. “I kiss him . . . He ain’t kissin me back. He ain’t touchin me. He jest stands, not movin. His shirt hangs open. Did I do that? I don’t recall. I press closer, ever closer. My fevered hands roam him. Reckless. Hell-bent. Uh-uh. He grabs ’em. Firmly. Stop right there, he says.”
  • Saba makes out with Jack. “Our kisses grow hungry. Our bodies heat . . . I push him off, sit up an start puttin my cloths to rights. He’s made a heroic effort to undress me.”
  • An unnamed character has intercourse with Molly so he can learn, “how to please a woman. Yer teachin me. That’s all this is.”
  • Saba sleeps with Jack. “We’re skin to skin. Breath to breath. There’s now. There’s here. There’s him an”
  • Saba agrees to marry DeMalo if he gives her friends and family safe passage. When Jack finds out, he and Saba fight. “What deal did you make? To marry him, I says. His eyes harden to ice. You bought our freedom in his bed.”
  • Saba has a miscarriage. “You miscarried, lady . . . if often happens with the first one. Sometimes you don’t even know you’re pregnant.” Saba’s not sure who the father was as she slept with both DeMalo and Jack.

Violence

  • Saba and the rebels set out to blow up a bridge. At the last minute, a group of Tonton and slaves cross the bridge and get blown up with it. “Gone. The three Tonton. All gone. The Stewards in their cart. The blameless beasts. Animals an people, now bloody lumps of flesh. Flung like so much bad meat.”
  • Mercy has scars on her back. “I’ll survive, she says. I’ve had worse. Thin white lines, the scars of a whip, criss-cross her sun-tough skin.”
  • Mercy slaps Creed. “Marry me, he says. She slaps him hard. Almost slaps his head off. Everybody turns at the sound. The angry crack of skin on skin.”
  • In New Eden, weak newborn babies are left outside overnight. If they survive, they are given a second chance to live.
  • Someone nails a dead crow to a tree, hoping Saba will think it is her pet Nero and get frightened. “There’s a crow spiked to the trunk. Jest above head height. Wings spread wide. Dead. Nero.”
  • Emmi is shot. “We’re runnin an pullin her along by her hands. Lugh one side, me the other. There’s a crack. I feel the shot hit her. The blast throws her forward. I hold tight to her hand. She goes limp between us.”
  • Lugh is shot. “What’ve you done? I shout at Lugh. He’s on his feet, lookin dazed. A gun thuds. a bolt slams him in the back. No! I scream as his arms fly up as he twists an falls to my arms. Then we tip we topple out of the window down to the river below.”
  • Saba kills DeMalo. “DeMalo’s knife slashes my arm . . . I seize the crystal rock. I raise it high. I smash DeMalo in the head…My fingers wet with his blood. His head’s crushed. A mess of hair, blood an”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Saba is given a sleeping potion. “From a tiny stone bottle she tipped the merest, barest blink of a teardrop . . . Molly weakened it three times in water. Saba drained the cup, then lay down. Short minutes later she was out.”

Language

  • Profanity is used throughout the book. The profanity used includes: Gawd, bullshit, bullshitter, fergawdsake, dammit, ass, sonofabitch, ohmigawd, damn, and hell.
  • Gawdamn and gawdamnmit are said many times throughout the story.
  • Saba has a chance to shoot DeMalo, but “I cain’t. I cain’t do it. Slowly I lower my bow. I says, Gawdamnn you sonofabitch.”

Supernatural

  • Emmi starts to hear earth songs, a sign that she can become a shaman. “They’d wakened her at dawn yesterday. The earth songs…the songs leading her, telling her, teaching her. Not songs with words. No. No words. Dreams.”
  • DeMalo claims to have visions of what the earth looked like before the apocalypse.
  • Saba has a heartstone. It gets hot as a way of leading a person to their heart’s desire.

Spiritual Content

  • Saba wonders if it is ever right to kill. “I killed some people. Not becuz I wanted to, I had to. It was kill or be killed. Is that wrong? . . . That’s a big question, says Mercy. Is it ever right to kill another person?”

by Morgan Lynn

Rebel Heart

Saba killed the King, but she didn’t destroy the empire. DeMalo, the King’s second in command, has taken control. He has plans to create a new empire and prove himself a much tougher opponent than his predecessor.

All Saba wants to do is join up with Jack at the ocean and live the rest of her life in peace. But the world has other plans. Rumors that Jack joined the Tonton sends Saba on a journey to find him. Only Saba believes in Jack’s innocence; those she travels with doubt his intentions and are ready to kill him if need be.

Swept into the heart of DeMalo’s new empire, Saba reluctantly joins rebels who are determined to destroy everything DeMalo has created. This sequel to Blood Red Road is not as fast-paced as the first, but the world DeMalo is trying to build is both interesting and alluring. The author makes Saba’s decision between joining DeMalo and fighting him a difficult one. While his methods may be harsh, the picture he draws of the future is beautiful. It’s the age-old question: does the end justify the means? A gripping story, the Dust Lands series has enough violence and sexual content to exclude younger readers.

Sexual Content

  • Saba sees her brother go off with a prostitute after a party. “His hands circle her ankles, smooth her bare legs with restless intent. She jumps down. She takes him by the hand. She leads him off into the night.”
  • Slim tells Lugh to, “get on with it. Life’s too short. Take her off in the bushes, my friend, an make her yer own. If you don’t, somebody else will. Hell, I might jest make a play fer her myself.”
  • Tommo kisses Saba. She stops him.
  • Saba makes out with DeMalo, then sleeps with him. “I’ve climbed on to his lap an I’m runnin my hands through his hair, over his shoulders an arms, while we kiss . . . he drags his lips along the inside of my arm, wrist to elbow. Trailin shivery fire on my tender skin till I’m quiverin head to foot. A rush in my belly, hot an ancient . . . I lead him to the bed. We lie down together.”
  • Molly sees a hickey on Saba’s neck.
  • Saba kisses Tommo to get him to trust her.
  • Saba kisses Jack when she finally finds him. “He takes my face in his hands an kisses me, over an over an over agin. My lips an my cheeks an my eyes an my lips, oh my lips. An I kiss him back. My whole body’s shaking. On fire. He’s shakin too.”

