Reading Level: Junior High

Nemesis

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

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

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

Supernatural

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

Spiritual Content

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

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

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

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

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

 Sexual Content

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

 Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Rebecca Mondon

Haze

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content 

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

Violence 

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

Drugs and Alcohol 

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

Language 

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

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content 

  • None

No True Echo

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

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

 Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

  • None

Supernatural

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

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

We Were Liars

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

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

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

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

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

 Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

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

Supernatural

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

Spiritual

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

by Morgan Filgas

Fever

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

  • None

Supernatural

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

Spiritual Content

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

by Morgan Lynn

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.

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.”

The Breathless

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

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

Supernatural

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

Spiritual Content

  • None

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

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

Crossed

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

  • There are several scenes with kissing.

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

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

Matched

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

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

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

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

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

 Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

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

Reached

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

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

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

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

Can’t Look Away

Clothes. Make-up. Her Vlog. Popularity. Torrey cares about them all.  While at the mall trying to film her newest Vlog, Torrey and her sister, Miranda, fight. Miranda leaves and is killed by a car.  When her sister dies, Torrey’s life falls apart.

Because of Torrey’s popular Vlog, many bash her online. When Torrey goes to a new school, she wonders who wants to be her friend just because of her online presence. Things get even more complicated when the popular girls invite Torrey to be a part of their group. When Torrey begins to fall for Luis, who the popular girls hate, Torrey begins to wonder if being part of the “in crowd” is worth it.

Mixed into the conflict of trying to fit into a new school, Torrey is also trying to figure out how to deal with the death of her sister, Miranda. When Luis introduces her to the tradition of the Day of the Dead, Torrey wonders if there is a way to remember Miranda without the pain.

Even as Torrey’s family is dealing with the death of Miranda, Torrey’s focus is on herself. She feels guilty about how she treated Miranda, but Torrey also feels frustration that her mother is focused on grief instead of her. She also wants to prove to the online world that she isn’t as bad as some people think.

When Torrey begins attending a new school, she focuses on how to become one of the popular girls, and how to hide her growing feelings for Luis. At the beginning of the story, Torrey’s main concern is her image. Everything revolves around her.

As Luis introduces Torrey to his world, one where death is just a part of life (his father runs the local mortuary), Torrey begins to face her own feelings about death.

Luis is a welcome addition to the novel. Besides being a sweet love interest, he is a likable character who takes the reader into the world of the funeral business, which gives the story an interesting angle.

Can’t Look Away deals with the tough topic of death in a way teens can relate to. Although it deals with many teen issues—friendships, popularity, and family problems—the book doesn’t come across as preachy. Instead, the first-person narration allows the reader to see the difficult emotions that Torrey faces when she loses her sister. And in the end, Torrey realizes that true friend are more important than popularity.

Sexual Content

  • Torrey kisses Luis several times, but it is not described in detail. “When Luis pulls slowly away, I can still feel the touch of his lips on mine.”
  • At a party, Luis kisses Torrey. “He runs his fingers lightly through my hair. Then he kisses me. And I melt into mush.”
  • Torrey thinks about what it could feel like if Luis touched her.

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • There is a brief conversation about what happens to people after they die. One person says they believe in God and that “if some kind of afterlife exists, then dying wouldn’t be bad after all.”
  • When talking about death, one person says they think people can “stay around” after they die. “I think there could be reasons sometimes for them to stay . . . It’s a very small space between the living and the dead. Why wouldn’t there be some overlap?”
  • Part of the story revolves around the Day of the Dead. Torrey goes to her sister’s grave on the Day of the Dead in order to put her sister’s favorite things on her grave. “Whatever made the dead happy in life, they are to have it again.”

How to Say I Love You Out Loud

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

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

 

Violence 

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

Drugs and Alcohol 

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

Language 

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

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content 

  • None

 

Broken Crowns

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

Violence

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

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a party, guests drink “tonic.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

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

Burning Kingdoms

They escaped Internment, but will the ground be a refuge or a prison? When Morgan and her friends left Internment, they never imaged what life would be like on the ground. There are many new wonders, but there are also the horrors of war.

Celeste is determined to return to Internment so she can save her dying mother—and she needs the king’s help to get her home. Morgan has the ability to help Celeste convince the king to help. However, in order to help Celeste, she must betray her best friend, Pen. As Morgan struggles to make the right decision for her friends and for Internment, the war on the ground intensifies.

