Reading Level: Young Adult

Chemistry Lesson

Maya has her summer all planned. She has an internship at MIT and the perfect boyfriend, but before the summer fun can start, Maya’s boyfriend breaks up with her. Maya, who is still grieving her mother’s death, has one thing on her mind—getting Whit back.

When Maya finds her mother’s old notebooks, she thinks she’s discovered the perfect way to get her boyfriend back. With the help of her mother’s lab intern, Ann, Maya makes a love serum. But before Maya can use it on Whit, she needs to test out the serum on two test subjects. Maya embarks on an adventure that leads her to discover the unpredictability of love.

The best part of Chemistry Lesson is the relationship Maya has with her best friend, Brian. Realistic, funny, and kind, Brian shows what true friendship should look like. Another positive relationship in the story is between Maya and her father. Both are trying to deal with the loss of Maya’s mother and struggle with the grieving process.

Although the storyline has an interesting premise, Maya’s willingness to ignore moral codes to get Whit back seems farfetched. Whit’s early disappearance from the story leaves the reader wondering why Whit is worth all of the effort to create a love potion. For a person who is so smart when it comes to science, Maya is completely clueless when it comes to guys. By completing the experiment, Maya does learn about herself and others, but her naivety when it comes to boy-girl relationships comes off as false.

Chemistry Lesson is a quick, easy read that has a diverse cast of characters. Even though the story focuses on a love potion, the love scenes won’t stir up much emotion. For those looking for a fun, unique love story, Chemistry Lesson will hit the mark.

Sexual Content

  • Brian is gay, but the only reference to his sexuality is when Maya asked, “Were you ever this upset about Matt?”
  • Maya’s aunt has a female partner “of more than 20 years.” Pam tells Maya that when she “had crushes on women and men while I was with Pam,” but because she was older, she was “able to ignore the crushes.”
  • Maya’s friend Yael told Maya “how a woman she’d met in undergrad pursued her for months only to dump her for a guy on the rugby team.”
  • Maya and her boyfriend, Whit, decided “we’d have sex in four weeks—once Whit moved into off-campus housing, where he’d have his own room.” Maya was “unable to stop myself from imagining what was going to happen in less than a month.”
  • When Maya’s boyfriend breaks up with her, her friend tells her, “This whole ‘losing my virginity thing is a heteronormative concept anyway.”
  • Maya makes out with Kyle. The scene is described over three pages. As they kiss, “He tipped me back so that my head rested against a couch pillow, and then he was half on top of me, one leg on the couch, one on the floor. . . He shifted so that his knee fell in between my legs.” Maya stops Kyle. Then he said, “This kind of thing happens all the time in college.”
  • Maya thinks back to visiting Whit at college where, “I’d seen students bring strangers back to their rooms and then say goodbye forever the next morning.”
  • One of Maya’s friends “hooked up with one of the techs from next door.”
  • Maya makes out with a boy at a party. “He pulled me close and hugged me, and I reciprocated with my arms around him. Then I felt a tickling wetness on my neck. . . He put one hand on my butt like it was no big deal . . . I couldn’t do much besides keep my mouth open as his tongue began wagging from side to side inside it.” The scene is described over four pages.
  • Someone tells Maya, “sometimes the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”
  • When Maya is in Whit’s room, she teases him for having Bananagrams in his nightstand. She says, “You’re supposed to have condoms and drugs in there.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • For an experiment, Maya takes drops. When her friend catches her taking the drops, she tells him, “I’m ingesting a pheromones-masking formula to get Whit back.”
  • Maya thinks back to “the wine that Whit once stole from his parent’s liquor cabinet so we could share it on one of our first real dates.”
  • After dinner, Maya’s aunt poured her a “full glass of sweet wine.”
  • Maya goes to several parties where there was alcohol. At one, “Most of the kids were drinking beer procured by someone’s older brother.”
  • When trying to explain an experiment, one of the characters mentions Viagra.
  • Maya, her father, and her friend go to an outdoor play. Her father brought “water bottles filled with his special juice drink.” Maya’s father said, “I’m teaching her that alcohol isn’t something you consume in excess for the purposes of getting drunk.”
  • Maya goes to a party where teens are drinking and she “could see a pack of adults smoking something in a circle.”
  • When Maya hurts herself, she takes Percocet for the pain.

Language

  • When someone makes fun of Kyle’s singing, he “lifted his middle finger in our direction.”
  • When Maya visits her aunt, her aunt uses profanity including “goddamned.” The aunt’s accent is so thick that the curse words sounded like “fahckin’ or ‘gawhddamned.’”
  • “Oh my god” is used as an exclamation.
  • Profanity is used infrequently but includes bullshit, dammit, hell, and shit.
  • After Maya sings karaoke, her friend says, “you sounded like a fucking robot.”
  • “Jesus” is used once as an exclamation.
  • When Maya falls down, a guy says, “Holy shit, she’s down.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Since You’ve Been Gone

Emily was ready for summer. She had it all planned out: she and her best friend Sloane would find fun part-time jobs, go on weekend trips, and take everyday adventures together. However, everything changes when Sloane mysteriously disappears, leaving behind a list for Emily to accomplish. Seeing this as the only way to get her best friend back, Emily is determined to finish the list. The list contains thirteen tasks designed to push Emily’s comfort zone like “riding a horse” or, even scarier, “kissing a stranger.”

Emily embarks on a completely unexpected summer filled with risky exploits, play-writing parents, and new friends that allow her to discover who she is as an individual, not just half of a whole.  Since You’ve Been Gone is a delightful novel that makes the reader long for those days of summer that seemed endlessly filled with possibilities. Fans of Morgan Matson’s other books will be thrilled by this adorable adventure that is in her same spellbinding style.

This book is perfectly appropriate for teen readers and is relatable in many aspects through the struggles Emily faces to discover her individual identity. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of romance throughout the book and sexual content is found on several occasions, so parents of younger readers may heed caution. Despite this, Since You’ve Been Gone is a delightful book full of hilarious scenes in which the readers feel as though they are part of a group of friends. The characters and plot make Since You’ve Been Gone well worth reading.