Violence

  • Subjects of New Haven are branded on the forehead depending on their status.
  • A family is displaced. The parents and son are shot, the daughter shoots herself rather than be taken. One of the soldiers is also shot for disobeying orders.
  • Saba is attacked by wolves. Her friend’s wolfdog saves her by ripping the other wolves’ throats out. Saba is knocked unconscious during this; she only sees the dead wolves afterward. “They lie in pools of their own blood. Both got their throats ripped out . . . The air hums with a hungry buzz. Flies. Hunnerds of ’em. Thousands of ’em. The open wounds, the half-dried lakes of sticky blood.”
  • In a fit of rage, Saba attacks her brother. “I leap at Lugh. I knock him backwards. We roll on the ground. I punch, I kick, I claw . . . my hands is tight around Lugh’s throat. My thumbs pressin on his windpipe.”
  • Saba discovers a temple of skeletons built by cannibals. The skeletons “sit close packed, side by side, on long wooden benches. They gleam whitely, dully, in the dim light.”
  • There is a pot cooking in the temple. “Somethin large bobs to the surface. It turns over…a face looks at me. A human face.” She flees, killing a priest on the way out. The cannibals give chase, and she shoots several of them with her arrows.
  • Saba and her friends hijack a man’s wagon. They force him to drive it by threatening to shoot him. “Gawdamn sonofabitch, I mutter . . . I walk fast, loadin by bow, aimin it straight at his face. He throws his hands up.”
  • Twice while on the road, Saba and her friends are spotted. They kill the people to keep their presence in New Haven quiet. “He shoots her head. An it’s silent. Jest like that.”
  • While on the road Saba sees a dead man who was lashed to a tree trunk. “A fat iron spike’s bin nailed through his throat. He ain’t bin here more’n a few days. He died hard. Hard an long.”
  • Saba jumps off a cliff. DeMalo pulls her out of the water and asks, “Were you trying to kill yourself?…[Saba] says naught.”
  • When attacked by Tonton, all the Tonton are killed. One of Saba’s allies is killed, possibly from friendly fire. “Both Tonton lie dead on the ground. Bram hangs halfways outta the driver’s seat, face down. He’s bin shot in the back.”
  • Maev gives herself up as a diversion so the others can escape. She fights for as long as she can, then blows herself up. When Saba tells Maev goodbye, “I kiss her lips. Don’t let ’em take you, I whisper . . . An as I soar through the darkness, high above the lake, Maev starts to shoot . . . the sound of gunfire goes on fer longer than I’d of thought it would. Or could. Then one big explosion.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Jack drinks wormwood whiskey at his friend’s inn.
  • Saba accuses her brother of taking the drug chaal, but he denies it.
  • Saba’s brother is hit with a blow dart. They cut open the wound and suck the poison out.
  • Saba drugs DeMalo’s wine with a potion that will knock him unconscious for many hours.

Language

  • The words damned, helluva, fergawdsake, damn, and sonofabitch are used once or twice.
  • Hell, variations of gawdamn, and ohmigawd are used often.
  • When Saba starts acting irrationally, her brother yells at her. “Tell me, gawdammit! Why’d you break yer dawdamn bow?”

Supernatural

  • Saba has a heartstone. It gets hot as a way of leading a person to their heart’s desire.
  • Saba starts to see ghosts. “It’s Epona. But not like she was. In life, she gleamed an shone…She’s a child of the air now. Fog an mist. She drifts. She gathers. She fades.”
  • Saba meets the Sky Speaker, a type of shaman who can sing the earths songs and sometimes see what will happen in the future. “The Sky Speaker’s shakin, head to foot. Her eyes roll back an she waves her hands wildly. She starts to babble, a endless stream of sounds.”
  • Saba follows the Wraithway, a road where spirits are said to roam.

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Morgan Lynn

Paper Covers Rock

Alex narrates his story through diary entries and poetry. At the beginning of the school year, Alex and his friends are drinking and decide to jump off a tall rock into the river. Thomas, one of Alex’s best friends, dies. With that death comes terror—the terror of someone finding out that they were illegally drinking. The terror that Mrs. Dovecott saw more than she is letting on. The terror that Thomas’s last words will shatter someone’s life.

Alex life is full of secrets. He splits his time between daydreaming about his crush on Mrs. Dovecott and wondering how far Glenn will go to keep their secret. Paper Covers Rock revolves around Thomas’ death and the boys wanting to keep their drinking a secret. Glenn wants Alex to tempt Mrs. Dovecott into kissing him so that she will get fired. And Alex reluctantly goes along with the plan.

The storyline of Paper Covers Rocks does not always ring true. The boys’ lives are full of lies, deception, and sexual content. As Alex paints the story of his life, it is hard to connect with someone who is willing to lie to everyone around him in order to hide the fact that he was drinking when his friend died.