Soon the characters are caught in a trap of the king’s making, and they aren’t sure what will become of them. Burning Kingdoms, the second book of The Internment Chronicles, has danger, suspense, and a new set of characters.

Burning Kingdoms focuses more on the character’s relationships with each other than on the challenges of being in a new world. The story is interesting, but the world on the ground is not really unique or intriguing. The ending of the story throws in some complications—Pen’s relationship with her father and Morgan kissing Judas—however, the complications distract from the story and leave the reader wondering why they were added.

Sexual Content

  • Celeste talks about her brother. “What would they do with a prince who dreams of falling in love with another prince?” She then talks about how she worries that her brother would be sent to an “attraction camp” to cure him. “There are tonics involved and surgeries that are worse than death . . . If Papa were ever to find out, I truly worry that Az would end himself.”
  • Morgan kisses Judas (to who she is not betrothed to). “He’s closer, and I reach for his shoulder. It’s jagged with bone, and I’ve wanted to touch it since the night he pinned me against that tree in the moonlight . . . My heart is like this world’s rain hitting against the window. I can’t breathe. I had thought all kisses were like the ones I’ve shared with Basil, that they started out timid and uncertain. But this one goes through the skin.”
  • The story implies that Pen’s father abused her. Pen feels ashamed. “A horrible thing happened that day. You wouldn’t have understood. You were only a little girl.”
  • Morgan and Pen talk about Judas’s kiss. “. . . But I realize that she’s right—that something in his eyes when he looked at me, when he kissed me, even when he plucked the leaf from my hair, was wanting.”

Violence

  • Two bombs land in the middle of a busy city, killing many. “The screams have all faded to whimpers and groans; Birdie is one sobbing girl among hundreds . . . The first bomb was just to get everyone to the harbor . . . All the survivors would come here and be caged animals.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Several of the characters go into a club and get drunk. “By the fourth or fifth glass, Birdie has stopped spluttering the stuff back up before she can swallow it.”
  • Several times throughout the story, the characters drink alcohol.
  • Pen spends much of her time drunk. “She prefers gin to sleep.”
  • A group, including Morgan, goes on a yacht and drinks champagne. Pen gets drunk and dives into the water. When Pen doesn’t resurface, Morgan jumps in after her and finds Pen unconscious.
  • While in the hospital, Morgan is given something to help her sleep.

Language

  • The only profanity in the story is when a driver mumbles, “goddamn snow” during a blizzard.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Throughout the story, there are references to Internment’s belief in the god of the sky. They believe that when someone dies, “we burn the bodies of our dead so that all the bad in them can fall away, while all the good becomes a mass of colors in the sky that can’t be seen by the living.”
  • Two of the characters discuss their different beliefs. On the ground, they burn offerings. “If there’s something you really want to ask of our god, you burn something that’s of equal importance.” Once a year on Internment “we burn our highest request and set it up on the wind to be heard.” At the end of the story, one of the characters sacrifices his car, which is his most precious possession, in the hopes that god will make his sister well again.
  • One of the characters tells a story about the god of the sky. “If people were going to be greedy, he could take the source of that greed away. That’s why it’s against the law for any king to pass a bill that would charge for wind or solar energy.”
  • On the ground, people believe that Ehco was the first creature of the sea. “. . . The God told him [Echo] that when he put mankind in the world, mankind would sometimes ask the God for things he wouldn’t be able to do. And mankind would grow angry with him—and would grow sad, and that anger and sorrow needed someplace to go, and so it would be Ehco’s job to consume it and keep it in his body so that it didn’t destroy the world.”
  • Pen and Morgan question their beliefs. “Lately I wonder if the god of the sky even heard us when we were in the sky.”
  • Pen is reading the ground’s religious book, The Text. In the book, “their god creates light, and the earth and things . . . And then this god of theirs creates the first man and woman, and a page or two later their children are throwing stones and murdering each other. It doesn’t bode well for the dawn of humanity, does it?”
  • The Text has a story about the ark. “Their god flooded the world to start over. So when their god doesn’t like someone, he tries to drown them.”
  • When having a funeral, one of the characters is worried about not having a priest. “The priest has to say the burial prayer. If he doesn’t say the prayer, how will Riles be able to get to heaven?”

Visitors

Two Riggs means twice the adventures—and twice the trouble. Now that Rigg has a copy, they have decided to diverge. One will attempt to get to Earth and stop the invasion. The other will explore the wallfolds of Garden and decide if the walls should stay up or come down.