Sexual Content

  • Sloane and Emily make a plan to find “summer boys.”
  • A boy absentmindedly stares at Sloane when she is at a craft fair, and he unknowingly picks up a macaroni necklace during his entrance of her beauty.
  • Items on Sloane’s list include skinny dipping and kissing a stranger.
  • When Emily goes to The Orchard, a popular hangout place, a couple of parks next to her car and “started furiously making out in the front seat.”
  • When Emily sees Frank lift up his shirt to reveal his surprisingly ripped abs, she “felt my feet tingle.”
  • When Emily meets Dawn for the first time, Dawn is crying about the fact that her boyfriend is cheating on her with her best friend.
  • Sloane’s boyfriend, Sam, was “sliding his arms around Sloane’s waist and kissing her cheek.”
  • Emily’s parents’ play has a kissing scene that Emily and Frank almost have to perform.
  • Emily makes out with a stranger in the small pantry of Frank’s house. “His lips were on mine . . . he wrapped his arms around my waist, and started kissing me for real . . . And soon I was kissing him back, my pulse racing and my breath catching in my throat, his hands twined in my hair. It was only when his hands slipped under the hem of my shirt . . . that I came out of the make-out trance.”
  • Emily’s former boyfriend Gideon is a “good kisser.” They kiss a few times in the book.
  • Sam kisses Emily, making Sloane break up with him.
  • Emily and Frank kiss in her car as the rain is pouring down on them through the sunroof. “And it was a kiss that felt like it could stop time . . . We were kissing like it was a long-forgotten language that we’d once been fluent in and we were finding again, kissing like it was the only thing either of us had wanted to do for a long, long time, kissing with the urgency of the rain that was pounding down all around us . . . His hands were tangled in my hair, then touching my bare back, and I was shivering in a way that didn’t have anything to do with the cold.”
  • At the conclusion of the novel, Frank and Emily engage in a passionate kiss that is not described in detail.

Violence

  • When attempting to break into her own house, Sloane falls over the windowsill and lands “with a thump that I could hear even from the ground.”
  • A character commits arson in the play Bug Juice that Emily’s parents wrote.
  • Frank hits Collins on the back affectionately and Emily remarks, “I had no idea why boys, when they become affectionate, got violent.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At the apple orchard where many parties are held, there are ladders, and “only the bravest‒or drunkest‒people ventured up them.”
  • The Orchard is described as having, “a small group smoking. There was a keg and a stack of red Solo cups, an open cooler at his feet.”
  • Emily gets a cup of beer that was “mostly. . . a cup of foam.” She “took a tiny sip, wincing at the warm, metallic taste, wondering how much longer I had to stay.”
  • Collins hits on a girl who is, “smoking a cigarette and talking on her phone.”
  • Sloane acquires fake IDs for herself and Emily to go into a bar and hear one of their favorite bands perform. Emily does not go in the first time, but returns after Sloane has gone missing. Within the bar, she sees “the shelves of liquor stretched up almost to the ceiling.” When she orders a diet coke, the bartender asks her if she wants it “with rum,” to which she refuses.
  • At Frank’s birthday party, Emily gets tipsy.
  • When Emily sleeps over at Sloane’s house, she is sent to get a bottle of wine from the fridge for them to drink while they binge watch Psychic Vet Tech.

Language

  • Phrases using the word “god” as an exclamation are used frequently.
  • Profanity is used frequently throughout the novel. Profanity includes holy crap, hell, and damn.
  • Collins jokingly insults Frank and says, “You complete moron. I thought I was going to have to get the ladder and pull you out like a damn cat!”
  • Emily thinks that some people at a party think that she is a “narc.”
  • A girl in a bar says, “Jared has been cheating on me with some skank named Penelope.”
  • Frank says to Emily, “Don’t be stupid.”

Supernatural

  • When thinking of Sloane’s mysterious disappearance, Emily says, “I was negotiating with some cosmic dealer who could guarantee this for me.”
  • An example of the trivial text exchanges between Sloane and Emily is, “Have you noticed it’s been a while since anyone’s seen the Loch Ness monster?”

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Morgan Filgas

Resistance

Chaya Linder is living in Nazi-occupied Poland. Her Jewish family is in danger. Her sister is deported to one of the camps and her brother disappears. After losing their two children, Chaya’s parents have given up hope. In an effort to make a difference, Chaya becomes a courier and travels between the ghettos of Poland. She takes lifesaving supplies like forged papers and food. Sometimes, she even smuggles out children.

When Chaya joins a resistance cell, she hopes to use the Nazis’ supplies to help her people. When a mission goes wrong, most of Chaya’s network is killed or captured. Alone, with nowhere to go, Chaya isn’t sure what to do. When Esther, a former member of her cell, appears, Chaya begins a journey to the Warsaw Ghetto where a large uprising is being planned. Chaya is determined to save as many lives as possible, even if she loses her own life. Her only desire is to live or die with honor.

Told from Chaya’s point of view, Resistance gives the reader a grim picture of the persecution Jews received during World War II. The story begins with suspense, which continually builds as Chaya survives her ordeals, while many of the other resistance members are killed. Many of the events are violent, and although they are not described in bloody detail, death is common. Although the publisher recommends the book for ages 8-12, the descriptions of death and torture would make this a difficult book for younger readers.

As Chaya’s world crumbles around her, the reader gets a better understanding of why some Jews did not fight back. Some of the Jewish people were so overcome by fear, or some didn’t believe the stories of the death camps, so they didn’t fight back. Others refused to fight because they believed that killing was wrong—even if they were fighting to save their own life. Several times in the story, the characters discuss the morality of killing the Nazi soldiers. In the end, the story makes it clear that leaving the Ghetto in order to survive, or staying in the Ghetto are both valid choices. “We’ll all die one day, no one escapes that fate. Our only decision is how we live before that day comes. Our path requires courage, but so does theirs. Both paths are ways to resist.”

As Chaya and Esther travel to Warsaw, they meet people from all lifestyles and religions. This helps the reader understand people’s different responses to the Jews. Some of the Poles ignored the problem, while others took advantage of the Jewish people, and even physically attacked them. Yet, there were still many Poles that risked their lives to help save the Jews. In the end, the story shows that there were evil people as well as good people who were willing to die fighting.