Sexual Content

  • Alex spends a lot of time fantasizing about his English teacher, who he thinks he is in love with. In one scene he thinks, “I wish there were punch, I wish it was spiked, I wish that Mrs. Dovecott would drink a gallon of it and make crazy love to me.”
  • When talking about the culture of the school, the narrator explains that there are not a lot of employees at the school who are hot. “If you want to have a crush on a Burch bitch . . . there are not a lot of options. You’ve got your dining hall employees, but they’re inbred. . .”
  • The narrator mentions that his roommate is, “jacking off every night.”
  • The narrator wonders if his friend is gay. At school there, is no worse label than being gay.
  • One of Alex’s friends tells him, “Your brains are in your crotch.”
  • The boys play a version of Would You Rather. “Would you rather watch Mrs. Davido give a blow job to Buddha or Mr. Lyme? Would you rather watch Miss Dovecott give a blow job to Gaybrook or Everson?” Then they talk about if Mrs. Dovecott could get Gaybrook “off” and if Everson would “sploodge in about two seconds.”
  • Alex is glad that his mom isn’t coming to parents’ weekend because she will be labeled as a FUM, “boarding-school speak for (f^ckable mom).”
  • The boys wonder if a teacher is a lesbian.
  • Alex thinks about how he, “fondled a girl’s breast once. Her nipples were tiny, but her tits were huge . . . She laid the sweater across my crotch and slid a hand underneath it . . . I moaned and came in my shorts.”
  • Someone tells a story about girls kissing another girl’s breast and practicing kissing on each other. “I had heard before that girls practice kissing with one another so that they know what they’re doing when a boy kisses them for real.”
  • Alex thinks about the faculty members’ daughters who are sent away to go to school. He thinks that the girls who stayed would all have sex with his friend Glen, if Glen wanted to have sex with them.

Violence

  • At a dance, someone talks about how a student committed suicide. “This teacher’s theory is that the boy took all those pills because he was struggling with his sexuality . . . He might have been gay.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • While drinking, Alex and his friends jump off a rock and into a river. His friend Thomas, who was “shit-faced” from chugging vodka, hits his head on a rock and dies. The boys are afraid that if the school finds out, they will be expelled.
  • There is drinking at a football game that the alums go to.

Language

  • Alex says someone is, “full of shit.”
  • The narrator says that parents pay “shit-loads” of money to send their sons away to boarding school.
  • An “ass-hole” who lived in Alex’s dorm room before he moved in burnt holes in the carpet with cigarettes.
  • Profanity is scattered throughout the book. The profanity includes bullshit, f^ck, smart-ass, and damn.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • The school’s reverend, “is a hypocrite. He preaches on the sin of homosexuality at least once a trimester, he quotes the Scriptures, twists it so that it fits his message. . .The good reverend says that we are made in God’s image. God is perfect. Therefore, God is not gay. If you engage in the sin of homosexuality, then you will contract gay cancer and die a very slow, very painful death.”
  • In one sermon the reverend says, “You will come to learn that God shows His mercy in small ways . . . God is with us, and under His watch, all things are good.” Alex doesn’t agree.
  • Alex’s father told him that, “religion was a human invention.” Alex thinks that more educated people don’t, “need religion to make sense of the word.” Therefore Alex does not believe in God.
  • The reverend says Thomas, “did not die in vain; he was part of God’s plan.” Alex thinks, “Even God does not have the power to intervene in a world where centuries of evil have rooted beneath the surface of everything . . . My father is right: humans made god up to satisfy their own needs.
  • Mr. Parks preaches that “God is programmed into our DNA, so He’s there under our skin, biologically there, to connect us to a force larger than ourselves.” Alex wonders if homosexuality is programmed there too.

Monument 14

One minute, fourteen kids were on the bus heading towards school. Then the gigantic sized hail began. The bus crashed and everything changed in an instant.

Six high school kids, two eighth-graders, and six little kids are trapped in a chain superstore, while chemicals fill the outside air. They must work together in order to survive. However, the longer they are in the store, the more difficulties they must face—they must keep others out, they must take care of the younger children, they must fight the escalating tension between each other—all the while trying to come up with a plan to survive.

Monument 14 is a suspenseful survival story written from the point of view of one of the teenagers. Although the premise behind the book is interesting, some of the events in the story are farfetched. The narrator describes some graphic fights, including one in which an adult is shot and killed. One of the pre-teen girls is sexually assaulted. Another character raids the pharmacy and is high for most of the story.

Sexual Content

  • When exposed to the chemicals in the air, Brayden thinks, “But I still had some weird stuff happening in my body. What I wanted was Astrid. She looked so good to me that I wanted to take her, in a dark and terrible way.”
  • When one of the children is playing with Barbie toys, the narrator describes it as a “Barbie orgy.”
  • When some of the characters fight, a boy says, “I see. I get it . . . You and your brother want in on Niko’s little gay Scout thing. You guys wish you could be up in the woods, huffing on each other’s campfires . . .”
  • Some of the boys were talking about Astrid. Brayden says, “You don’t even love her. You just want her so you can get your rocks off.”
  • Sahalia helps people wash their hair. The narrator and two other boys watch her. “We can see skin under the leg of her shorts. The creamy skin of her inner, inner thigh . . . Now we see her breast outright, through the material of her shirt. We could see the nipples. Everything about them, we could see . . . But it seemed to me she wanted us to see her body. She wanted to be wanted.”
  • Sahalia is wearing a revealing outfit. When the boys look at Sahalia’s body, another character yells at her, “We get it, okay? You’re sexy and you want to have sex with these guys. We get it. But, honey, it’s not going to happen because you are thirteen.” As the two fight, Sahalia yells, “I know more about sex than you do, you stuck-up bitch!”
  • Astrid finds Sahalia “basically naked” and crying. “She sat on the floor, clutching her nightgown to her chest.” Later Sahalia says, “He (an adult, school employee) said that I should be, like his girlfriend. And I guess I thought I could, you know, do what all he wanted me to do. But then I didn’t want to and . . .”
  • Two of the characters kiss. “Nicko held her to him, encircling her dark shoulders and pulling her into his body . . . She looked up at him and he looked at her and they were kissing.”