The Rigg that goes to Earth is willing to destroy his parent planet if that is the only option for protecting Garden. He quickly discovers that the situation is not that simple. Earth may be in as much danger as Garden from an enemy that cannot be fought or reasoned with.

Meanwhile, the original Rigg explores his own world. He encounters slavery and murder, and is faced with the dilemma of how to use his powers. As a time traveler, he can change anything he wants, but should he? If he allows people to die, is he complicit in their murders? He cannot save everyone…or can he?

The final installment of the Pathfinder series has everything from Neanderthals to alien races. The brain-tickling problems that come with time travel continue, this time compounded with moral questions. Just because Rigg can save a life doesn’t mean he should, but how can he let people die horrific deaths when he has the power to change the outcome? At what point does free will become an illusion? Visitors again expands Rigg’s world from a few wallfolds to several populated worlds, and provides readers with an extremely satisfying ending.

 Sexual Content

  • Umbo and Param kiss several times. Years later, when they are married, Param is irritated that her husband never asks for intimacy or “even wait[s] around as if hoping.”
  • Leaky wonders if she is infertile or if her husband is.
  • Leaky admits she had a botched C-section and was so, “torn up inside the midwife said [she’d] never be able to bear.”
  • Ram plays matchmaker with Noxon and Deborah, to which Deborah says, “We didn’t agree to mate and make babies.”
  • When speaking of Neanderthals and Erectids (extinct species), a man describes their mating as “being kidnapped and sequestered” while his daughter insists it is “rape.”
  • Square, one of the first people to grow up with a facemask, discusses the need for him to mate with Umbo. “And when you take a mate and we find the best way to get facemasks on your babies.”
  • Noxon is copied, and both copies are in love with Deborah. The Noxon who was not exposed to radiation decides he will be Deborah’s husband because his gametes are likely superior to the Noxon who was exposed to radiation.
  • Noxon kisses Deborah. “Whereupon Noxon sprang from his chair, took her into his arms, and kissed her . . . She responded with as much enthusiasm as was appropriate with her father present. Which was to say that, upon repetition, in private, the whole business seemed to work much better.”

Violence

  • Umbo realizes Param will have to marry him or kill him because he could become a political threat to her. “It should be clear that in order to keep you from being a divisive force in the kingdom, she either has to marry [me]…Or kill me.” Param decides to marry him.
  • To explain Rigg’s face, Ram Odin lies and says Rigg’s face melted in a fire.
  • Umbo’s father hits Umbo and breaks his son’s skull. “Father began striking him with the flat of the blade, hitting him on the shoulders and the side of his head, until young Umbo hung limp and unconscious . . .‘”I think the skull is broken here. Look how it’s swelling, but it looks dented anyways.’”
  • Rigg visits a tiny town where a young girl was raped and murdered. “He tried to kiss her and she was still too young and small to put up much of a fight. When he was done with the rape, she was crying and her clothing was torn . . . he dragged her to her feet and strangled her. It was brutal. He held her up and she flailed and kicked, but her arms weren’t long enough to reach his eyes and her kicking him did no good.”
  • When exposed, a murderer commits suicide.
  • In one version of the future, Loaf’s throat is slit, his wife is run through with a sword, and their baby is thrown out of a second-story window. Umbo is told that this is what happened as he does not witness any of it.
  • A man kills Deborah. “He had a fist-sized stone in his hand and he was bringing back his arm and before Noxon could come out of sliced time to shout at Deborah the stone was already in the air . . . It struck Deborah on the side of the head . . . and dropped her instantly.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Shut up is said several times.
  • Son-of-a-bitch is said once.
  • Ram asks the expendable if he has an anus and if it works.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Rigg and Ram discuss the morality of going back in time and preventing a young girl from being raped and murdered. Ram says, “You can’t just go killing people because you know they’re going to do something terrible…because until he does the murder, he doesn’t deserve to die.”
  • Rigg comes to the conclusion that while he has, “this godlike power to force other people not to do evil…choos[ing] not to use it doesn’t make [Rigg] evil.” He decides on a course of minimal change.
  • Umbo wonders if the replication of genes is all there is to life, since “we evolved so that our greatest pleasure comes from sex.”

by Morgan Lynn

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  6. 36
  7. 37
  8. 38
  9. 39
  10. 40
  11. 41
  12. 42

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