Resistance ends with the events of the Warsaw Uprising, which gives the reader a vivid description of the death of many civilians, and resistance fighters. The cruelty of the Nazis and the heroic deeds of the Jews are depicted. Although the story gives a historic perspective, sensitive readers may be upset by the death the surrounds Chaya and the Jewish people. Resistance ends with a list of the historical resistance fighters who fought for their people and should be considered heroes.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Chaya’s father is stopped by a Polish police officer who, “ripped out pieces of my father’s beard, one fistful at a time. With every tear, my father grunted with pain, but he said nothing and offered no form of resistance. The crowd that had gathered pointed at him and laughed, as if humiliation and pain were some kind of joke.”
  • Chaya and some others were stealing provisions from a train car when “a gunshot rang through the night and Jukub yelped with pain.” Charya shot a Nazi soldier who was “running toward us with his pistol out, shouting for his comrades.”
  • The resistant fighters attack a café. One threw a grenade through the window. Soldiers, “began to emerge, many with obvious cuts on their faces or uniforms. They became the target of my first grenade. . . My third went inside the café and exploded with enough force to blow some of the bricks off the building.” The surviving Nazis began shooting, and Chaya “saw bodies in civilian clothes fall.”
  • Some of the resistance fighters who survived were sent to Montelupich Prison were, “If the Draengers were there, then they had experienced torture worse than anything I could imagine, and even what I could picture turned my stomach. They would be kept at the edge of death in an attempt to make them talk.”
  • While in a ghetto, Esther drops potatoes, and “two desperate women suddenly became five, and then all of them fought for anything that was left. To get it off Esther’s shoulders, one woman knelt on her back. They were suffocating Esther, but the only thing that seemed to be in their vision was the bag.”
  • When Chaya and Esther are trying to escape from a ghetto, a boy who is helping them is shot. “Henryk hadn’t yet shut the window before a bullet caught him from behind. He fell forward across the windowsill. . .”
  • When Esther is hiding in a barn, the Gestapo finds her. “Ester was hit again and probably knocked unconscious, because she made no other sounds.”
  • In order to create a distraction and save Esther, Chaya cuts the gas line to the Nazi’s trucks and then lights the gas on fire. The gas, “immediately ignited a booming fire that popped the truck’s hood open and set the engine aflame . . . The last truck exploded into the air with a booming sound that would be heard for kilometers around.”
  • When Chaya found Esther, she was tied to a tree’s trunk. When Chaya got closer, “I noticed the bruise was even worse than it appeared from a distance. There was a cut on her cheek too, and other smaller bruises on her neck and probably elsewhere that I couldn’t see.” Esther’s arm was injured as well.
  • Esther recounts what the Gestapo did to her. She was put in a dark room, and “someone slapped me or hit me to get my attention, and they were telling me what would happen if I didn’t talk.”
  • The end of the story focuses on the Warsaw uprising, the description of the battle is told over ten chapters. The resistance fighters throw Molotov Cocktails on the soldiers. When the first explosives were thrown, “bodies fell, and the troops who survived it scattered.” During the battle, Esther threw a “fuel-filled wine bottle” onto a tank, and “the top hatch burst open like a popped cork. Flames shot from within the tank.”
  • During the battle, the Nazis “found the hospital. . . They killed everyone inside. Revenge for our fighting.” How the patients died was not described, but Chaya thinks, “I didn’t want to know, or think about it.”
  • The Nazis have a long-barrel machine gun that they use to kill the Jews. A sniper killed the gunner, “who kneeled over his gun, dead.” Chaya throws a grenade at the vehicle and “the explosion knocked me off my feet.”
  • The Germans escorted civilians and “each was placed on their knees, row by row by row. . . A fighter rose from her knees with a gun. . . She took aim at one of the commanding officers and fired, hitting him squarely in the chest.” Then an officer “gave the order to shoot and every Jew on the street was killed.”
  • Chaya is shot in the leg. When she looks at the wound, she “saw blood spurting from my thigh, almost like everything was happening in sudden slow motion.”
  • When a SS officer sees Chaya, “his hand unfolded, revealing a grenade. . . He pulled the pin and raised his arm to throw it. Then a bullet whizzed past my ear, hitting the grenade itself, which exploded in his hand.”
  • German soldiers would throw poison gas grenades into the sewer system, just in case Jews were hiding in there. As Chaya and a group were trying to escape, poisoned gas was thrown into the sewer, and “Then I heard a splash, and in the light beneath the manhole, I saw Mr. Pilzer’s body go down. He didn’t fall like a dead body would. Instead, he used himself as a shield from the gas, deliberately spreading out his clothes to contain as much of the smoke as possible.”
  • Esther intentionally leads a soldier away from a group of Jews. “A few minutes later, the silent darkness was broken by a single shot fired inside the sewer line.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Several times during religious services, people passed around wine.
  • Chaya thinks that on Adolf Hitler’s birthday, he probably had, “a hearty slice of birthday cake to go with a glass of wine.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • As Chaya and Esther were hiding from Nazi soldiers, Chaya was upset that Esther did not do a better job as a lookout. Chaya thought, “Even God wouldn’t expect me to forgive her.”
  • During Shabbat, Chaya, “covered my eyes with my hands, giving myself a private moment with God to ask for healing, happiness, and prosperity.”
  • Chaya and Esther are about to take a trip, and Esther thinks the snow is a warning. Esther said, “Maybe God is telling us to wait one more evening.” Chaya replies, “Maybe God is offering to cover our tracks if we hurry.”
  • One of the characters tells Chaya, “The greater our need, the nearer our God, no?” A boy replies, “And God is very near now.”
  • Chaya asks a group of teens if they will try to escape the ghetto. A boy tells her, they will remain because “We’ve given our lives to God. Whatever happens to us now is alright.” The group discusses the moral implications of staying or trying to escape to fight. One of the group members tells Chaya, “The highest honor we can give God is to die in His name.” Another character said, “Defending one’s life in the moment is allowed. But killing them is different. That’s murder!”
  • Chaya and Esther discuss their belief in God and his promises. Chaya said, “I believe in God’s promises. . . But I’ve run out of patience waiting for them. I believe in God’s laws, but. . .” They also discuss if killing Nazis is murder. One of Chaya’s friends believed that “God has given us the right to defend ourselves.”
  • When Chaya and Esther miss Shabbat, Ester is upset. Chaya tells her, “God will understand, Esther! He understands why we missed Shabbat, and why I wear the crucifix. He understands the gun inside my bag, and if I have to use it again, then I hope He will understand that too . . .”
  • The evening before Passover, a group discussed God. One of the men, Tamir, gave encouraging words, “Didn’t Moses once say to our people, ‘Be strong and courageous! God is the one Who goes with you.”  Chaya thinks that Tamir was “giving praise and honor to a God who might not save him from his fate. But he did so, confident that this coming fight was worthy of God’s blessings.”
  • Esther found a belt buckle in one of the Nazi soldier’s bags. The buckle had an “eagle standing on top of the Nazi swastika” with the words “God With Us.” Chaya thinks about how the Christians are beginning to prepare for Easter. She thinks, “how could these soldiers commit such atrocities on this day, all while wearing an emblem that suggested God supported their actions?”
  • An escaped prisoner tells Chaya, “Hitler wants no Gods other than himself.”