Violence

  • When the school bus crashes, the driver is killed. “He was pinned behind the wheel and blood was spilling out of his head like milk out of a carton.”
  • When exposed to the air, the narrator begins attacking Niko. “I started beating him with the mask I was still holding. He wouldn’t let go of my leg and was dragging me down the stairs. I swung at him, wanting him to lose his balance . . . I couldn’t think. Just pummel. Pound. tear. Destroy.”
  • One of the characters talks about how his mother’s boyfriend hits her. In a later scene, he talks about how his aunt’s husband would beat her aunt, but the aunt would always lie about how she got hurt.
  • When Chloe was exposed to the chemicals, she attacks the others. “She had Batiste by the throat, up against the wall . . . He was getting strangled to death . . . His face was blue and his eyes were big and his legs were limp.”
  • When Robbie (an adult, school employee) is found sexually abusing Sahalia, Astrid holds a gun to him. Later, Jake is given the gun and Robbie attacks him. Robbie says, “I told you it wasn’t me. She wanted to be my girlfriend.” Then Robbie, “lashed out and struck Niko across the face with the barrel of the pistol.” Another character shoots Robbie dead.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of the kids says that he went to a strip club with his uncle. He said that they serve liquor. “They have these little glasses in all kind of flavors like watermelon and peach passion and hot apple. They taste horrible.”
  • Some of the older kids drink rum. The narrator describes the experience. “I was loose. I felt big, like I could say what I really felt. I was drunk.” In another scene, three of the older kids put alcohol into their slushies and get drunk.
  • After getting in a fight, the narrator takes some pain pills and some steroids. “I was already starting to feel better. More warm and relaxed.”
  • Jake offers the narrator a pill and says, “Let’s get high.” The narrator takes, “one of the EZ-melt pain pills from the day before and one triangular orange mystery pill later, I was flying. I felt relaxed but energized. Loose and happy.”
  • Jake said, “I keep taking these pills. But every time, they’re working less. It’s like I squeezed all the good feelings out of my brain and now I’m out. I drained it all out and I’m done.”

Language

  • Profanity is used often. The profanity includes: holy Christ, hell, son of a bitch, a-hole, crap, and ass.
  • When the group of kids make lunch in the store, one of the kids asks, “What do we do if the people from the store come? They’re going to be pissed?”
  • When watching the news, the narrator notices the anchors messed up make up. “I wondered why no one fixed her makeup. It was CNN, for God’s sake.”
  • When Brayden tells Astrid what to do, she yells, “Screw you, Brayden! You’re the last person I want to be stuck here with!”
  • When Chloe sees Brayden’s beat up face she asks, “Oh my God, what happened to you?”
  • Someone tries to get into the store. The man shouted, “BY THE HAIR OF MY F—CHIN, LET ME IN OR I’LL HUFF AND I’LL BLOW YOUR EFFIN’ GREENWAY DOWN.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When disaster strikes, Batiste keeps saying it is “the end of days” and that “judgement day was upon us.”
  • When talking about the strip club, Batiste says, “Our church is always trying to get those sinners to repent. But I don’t even know what kind of sinning they’re doing.”
  • A character says, “I thank God he brought us to this place.”

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

I Am Number Four

John moves around a lot. But not because of his dad’s job—because he’s an alien. He is one of the few survivors of the Loriac, who are being hunted to extinction by the Mogadorians, a race of conquering aliens who have now set their eyes on Earth.

John tries to blend in among the Earthlings, something that isn’t difficult at first. He looks just like you and me. But then his Legacies start to appear.  Glowing hands, fire-proof skin, and more. With the appearance of his Legacies, his life becomes a lot more complicated. Will he have to move again? It has never been a problem before, but now John has a best friend and girlfriend, and refuses to flee when the Mogadorians start to close in.

I Am Number Four is an interesting story. The story is told from John’s mind, which feels like the mind of any normal teenage boy. John learns about the death of his planet, his parents, and his race. At first, he wishes that he could just be human and not have to hide anymore. But as he learns more about his heritage, John begins to realize he is a part of a much bigger battle.

This book is fun, but lacks suspense until the very end. The characters are extremely likable though, and following their lives is enjoyable. I Am Number Four is a good introduction to Lorien series.

Sexual Content

  • John and Sarah kiss several times. “I kiss her good night, a lingering kiss while holding both her hands gently in mine.”
  • “When we get to her room, she closes the door and kisses me. I’m surprised, but thrilled.”
  • Sarah and John make out on his bed. “We fall back on the bed, on our sides…all at once we’re kissing again. Entangled. Meshed. Our arms tightly around the other…Sarah and I fall on the bed kissing each other, falling into each other.”