 

Crossing the Line

Dalila Sandoval, the daughter of one of the wealthiest lawyers in Mexico, is focused on her future. She is turning 18, but she already knows exactly what she wants from life—until she meets Ryan Hess. He is a “bad boy” who doesn’t fit into her life, but when she looks into his blue eyes, a flame of desire comes alive.

Ryan Hess has one goal—to prove he can become a great boxer. He flees an unhappy family life and travels to Mexico in the hope of convincing a famous retired boxer to train him. He does not want to be pulled into Dalila’s life or her problems, but he can’t stop himself from falling for her. Despite their immediate attraction, forces outside of their control quickly rise to conspire against them. Is there any way their love can survive?

Dalila and Ryan are two star-crossed lovers who, like Romeo and Juliet, fall in love quickly. Each chapter flip-flops between Ryan and Dalila’s point of view, allowing readers to understand both character’s thoughts and feelings. The beginning of the story is predictable, and the supporting characters are underdeveloped. Despite these drawbacks, readers who enjoy a good love story will be drawn into the couple’s drama and enjoy the unique angle of a rich girl from Mexico falling for a poor American.

Crossing the Line is not a book for those wanting a plausible story based in reality. Ryan spends all his time thinking about proving himself in the boxing ring, but once Dalila steals his heart, he quickly forgets about his dream. Dalila has no qualms about lying or using her body to beguile Ryan. Even though Ryan knows that Dalila is manipulating him, he overlooks her flaws and vows to stay by her side as she tries to figure out if her father is involved in the Mexican Mafia.

Crossing the Line is full of mystery and has a whirlwind ending full of surprises. The story follows the typical story line—boy and girl don’t want to fall in love, but are forced together by outside forces. For older readers who want a steamy, action packed romance, Crossing the Line will keep you entertained.

Sexual Content

  • When Ryan was new to town, a girl and he “hooked up at a party.”
  • After Ryan’s mom found out she was pregnant, her boyfriend, “ran off with some bimbo stripper he’d met at a dive bar.”
  • When Ryan was younger, his mom “had a history of bringing random guys to the trailer, but she wasn’t a whore. She was hoping one of them would stick around enough to take care of her.”
  • While at a concert, Ryan’s friend said, “I think that girl over there with the spider tattoo on her face just grabbed my ass. I feel violated.”
  • Dalila’s friend “might be a flirt, but she’s not into one-night stands or hookups.”
  • Dalila tries to convince a police officer that she is Ryan’s girlfriend. “I bury my hands in his thick hair and touch my lips to his. I’m determined to make this make-out session look convincing. . . the touch of his soft but firm lips against mine sends delicious sensations zinging up my spine. I’ve kissed boys before, but I’ve never felt goose bumps all over like this.”
  • The day after Ryan’s fight, Dalila tends to Ryan’s wounds. “And when she bends over to tend to the cut on my cheek, her cleavage makes my groin twitch.”
  • At Dalila’s birthday party, she and a friend take a walk in the gardens. “Before I can pull back, he presses his lips to mine and wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me close. I’m not ready for this. . . I push him away, glad when our lips separate.” The boy thinks she is playing games and “presses his body to mine again, so close that I can feel how much of a distraction he wants to be.” Ryan sees the two and the boy leaves.
  • Ryan and Dalila kiss several times. Once when they kiss, Ryan’s “breath hitches as she steps so close, I can feel the heat of her skin against mine. Without hesitation, she reaches up on her toes and her sexy, full lips meet mine. They’re soft and wet and full of passion. I hate myself as I take hungry possession of her mouth . . . My lips are still on hers as my tongue instinctively darts out, taking this kiss to the next level. . . her tongue darts out and meets mine.”
  • Ryan tells a story about when he, “got an erection during the swim unit freshman year. One of the girls noticed and screamed it out to the entire class.” He tells another story about his mom’s boyfriend. Ryan did not like him so he took a girl’s phone and “text[ed] the guy all this sexual stuff hoping my mom would see it.” Ryan’s mom broke up with the man.
  • Dalila goes to where Ryan is staying and takes a shower. Thinking about her in the shower, Ryan’s “body is reacting, willing and ready to be called into action.” The shower scene takes place over four pages and the two end up in the shower together. Dalila’s “breath hitches as he leans down and gently licks my wet skin, the sensation sending shock waves through my veins. . . His hot, wet tongue graces my earlobe and then his lips place tiny, light kisses on my mouth. A fire burns within me that I’ve never experienced before. . . This feeling is like a drug and I want more.” They do not have sex, but “we both explored and experimented and drove each other insane. . .”
  • Ryan and Dalila’s truck breaks down in the middle of the desert. Alone at night, they kiss and Dalila, “still straddling me, lifts my T-shirt that she’s been wearing all day over her head. Her fingers go to the front hook of her sexy lace bra and she releases the material, making me feel like the luckiest guy on the planet. It falls down her shoulders revealing her full, perfect breasts. I swallow and my breathing gets ragged as her hands reach for my zipper.” They then have sex, but it is not described in this scene.
  • Later, Ryan and Dalila have sex again, and it is described over two and a half pages. “She steps closer and reaches out, touching my chest with her soft, delicate fingers. . . I close my eyes and feel the brush of her gentle kisses on each bruise, starting with my shoulders and moving down to my chest and lower. . .When her panties and shorts fall to the floor, she focuses her gaze on the ground. . . My fingers trace a path from her taunt stomach to those perfectly shaped hips and I settle my palms on her amazing backside. I pick her up by her bottom.”

Violence

  • Ryan thought about committing suicide, but someone saw him, “sitting on a park bench with a pocketknife it my hand,” and talked him out of it.
  • Ryan thinks back to a time when he got in a fight at school. When the boy talked badly about him, he “whacked willie with a solid left hook. Willie fell and I was immediately on top of him, punching him repeatedly as frustrated tears streamed down my face. My fist kept flying until three lunch supervisors hauled me away.”
  • Ryan sees a boy slip something into a girl’s drink and he confronts the boy. When the boy goes to give the girl a drink, Ryan’s “fist connects with Skyler’s jaw. The guy stumbles backward and falls to the floor.”
  • Ryan’s stepfather tells Ryan that his father “killed someone, shot him in a bar fight.”
  • Ryan goes to an underground bar and fights other men, but the fighting is not described.
  • At Dalila’s birthday party, someone shoots at her family’s compound. Ryan shields Dalila. “Another pop pop pop fills the air and I suck in a horrified breath. . . Fresh blood drops from Ryan’s side onto the floor.” Ryan only has a flesh wound.
  • After spending the night together, Ryan takes Dalila home. Her father’s bodyguards beat up Ryan. “Without a word or grunt, he punches me in the gut. His fist feels like a steel mallet. Fuck, that hurt. . . Gerardo punches me in the gut with that mallet fist of his two more times. I don’t want to crumple to the ground when the clowns release me, but the pain takes over my resolve and all of a sudden I’m eating dirt.”
  • A man and his gang attack Ryan. “I take a few of them out before I’m surrounded. I’m not giving up, not even when someone whacks me on the back with something other than a fist. The punches and kicks don’t stop, and slowly my body gives up.” Ryan blacks out and is dumped in an alley.
  • Dalila hears a gun shot. When she runs towards the sound, “my entire body goes numb as I see Papa holding a gun. He’s standing over a body lying in a pool of blood.” Later she finds out that her father did not kill the man.
  • Someone kills Dalila’s abuela as revenge. Ryan and Dalila find “Abuela Carmela, who’s lying on the floor, soaking in her own blood. . . Dalila’s hand flies to her mouth and a helpless cry pierces the air at the sight of her grandmother riddled with stab wounds.”
  • At the end, several cartel members surround Ryan and Dalila. Ryan threatens them and “I see the fire flash out of the barrel of his gun.” Ryan is shot. “Something cold pierces my gut and my shoulder. I know I’ve been hit.” Someone grabs Dalila “and attempts to run out with her as his shield. . .” Before he can do that, “shots ring out” and the man “falls to the ground, his body riddled with bullets. He’s dead.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Ryan’s mother is an alcoholic. At a funeral Ryan wonders, “how much alcohol she downed before she showed up here.” Ryan refers to his mother’s drinking often.
  • Ryan smokes a cigarette at a funeral.
  • At a dinner party, the guests are served “some kind of amber-colored brandy.”
  • At a concert, people are able to order a drink from the bar. A boy offers to buy a girl a beer, but she just wants a soda. The boy buys the girl a soda, but slips something into it.
  • Ryan meets a man in a bar; the guy has a “half-empty bottle of beer in front of him.”
  • Ryan’s mother said she heard, “you were running drugs across the border.”
  • Dalila goes out with her friends and sees a boy she knows. The boy is with his friends. “One of them is laughing loudly and the other has bloodshot eyes. They’ve definitely been drinking.”
  • Ryan goes to an underground bar where “there’s a big dude at the door who looks like a poster child for the overuse of steroids. In lethal doses.” The people in the bar are also drinking.
  • Dalila’s parents throw her a birthday party and one of the boys was holding a beer.

Language

  • Profanity is used in the extreme. Profanity includes: ass, bastard, bitch, crap, dick, damn, douch-bag, fuck, hell, motherfucker, piss, pendejo, puta, and shit.
  • When Ryan sees a girl, he flips her off.
  • Ryan’s motto in life is “fuck being a hero.”
  • Ryan’s stepfather calls him a bastard several times.
  • When Ryan stops a boy from kissing someone, the boy says, “Oh, and the next time you cock-block me like that, I’m gonna make sure you never get hired in Mexico again. By anyone.”
  • After Ryan is shot, he stays the night at Dalila’s family home. His friend tells Ryan, “I’ll bet my left nut that sleepin’ on an expensive mattress will make you crave the good life, especially if the rich chick finds her way into it.”

 

Supernatural

  • None

 

Spiritual Content

  • When Ryan reminds his stepfather that they are not family, his stepfather says, “Thank the mighty Lord for that.”
  • The story talks about the Day of the Dead.

Screenshot

Skye had big plans for her life, including getting a summer internship at Senator Watston’s office. Sky makes sure that her social media account always reflects her best self. Then her best friend, Asha, posts an embarrassing video of Skye at a sleepover. Once the post is deleted, Skye thinks everything will be all right.

When Skye gets a threatening text, with a screenshot from the video attached, she’s afraid her carefully crafted image will be ruined. The person threatens to share the embarrassing photo if Skye doesn’t do whatever they say. How far will Skye go to keep the picture under wraps? And who is trying to ruin her life?

Teens will relate Skye as she faces many real-life issues that come with being a teen in a world obsessed with social media. Screenshot tackles real issues that teens face including body image, dating, changing friendships, and online bullying. Most of the book is written from Skye’s point of view, which allows readers to understand her confusion and anguish. However, other parts of the story awkwardly switch to a third-person point of view. This adds depth to the story as it allows the readers to see into the lives of other characters and understand their struggles.

The one drawback to the story is the relationship between Skye, Emma, and Asha. The three girls have been “inseparable” since they were ten years old. However, after the beginning of the book, the three friends rarely have any interaction. The fact that they all are keeping secrets from each other, have negative feelings about each other and don’t encourage each other, makes it hard to feel invested in their friendship. In the end, the reader is left wondering why the three girls were friends in the first place. In the end, Skye learns to be more confident and less consumed with her image. She also learns the importance of standing up for herself.

As Skye struggles with her own image, she begins to see other teens differently and realizes that outward appearance can be deceiving. The easy-to-read story has engaging dialogue, short sentences, and text messages scattered throughout. For those looking for a quick, entertaining story that won’t make you think too much, Screenshot will hit the mark.