 Violence

  • A man is killed. “ ‘No,’ the man whispers, and in that instant the blade of a sword, long and gleaming…comes through the door and sinks deeply into the man’s chest . . . The man takes a single breath, and utters one word: ‘Run.’ He falls lifeless to the floor.”
  • John gets into a fight with some bullies. “I bring my knee straight up into his crotch. His breath catches in his throat, and he doubles over.”
  • John sees visions of his planet’s destruction. “People are running everywhere, fighting back. As many Mogadorians as Loric are being killed . . . I turn around and face a beast that must be forty feet tall…[it] takes out dozens of Loric around me.”
  • John sees another vision of his planet. “Mounds of bodies, not all of them intact, not all of them whole. On top of one mound is the man in silver and blue, dead like all the rest.”
  • Sarah is dragged off in the darkness of a hayride. John is attacked but finds Sarah and fights back. “I throw him and he hits the side of a tree twenty feet away . . . I pick him up and lift him a foot off the ground with my hand again around his throat. His legs kick wildly.”
  • John challenges a group of bullies to a fight. “Two of the guys come at me, both bigger than me. One swings but I duck his punch and send one of my own into his gut . . . I shove the second guy and his feet leave the ground. He lands with a thud five feet away.”
  • Sam points a gun at John because he thinks he isn’t human. John talks Sam into putting the gun down, and Sam admits, “it wasn’t actually loaded.”
  • Henri disappears. John goes after him and follows him to a certain address. When he goes in, he is attacked by a man with a bat. “He swings the bat. I duck and it hits the wall with a thud, leaving a large splintered hole in the wood panel.”
  • A man points a gun at John. Later, John points the gun at the man to get him to share information.
  • John is attacked by Mogadorians. “Henri fires the shotgun. The sound is deafening…He cocks the gun again, keeps it aimed. I twist my body to look out. Two fallen scouts are lying in the grass, unmoving.”
  • During the final fight, there is a lot of shooting, fighting, and running away from Mogadorians with swords. “A golden glinting object that speeds through the air with violence. It hits the scout so hard that its skull cracks on impact, and then it falls to the ground and lies motionless…Henri takes Sarah’s knife and thrusts it through its chest, reducing it to a pile of ash.” “Henri cries out in pain. I turn. One of the scouts has thrust a knife into his gut . . . The soldier raises its sword in the air. The blade tastes death, starts glowing in the night sky behind it.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • John goes to a party where there is beer.
  • There is a substance that looks like a stone. When placed under a Loriac’s tongue, it dissolves and gives the Loriac strength.

Language

  • Hell, dick, shit, and damn are said many times in daily conversation.
  • Son of a bitch, ass, bitch, asshole, and bullshit are said one or two times.

Supernatural

  • The protagonist of the story is an alien. There are many aliens living on Earth, hailing from two different races and two different planets. One race is trying to drive the other to extinction.
  • John starts developing powers such as being fire-proof and telekinetic. “I put all my power into the pit of my stomach and direct it towards him…he goes flying backward and crashes into the wall.”
  • John’s race of aliens develops a myriad of powers. Some are universal, such as super strength, while some are specialized, such as invisibility. John trains to increase his powers’ strengths.
  • John has visions of his planet’s destruction.
  • On Loriac the animals can change their shapes.
  • The Mogadorians can make people see horrible visions, such as, “My own death, and the deaths of all the people I know and love . . . Not only did I have to witness the deaths, but I could feel them, too . . . then came things I’ve always feared as a kid . . . werewolves. Demonic clowns. Giant spiders. I viewed them all through the eyes of a child, and they absolutely terrified me. And every time one of those things bit into me, I could feel its teeth rip the flesh from my body . . . I couldn’t stop screaming.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

Watched

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

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

 Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

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

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

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

by Morgan Lynn

Bang

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

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

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

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

 Sexual Content

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

 Violence

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

 Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

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

Supernatural

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

Spiritual Content

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

Crash

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

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

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

Supernatural

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

Spiritual Content

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

Gasp

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

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

Supernatural

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

Spiritual Content

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

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

Perfect Ruin

The edge calls.  Life on Internment should be enough, but for some it is not. They seek the edge. They brave the hypnotizing winds.  They hope for a glimpse of the ground.  They want more.

For Morgan, life on Internment has been enough.  Then a young girl is murdered and everything changes.  Danger is in the air.  But it’s not the murder that worries Morgan.  She wonders if she can resist the call of the edge.  She wonders if Internment is what it appears. She wonders.  She daydreams.  She questions.  And her questions can be dangerous.

 Perfect Ruin creates a world that is a utopia for most.  The author creates a world that is interesting in the fact that it is not perfect, but it is not evil.  However, what makes Perfect Ruin a great read is the characters. From the start, the reader can easily fall in love with Morgan as well as her friends and family.  Morgan’s best friend Pen is full of contradictions and surprises.  Basil, Morgan’s betrothed, is a solid character who clearly understands Morgan and loves her anyway.  The interaction between the characters is heart-warming and believable.

The storyline is full of twists and surprises.  And when the readers get to the end, they are going to want to pick up the second book in the series, Burning Kingdoms.

 Sexual Content

  • In Morgan’s narration, she says, “. . . I’ve heard it isn’t uncommon for girls my age to be intimate with their betrothed, but the idea still embarrasses me.”
  • Morgan and her friend are caught sneaking out of the academy. When asked by the headmaster why they left, Morgan’s friend says they were talking about “female matters, sir.  I’m a little more—seasoned—than Morgan and she was asking me for advice regarding a private conundrum with her betrothed.”
  • Morgan and her betrothed kiss. “We move our faces at the same time, and then our lips are touching.  I’ve lost my worries.  Traded them in for the sun and the taste of his tongue and the thought that in sixty years we’ll be ashes—we’ll be tossed into the air and after a moment of weightlessness we’ll be everywhere and nowhere.”
  • Morgan describes when she kisses her betrothed. “It roots me to the place, makes me feel at home.”
  • One of the characters mentions that her brother is “more interested in my betrothed than I am.” At that time Morgan thinks, “I am still thinking about the prince being attracted to his sister’s betrothed…the prince isn’t the first to be attracted to his own gender; although it isn’t talked about, I remember my brother denouncing the serum and the surgery purported to treat this kind of attraction.”
  • When Morgan kisses her betrothed, “he’s touching the side of my face, his hands are soft as air. His eyes have changed, gone hazy the way they do when bodies are close. I like that I’m the only one that does this with him; I’m the only one who gets to see him this way.”