Sexual Content

  • Luke is Skye’s “first real boyfriend. The first guy who ever kissed me in the school hallway.”
  • Luke and Skye kiss three times, but the kisses are never described. For example, Skye gave Luke “a quick kiss on the lips.”
  • Ryan’s cousin found out that “Ryan had never had an actual girlfriend. He’d gone on dates-to school dances and movies-and had even kissed a couple of girls.”
  • Skye talked to her best friend about everything including her, “first kiss I shared with Ned Blakely behind the gym in middle school.”
  • Skye has a new boyfriend. When he comes over, “I kiss him full on the lips. Soft. Tentative . . . My head feels fuzzy and I can hardly breathe.” After that first kiss, “he finds my mouth and kisses me again. I melt into his body. This feels so different from when Luke and I would kiss. But different in a good way.” They jerk apart when Skye’s sister walks into the room.

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Skye goes to a pizza shop full of college students and “the place is full of empty beer glasses.”

Language

  • “Oh God” and “OMG” are used as exclamations several times.
  • One of the character’s father calls his wife a “stupid idiot.” The father yells, “Why would anyone marry such an ignorant pig? Look at yourself.”

Supernatural

  • Ryan’s grandmother wants to move because “there’s an old white woman ghost that hangs out in the hallway near the bathroom . . . Ghost aren’t a laughing matter to my Lola. That’s why she wants new construction. No ghosts.”

Spiritual Content

  • A Kmart employee used to give other employees samples of lattes “until a cashier told him that was practically stealing. Mr. King is super active in the New Life Baptist Church. So I no longer get free caffeine samples and Mr. King has to pray a little extra for his generosity.”
  • Skye thinks her friend doesn’t need to work out because, “for some weird reason only known to the god of genetics, she doesn’t have to.”

Tell

David isn’t sad that his stepfather is dead. However, he didn’t expect to become the prime suspect of his murder. The detective investigating the case is convinced that David is keeping secrets—and he’s right. David knows the truth about his stepfather’s death. But can he convince the police that he’s not guilty of shooting his stepfather and leaving him to die?

Tell, published by Orca Book Publishers, is specifically written for teens who want to read short, high-interest novels.  The story focuses on David and his struggles with his stepfather, Phil. The easy-to-read story shows the harsh realities of life without going into graphic descriptions. Even though David tells his own story, the mystery of his stepfather’s death leaves the reader wondering if David is actually the murderer.

The suspenseful story has a dark undertone. David struggles with his brother’s death, his mother’s deceit, and his stepfather’s manipulation. As David interacts with his mother, her uncaring and lying nature becomes obvious. In the end, Tell shows that sometimes the monsters in people’s lives are the ones living under their own roof. The sad ending can lend itself to some good discussion between parent and child.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • David’s brother, Jamie, “drowned when he was eight years old.”
  • David thinks Phil intentionally let his brother die. David said, “Phil could have saved him. Phil was right there. He was a good swimmer. He could have saved Jamie, but instead, he did nothing.”
  • After Phil goes to an ATM, a man approaches him. “Phil shoved him away and swore at him. He turned away from the guy. Then I saw the guy take out a gun. He pointed it at Phil . . . The guy shot him.” When David approached Phil, “he was making a sort of gurgling sound . . . Then Phil stopped making that noise. . . and I ran.” David didn’t get Phil help because Phil didn’t help his brother.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Throughout the story, people talk about how David’s stepfather would drink beer. Sometimes he goes to the bar and drinks. He would also play poker with his friends and they would drink beer.
  • David said that Phil carried the picture of his dead brother around because “he got a lot of sympathy from it. One time he told me he got a lot of free drinks too . . .”
  • Jack, a friend of David’s mother, “took a quick gulp of beer” while he was talking to Dave. Jack is also seen drinking beer several times in the story.

Language

  • Profanity is used a few times. “Ass” is used once. “Damn” and “pissed” are each used twice. When Phil gets home from work, his stepson would act up, which “really pissed Phil off. . . “
  • A character said Phil could be a “jerk.” Later, David said he “wanted his mom to know what kind of jerk she married.”
  • Phil calls David a “pain in the ass.”
  • “Oh my god” is used as an exclamation once.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

City of Ghosts

A screech of wheels. The grip of freezing water. Death. When Cassidy almost drowns, everything changed. She can now enter the world of the dead. To make things stranger, her best friend, Jacob, is a ghost.

Cassidy didn’t think life could get more complicated. Then her parents agree to film a TV show about the world’s most haunted places and the family heads to Edinburgh, Scotland. Restless ghosts haunt the graveyards, castles, and even the pubs. When Cassidy meets another girl who can see the dead, Cassidy realizes she has a lot to learn. Cassidy soon discovers that in a city of ghosts, danger hides in unexpected places.

Victoria Schwab writes a creepy ghost story that is just the right balance of cuteness, chills, and charm. Scotland’s people and lore come to life as Cassidy visits the historical landmarks including Edinburgh Castle and Mary King’s Close. As Cassidy encounters different ghost stories, Scotland’s history unfolds.

Cassidy’s best friend, Jacob, is a fun addition to the cast of characters. Even though Cassidy has told her parents about Jacob, and Cassidy’s parents research haunted places, they do not believe in ghosts. Cassidy’s caring, quirky parents bring ironic humor to the story that middle school readers will understand.

City of Ghosts is the perfect ghost story for younger readers. The easy-to-read text contains short sentences and is a good blend of action, description, and dialogue. The Harry Potter references will delight readers. Although the plot contains only a few surprises, the story is still solid and engaging. Cassidy’s inquisitive mind and courage will draw the reader into the story. Her relationship with Jacob and her parents are an added bonus. City of Ghosts takes the reader on a spooky adventure that will be hard to forget.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • The narrator almost dies while riding her bike. She is on a bridge when “the truck whipped around the curve and hurtled toward me. I swerved out of the way, and so did the truck, tires screeching as my bike slammed into the railing hard enough to make sparks fly.” She goes into the river, where a boy ghost saves her.
  • A long time ago, a boy died in a school fire. The fire began during a school play. In a panic, the boy “shuffles on his hands and knees until he reaches the trap door (of the stage). . .He pulls the door up and climbs down into the dark just before a piece of burning set collapse on top of the stage, pining the trapdoor shut.”
  • When Cass enters the veil, she sees “a man being hauled toward a platform, where a noose hangs waiting.”
  • Cass’s dad explains how some people would rob graves and take the bodies to medical theaters so medical students could practice on them. Two men, “Decided that instead of digging up corpses, they would simply create their own. . . They murdered sixteen people before they were caught and tried . . .Burke was hanged, and then dissected in an anatomy theater, just as his victims had been.”
  • While in the veil, The Raven, a ghost who steals children, puts Cass under a spell. Then, “her fingers harden like claws. . . she thrust her hand straight into my chest. Cold rushes through me, a bone-chilling cold, worse than the bottom of the river. It feels like icy fingers wrapped around my heart.” She tears Cass’s life’s ribbon out of her chest. In order to come back alive, The Raven must dig up her corpse and place the life’s ribbon in her chest. Cass attempts to get her life’s ribbon back and the struggle is told over several chapters. Cass crawls into a grave, and when The Raven finds her, “The Raven grabs me and throws me out of the grave. . . I land hard on the ground. . . and hit a gravestone, knocking all the air out of my lungs.”
  • While in the veil, Cass sees a ghost who is on a platform, and “a course rope is cinched around his neck.” The execution doesn’t come.
  • Ghosts chase after Cass and Jacob. The ghost children “close in, opening their mouths, and instead of different voices coming out, there’s only one. The Raven’s. Her eerie hypnotic song pours from their lips.” The chase takes place over several chapters.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of the characters has two pints of beer—one for himself and one for his friend’s ghost.