Violence

  • Morgan and several of her classmates are on their way home from the academy when the train backs up because a young girl has been murdered. Morgan finds out that the girl’s throat and wrist were slashed. “Everything indicates that she bled to death.”
  • Morgan thinks back to a murder that happened when her parents were young. Two men were fighting and one pushed the other one into the swallows, an area much like quicksand. The murderer “had been driven mad by a tainted elixir that should have been discarded by the pharmacists.  He was feverish and deranged when they found him, and the king had no choice but to have him dispatched.”
  • A flower shop burns down, which is highly unusual in this world.
  • When a specialist asks about her sister-in-law’s “procedure”, Morgan thinks, “Procedures. Like ‘incident,’ this is another word that covers a broad range of unpleasant things.  There is the termination procedure.  The dispatch procedure.  The dusting procedure that reduces bodies to ash.  The mercy procedure that dispatches the infants who are born unwell.”
  • Morgan narrates a story about two twins. The one twin, Olive, killed her sister and assumed her identity.  All of Olive’s children were born dead, “Convinced that she was being punished by the god in the sky, and driven mad by grief, Olive confessed what she had done.”
  • Morgan and her friend are kidnapped, have their hands tied behind their backs, and are put into a dark room. One of the attackers says, “We’ve decided to let you live . . . for now. If we killed you tonight, it would be an awful lot of blood; we’d be up until dawn with the cleaning. . .”
  • Morgan and her friend plan an escape. At this time, Morgan’s friend hits one of the attackers with a brick, and he falls to the ground bleeding.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Morgan’s mother regularly takes a prescription. When Morgan sees a murdered girl, she doesn’t want her mother to worry.  “She’s been doing so well lately.  It has been a while since she’s gone through an entire prescription.” Later in the story, Morgan’s mom sleeps a lot because of the headache elixir.
  • Morgan’s sister-in-law becomes pregnant “out of turn.” She has to have the pregnancy terminated.   As part of the narration, Morgan also tells a story about another woman: “A woman decided she’d rather smother her child than allow it to belong to someone else.”
  • When Morgan and her betrothed go to her bedroom, Morgan’s mother asks her if she took her “sterility pill.”
  • One of the character’s mothers has a tonic addiction that is referred to several times. The addiction prevented her mother from working for a while.
  • One character is given a pill so she doesn’t “have a fit.”
  • One of the characters says, “I’m going to get drunk now, I think . . . you’re welcome to join me.” However, Morgan talks her friend out of getting drunk when she says, “We promised to sneak tonic bottle only when we’re looking to have fun. This wouldn’t be fun.  It would just be sad.”

Language

  • A character tells Morgan she’s lucky because “You aren’t doomed to marry a complete ass.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • The book revolves around The History of Interment that tells of the first humans who the god of the ground wanted to destroy because they were ungrateful. The god of the sky “thought they were too clever to waste, and he agreed to keep them in the sky with the promise that they would never again interfere with the ground.”  Because of this belief, the god of the sky is referred to often.
  • There is a festival of stars, which is a month-long celebration. At the end of the festival, people ask the god of the sky for gifts and requests.
  • On the train ride home, Morgan sees a pregnant woman. “Her lips are moving.  It takes me a few seconds to realize that she’s talking to the god in the sky, something the people of Internment do only when they are desperate.”
  • In Daphne Leander’s essay, she wrote, “Up until someone I loved approached the edge, I had no reason to question the hand of any god, much less my own god’s hand. But to see that no amount of love or will on my part could make that little girl open her eyes as she lay unconscious in a sterile room—How could I not question this god that watches over us?”
  • Some think that the swallows, an area much like quicksand, were created because the god in the sky was angry.
  • Daphne Leander’s also wrote, “Every moment is a gift, from the frivolous to the dire. The taste of sweetgold, and the rough paper of our favorite books.  I find a god in these things—which god, I cannot say, but I’m grateful to it.”
  • When Morgan meets the person accused of Daphne’s murder, she wonders, “If he asked for Daphne to return to him, his request would certainly be rejected. There are some things that even a god can’t do.”
  • In Daphne Leander’s essay, she wrote, “Each of us has a betrothed so that we won’t have to spend our lives alone. It leads me to wonder to whom the gods are married. The elements, perhaps.  Or do they know something we don’t know about solitude?”
  • When Morgan and a friend sneak out of the academy during lunch, Morgan thinks, “It seems as though something should stop us. The god of the sky himself should send a gust of wind in warning. But nothing happens at all.”
  • Daphne Leander wrote, “Our bodies are burned when we die. All the good in our soul lives on in the tributary, while all the bad in us burns away forever.  This frightens me.  Who decides what is good and what is bad?  Who decides what is saved and what is lost from our souls?”
  • People are dispatched when they are seventy-five. “To live beyond our useful years would be selfish.  That’s how we show our gratitude to the god in the sky . . . We send our ashes up for the sky god to collect.  The ashes become part of a current, a force, instead of just one body.  It’s called the tributary—a perfect harmony of souls.”
  • When Morgan asks her friend if the gods are a myth, her friend replies, “It goes against everything we’ve been taught. We’re living on a big rock floating in the sky.  How many explanations can there be for that? . . . What kind of science could explain how we got here or even why we exist? Of course there are gods.”
  • In Daphne Leander’s essay, she wrote, “We accept gods that don’t speak to us. We accept gods that would place us in a world filled with injustices and do nothing as we struggle.  It’s easier than accepting that there’s nothing out there at all, and that, in our darkest moments, we are truly alone.”
  • In one scene Morgan’s brother prays to the god of the sky and she thinks, “He doesn’t even believe there is a god anymore.”
  • There are several characters who wonder if the gods exist.

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.”

ADRIFT

Matt went to the party to see a beautiful girl. He never expected that decision would alter his life forever. In a strange turn of events, Matt and John end up adrift in a boat with three rich kids. They assumed they would be rescued quickly. They assumed wrong.