Language

  • “Oh god” is used as an exclamation. When Cassidy’s parents want to talk to her, she thinks, “Oh god. I’m going to be a big sister.”

Supernatural

  • Jacob, a ghost who is attached to a living girl, is one of the main characters in the story.
  • Cass can see ghosts and cross the veil between the living and the dead. The narrator explains, “It takes a lot of spirit power for a ghost to reach across the Veil—the curtain between their world and ours. And the ghosts that have that kind of strength, they tend to be really old and not very nice. . . the dead grow strong on darker things. On pain and anger and regret.”
  • Lara casts a spell on a ghost and then reaches in and pulls the ribbon out “. . . The dark thread comes free in her hand, hanging limply from her fingers for a moment before crumbling away to ash. An instant later, the main crumbles, too, just . . . falls apart.” Later Lara explains that she sent him, “To the great unknown? To the silent side? To peace and quiet? Call it what you like. I sent him to the place beyond. Where he’s supposed to be.”
  • The Raven puts two teen boys under a spell. The boys “stand chest-deep in the grave. . . Their expressions are glassy, their breaths fogging as they shovel mound after mound of dirt out of the pit. . . “The boys dig up the Raven’s corpse.

Spiritual Content

  • None

Stay Sweet

For Amelia, working at Meade Creamery means more than just having a summer job. After four years of working at the ice cream shop, Amelia has a strong bond with the all-girl staff. The older girls teach her about life: who the best teachers are, how to wear lipstick, and the perfect amount of sprinkles to put on a sundae.

When the creamery’s owner suddenly dies, the grandnephew Grady takes over the business. The nineteen-year-old hopes to prove he is capable of running a business. But Amelia and the other girls feel threatened by his presence. She doesn’t want a boy to come in between her and the perfect summer. Can Amelia show Grady the importance of the traditions behind being a Meade Creamery girl?

Stay Sweet focuses on Amelia’s desire to keep the Meade Creamery open so traditions don’t die. The story is written in the third person, however, which leaves the story feeling emotionally flat. Instead of having well-developed characters that are worthy of falling in love with, the characters’ thoughts and feelings fail to shine through.

The characters are not likely either, which makes becoming invested in this story even more of a struggle. Amelia allows herself to be taken advantage of by Grady. Amelia’s best friend, Cat, is a jealous, self-centered, awful person and a terrible friend. And Grady’s handsome looks may be the only likable part of his character. The WWII diary entries of Molly Meade bring some interest to the story, but the script font makes the entries difficult to read. In the end, Molly is the only girl who is not portrayed in a stereotypical way.

Although Stay Sweet encourages girls to live their dreams, the characters’ flaws interfere with the message and leave the reader feeling indifferent for most of the story. Stay Sweet is not a memorable summer romance.

Sexual Content

  • Amelia thinks about all she has learned while working at the creamery. The older girls taught her “the unvarnished truth of what it was like when they lost their virginity.”
  • One of the girls “donated” a box of condoms because “girls shouldn’t ever depend on a guy to bring protection.”
  • Amelia knows someone who would “stress-French after SAT prep classes.”
  • Cat predicts that Grady will “try to get with one of the girls this summer.” She makes the girls swear to stay away from him.
  • Grady and Amelia kiss. Grady “pulls her even closer to him. There is warmth in his eyes. . . They are kissing . . . what she wants to concentrate on are his lips on hers, how he can’t seem to get close enough to her, how his curls feel softer than she ever imagined.”
  • Grady and Amelia get caught in a rainstorm. When they get inside, “he pulls her close to him and kisses her. Their wet bodies stick together.” They take off each other’s shirts. Then “they are kissing and walking, heading toward the living room couch half-dressed.” Amelia’s friend walks in on them and stops them from going further.
  • In one scene where Amelia and Grady kiss, “his hands slipping up her neck and into her hair. When she tries pulling away, he leans forward, holding his lips to hers, extending the kiss for a second, two, three. Like he doesn’t want it to end.”
  • Molly’s journal talks about when her boyfriend left for the war. He took “my face in his hands, wiping away my tears with his thumbs. He kissed me on the lips, then brought my hand to his mouth and kissed it, almost on the top of the engagement ring.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Grady and his father have a serious conversation, Cat says, “This is why kids at Truman are so stressed out! They’ve got these alpha parents pushing them. I’ve heard like over half of the student body is on Adderall.”
  • Grady’s parents try to FaceTime him, but he ignores it because “they got to Amsterdam today, which means they’re high.”
  • The creamery girls have a party at the ice cream stand and leave a huge mess. “Icy beer has splattered all over the drums of ice cream.”

Language

  • The teen characters often use profanity in their conversations, including: “ass,” “badass,” “crap,” “damn,” “hell,” “hella,” “pissed,” “shit,” and “son of a bitch.”
  • “Oh my god” and “Jesus” are used as exclamations several times.
  • Cat and Amelia get into an argument and Cat yells, “That’s a screw you.”
  • When Cat finds out that Grady will be the boss, she said, “I’m worried he’s going to ride our asses all summer.”
  • When Grady tastes the creamery’s ice cream, he says, “Holy shit.”
  • “Holy crap” is used several times.
  • Cat tells Amelia, “I’m pissed at you for keeping secrets, I’m pissed at you for hooking up with Grady, and I’m pissed that you fired me. . . But holy shit, Amelia, you fucking fired me.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • At Molly’s funeral, the pastor says, “Now, the good Lord sprinkled Molly and Wayne with the same stardust he must use to make movie stars.” Later in the service, he says, “Now, Wayne, as you know, never made it home from the war, may God rest his soul. But God did not forsake . . .”
  • In Molly’s journal, she prays, “Please, God, send him home to me.”
  • Molly is afraid that it is a sin to be so lucky, so on Sunday she is “going to put a little something extra in the collection plate and pray a few more rosaries than I normally do. That way God will know how very grateful I am.”