Matt and John are used to banding together to help each other. By when five people are fighting for survival, it’s difficult to know how far each person will go to stay alive. When Matt begins to fall in love with Driana, conflict builds. The group needs to work together to stay alive, but growing mistrust makes that impossible. After all, no one wants to be the first to die.

Adrift is a gripping tale that will capture readers’ attention right from the start. Even though most of the action takes place on a boat in the open sea, there is plenty of suspense to keep the story interesting. The story doesn’t only focus on the struggle of being lost at sea, but sprinkles in mystery because something happened in the past—something bad—and that secret has shaped both Matt and John.

Besides being an entertaining story, Adrift is easy to read and shows the complicated nature of humans.  Although the story explores the idea of killing a sick person to save oneself, in the end, the characters act with compassion. One positive aspect of this story is that characters show the importance of telling the truth—even if the truth is ugly.

Sexual Content

  • Matt and Driana kiss twice. The first time Driana, “kissed my eyes and then my lips . . . We kissed and kissed.” The second time Driana, “kissed me fast and then pulled away, and then she leaned in for a longer, harder one and lingered, and then she pushed away really hard. . .”

 

Violence

  • One of the characters tries to hug a dolphin. “It bucked, and its tail kicked up into the Windsurfer. . . Maybe I only imagined the bones crack, but her arm from her elbow down was facing the wrong way, and a slick red bone tip pierced her skin. . . blood pulsed from the rip in her arm . . . ”
  • John and Matt were told about a character whose, “mother was gunned down in front of her. . . A drug deal went bad and Stef’s mom was hit in the cross fire. . . Stef was holding her when she bled out. She was five years old, and she remembers it like it was yesterday.”
  • Throughout the story, the death of John’s father, Mr. Costello, is talked about. In the beginning of the book, the reader gets snatches of information such as, “When his father’s blood spattered my face.”
  • Several years before the story begins, John’s father is shot. The incident is described over several pages. Matt tells the story. He said, “It wasn’t the blood that freaked me out. . . Mr. Costello took all three bullets fired into the front seat. His body is pinned against the driver’s side door.”
  • At a baseball game, there is a group of men who are spitting at the coach. “Mr. Costello helps him up. He drags him to the ball-field exit and throws him into the parking lot.”
  • John tries to kill a baby porpoise, so they can eat it. John hits him with a harpoon, drags it onto the boat, and then hits it one the head with a hammer. “I heard a popping sound, and then another one when John swung the hammer into the porpoise’s temple. The porpoise writhed and bucked and flopped right out of the boat.”
  • When a shark tries to eat one of the boys, John hits it with a hammer.
  • One of the boys goes “out of his mind.” Dri is trying to comfort him when, “He screamed and flung her off. Her head smacked the bench cabinet. Blood drops hit the water on the deck and spread out like exploding red stars.” Matt steps in between the two and, “Drove the heels of my hands into JoJo’s chest. . . JoJo came back at me with a fist to my shoulder. The force of the punch tumbled into my spine, my legs. . . I hit the floor of the boat hard enough to see stars. . .”
  • JoJo jumps into the open ocean and is eaten by sharks. “. . . a shark bit his shoulder and shook him to tear away the skin. He didn’t have time to scream before another shark clamped its mouth over his head.”
  • John hits Matt. “When I turned back his fist smashed my face. Lights out.”

 

Drugs and Alcohol

  • There are several detectives looking for the missing teens. A detective’s memo stated, “Also, Castello’s mother was hospitalized with alcohol poisoning. Apparently this wasn’t the first time.”  Later Matt said, “After Mr. Costello was killed, she drank to the point she couldn’t work.”
  • One of the characters takes drugs for his depression. “One is pink, the other yellow, another light blue.”

 

Language

  • None

 

Supernatural

  • Matt occasionally sees a ghost. “I meet him [the ghost] in my nightmare. He lay in the front seat of the car with his skull smashed in. Mr. Costello opened his eyes and cried blood tears. The ghost had never spoken to me before, but that morning he said, Matt, it’s time to wake up.”
  • Matt says that Mr. Costello’s ghost is everywhere. “He looks so lost and sad. Like he wants to tell me something, but can’t talk because his neck is all blown out. His voice is gone.”
  • At the end of the story, Matt says, “. . . sometimes Mr. Costello is there . . . Once in a while he follows me. He doesn’t mean any harm, and he isn’t bleeding anymore. The wounds are gone. He can talk now, but he doesn’t.”

 

Spiritual Content

  • While looking at the sky, one of the characters says, “To get to see this? God loves us. Truly we are loved.”
  • A character asks Matt if he is a believer, then goes on to say, “I believe God sent you both. You especially. . . You have a talent for remaining calm. This is the way God made you.”
  • In a conversation, Matt is told, “God is watching out for us.” When Matt is asked if he believes, he replies, “Only when I’m taking a test I didn’t study for.”
  • There are several references to God such as, “Thank God we have more money than they do.”
  • One of the characters says, “The universe provides.” In response, John thinks, “For some people, the universe provides. The rest of us scramble.”

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

Invisible

Doug Hanson is not normal and the kids at school know it. But that doesn’t stop Doug from having a crush on Melissa or from being best friends with Andy, a popular football player.

Doug spends his spare time creating a bridge out of matchsticks for the model railroad in his basement. The one thing that Doug looks forward to is when his neighbor Andy comes home, and they talk out of their bedroom window. It doesn’t matter that Doug and Andy don’t spend much time together; Doug knows that Andy will always be there for them.

When Doug gets caught watching Melissa undress in her bedroom, things take a turn for the worse.  Now Doug is a target of the football players, the police are watching him, and the principal is on his tail.  To make matters worse, his parents are thinking about putting him into a private school for students with emotional problems.

Invisible is an easy-to-read story that focuses on Doug’s difficulties. Towards the end of the story, mystery is added because Doug keeps alluding to something that happened in the past. In the end, this mysterious event gives the reader a surprise ending.

The author adds drama through Doug’s difficulties, but because Doug obviously has problems, it is sometimes hard to empathize with him. Even though Doug knows it is wrong, he spies on his crush, Melissa. Because of Doug’s actions and his disturbing thoughts, the reader can understand why other students do not like Doug.

Sexual Content 

  • Doug has a crush on Melissa. While at school he stares at her. During one scene he thinks about her body. “I wonder what her breasts look like? I happen to know that girls’ nipples come in different sizes and colors. I imagine Melissa’s being the small, pink variety.”
  • Doug likes to climb up a tree and watch Melissa in her bedroom. He watches her begin to undress, but does not see much. Melissa’s father catches Doug and runs him off the property.

Violence 

  • Doug thinks about, “some Buddhist monks who poured gasoline over themselves and set themselves on fire. They did it to protest a war.”
  • Although there is no actual violence, Doug thinks about a conversation he had with Andy.  “Would you rather be strangled by a serial killer or devoured by rats? We both went with a serial killer.”
  • A group of “football goons” beat up Doug. “Freddie draws back on enormous foot and kicks me hard in the ribs, I curl up and try to roll way, but they are on me, three of them, kicking me from every side . . . One of them stomps on my chest; air hisses from my lungs.” Doug ends up in the hospital, but the boys are not punished.
  • While Doug is in the hospital he thinks about getting revenge. He wants to catch a rat and, “put it in a steel box with a hole against his body so that the only way for the rat to get out is to chew its way through Freddie’s’ stomach. Or I could soak his Nikes in gasoline and light them on fire while they are on his feet.”
  • Doug fills his railroad cars with the phosphorous and then watches them crash and catch on fire.  “I look up at the sky and see flames spreading across the basement ceiling . . . I am burning and I am blind and I can’t find the stairs . . .” Doug ends up in the burn unit.

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • There is one reference to “stoners” who attend school with the narrator.
  •  Doug takes Proloftin (or is supposed to). He doesn’t like the pills because they make him sleepy, but they help, “me being locked up at home and not being able to see Andy.” His psychiatrist and his parents keep asking him to take the pills, but he doesn’t.   

Language 

  • When the boys are beating Doug, he is called an “asshole,” a “perv” and a “goddamn peeper.”
  • Dough thinks about beating the “crap” out of someone.

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content 

  • None

The Selection

Gorgeous dresses, spectacular meals, a handsome prince, and the chance to become a princess. It was everyone’s dream . . . and one girl’s nightmare.

America Singer only signed up for the Selection to appease her family and boyfriend. She didn’t expect or even want to be chosen. But it no longer matters what America wants. She is taken from her family and forced to join thirty-four other girls in the palace, all of whom are hoping the prince will chose to love and marry her.

America is the only girl in the competition who wants to lose, but as she gets to know Prince Maxon and becomes his friend, her desires become unclear, even to herself.

As the competition drags on, America is exposed to the rebel attacks that are a regular part of the royal family’s existence. While everyone else dismisses the attacks as random acts of violence attempted to usurp the throne, America begins to suspect there is something bigger going on.

America’s personality shines throughout the story. She is strong, funny, and unpredictable. Instead of acting like a love-sick teen, she talks to Prince Maxon as if he were the enemy. And while the other contestants faun over the prince, America stays true to herself. Although there are many predictable parts to this story—the mean girl, girl drama, a love triangle—the plot is still enjoyable. The story has the same premise as the television show The Bachelor, but the book is teen-friendly.

Sexual Content

  • America and her boyfriend kiss several times. In one scene they are lying in bed, fully clothed, kissing, and she thinks, “I was nowhere near ready to stop” and “this is why people got married so young.” Then when America thinks about marriage she worries because only the upper class can, “regulate having children.”
  • When America is told the rules of the Selection, she has to sign a form stating that she is a virgin. She is told that she cannot refuse the prince, no matter what he asks, “dinner, outings, kisses—more than kisses—anything. Do not turn him down.”
  • As part of the Selection, the girls talk about which girls the prince has kissed.
  • Another girl who is part of the Selection asks what someone did to become so popular and then states, “A girl has more than one way she can pay for what she wants.”
  • The queen’s sister tells one of the contestants about the queen having multiple miscarriages.
  • Towards the end of the book, America and her ex-boyfriend are kissing in bed, fully clothed. Afterward she feels bad about cheating on the prince, even though the prince is dating other girls.

Violence

  • When America thinks the prince is going to kiss her, she knees him in the groin.
  • Several times rebels invade the palace and the girls must hide from them. Although the story describes the damage that the rebels cause, little actual fighting is described.
  • During one of the rebel attacks, a maid is terrified when a rebel gets ahold of her, licks her face, and starts dragging her off somewhere. As part of the description, it says, “I’m not sure they (rebels) have very many women with them, if you catch my meaning.”
  • There is some brief mention of the contestants fighting. One girl slaps another across the face, and a girl rips another’s dress.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • America is offered sleep aides because she has trouble sleeping.
  • America is described as running like a drunk.
  • At a banquet, the queen’s sister is drinking alcohol, and one of the contestants talks about how the queen’s sister has had too much to drink.

Language

  • America wonders, “How the hell did I get here?”
  • The word “damn” is used several times.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Although religion is not discussed, it is illegal for people to have sex before marriage.

 

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
  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 73
  6. 74
  7. 75
  8. 76
  9. 77
  10. 78
  11. 79
  12. 80
  13. 81
  14. 82

Latest Reviews