Girl at the Grave

When Valentine was a child, her mother murdered a wealthy man. After her mother was hung at the gallows, Valentine was left in the care of her neglectful father. Forced to learn to care for herself, she lived in a ramshackle house and spent most of her time alone.

Now Valentine is a senior at the prestigious school, Drake Academy. Even though she has earned excellent grades, her mother’s death still haunts her. An outcast among the other students, Valentine relies on Sam’s friendship especially when a local man is murdered and people begin whispering that Valentine may be a murderer like her mother.

As Valentine searches for the truth behind her mother’s death, she soon finds that powerful people will do anything to keep their secrets. Unexpectedly, Rowan Blackshaw, the son of the man her mother murdered, begins spending time with her. Because of Rowan’s interest in Valentine, the other members of her school begin to include her in their group. Valentine longs to be accepted by society, but is acceptance worth burying the secrets of the past?

The first chapter grabs the reader’s attention by setting up the mystery, hinting that Valentine’s mother might have been innocent. Valentine and her two love interests are all well-developed. Because the story is told from Valentine’s point of view, the reader has the ability to understand and care about her struggle. Rowan’s character is an unexpected delight because he does not conform to the rich boy stereotype.

As Valentine begins to unravel the mystery of her mother’s death, her discoveries show the different motivations of some of the characters, which adds interest. When Valentine’s father and another woman disappear, the town sheriff, Valentine, and other town people seem uninterested in their disappearance, which seems unrealistic. The lack of drama that surrounded their disappearance made the discovery of their deaths anticlimactic.

The middle part of the book spent so much time on the love triangle that the mystery faded into the background. The ending of the book contained several surprises, which highlighted how far people will go to protect those they love. The fact that Valentine chooses to follow an unexpected path instead of marrying the boy of her dreams is an added bonus. In the end, what drives the story is Valentine’s personal struggle. Even though the story lacks danger and suspense, Girl at the Grave is an entertaining book that is worth reading.

Sexual Content

  • When Valentine pulls away and won’t let Sam kiss her, he says his brothers, “think I’m a right fool, letting you lead me around on a leash. They kiss a different girl every week.”
  • Valentine learns that her father “has a woman across town. When he’s not home, that’s where he is.”
  • Valentine spends time with Rowan. Once while he was at her house, he “reached around my waist. . . I tilted my head, making room for him at my shoulder, and he lingered there . . . If I moved at all, he would do the rest. I felt him wanting it, his lips poised over my skin, his heart only inches from mine. But my body sways with uncertainty.” They don’t kiss.
  • Valentine and Sam kiss twice. The first time, “I leaned forward and touched my lips to his in the kiss that should have happened a long time ago . . . our lips soon warmed and softened, our heads tilting into one another, his arms sliding around me.”
  • Rowan and Valentine kiss several times throughout the story. “He leaned closer and brushed his lips against mine. Just a touch, then drew back. . . Then he kissed me again—and this time our mouths immediately molded to one another, warm and perfectly fitted, as if our lips had been made for this purpose, for this tasting and breathing and exploring one another.”
  • When Valentine tells Rowan she loves him, he kisses her. He “drew me into his arms, kissing me before I could catch my breath. A desperate kiss. A starving kiss. . .”

Violence

  • Valentine’s mother shot a man. She was hung on the gallows three days later. Throughout the story, Valentine revisits the memory. When Mr. Blackshaw was shot, the sound of the shot came from “everywhere, jolting my bones and filling my nostrils with the burning stench of gunpowder. . . I see Mr. Blackshaw sway on his feet, looking startled, then topple slowly backward, landing hard on the walkway, his arms sprawled.
  • Valentine remembers when her mother “hangs by her neck from a rope, her head tilting and her eyes staring fixedly, her hands clasped behind her back. Her boots dangle motionlessly at the bottom of her best black dress.”
  • When Valentine was younger, the Frye boys would torment her by “chasing me in the schoolyard. . . They’d tied me to trees and stolen my mittens.”
  • Valentine finds Mr. Oliver on the floor with a gash in his head. Valentine, “held his cold cheeks and felt his life sliding away beneath my hands, his face sagging, his body relaxing.” Later, she finds out he was poisoned.
  • Mr. Fry hits his wife and kids. Valentine thinks, “I’d seen what a punch from one of his enormous fists could do; Sam had outgrown them, but not Mrs. Fry and the younger boys.”
  • Valentine finds her father’s dead body. He is “on his back, staring upward, his eyes wide but seeing nothing. Icy and damp, both frozen and thawed.” Later she finds out he was poisoned, probably when someone gave him “a swig of liquor.”
  • Birdy’s body was next to Valentine’s father’s body. “A dark gash split the back of her head, separating her thatch of short hair.”
  • A woman attacks Valentine. “She grabbed a kitchen knife and lunged. . . She lunged with a furious screech . . . her knife sliced my upper arm.” They both grab for the knife and fight for control of it. Valentine pushes the woman, and “she stumbled back with a cry, blood flowing from a deep gash above her eye.” The woman falls, “hitting her head with a loud crack, then she crumpled to the floor.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Alvina Lunt’s “drunken father had broken both legs.” While he was in the hospital, Alvina learned about the unfair treatment of “lunatics.”
  • Sam takes his mother to visit her brother. When his brothers took his mother, “they got drunk and beat up the neighbor.”
  • Someone calls the doctor a “drunken fool.”
  • When Valentine was ill, Mrs. Blackshaw drugged her, so she would keep sleeping.

Language

  • Sam calls someone an “arrogant ass” twice.
  • Someone tells Valentine that she was “spawned by that tramp of a woman.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Devotionals are part of the school day on Fridays. During devotionals, Mr. Oliver reads from the Bible. “Man in his natural state . . . unassisted by the grace of God.”
  • When Valentine finds Mr. Oliver, she prays, “Father who art in heaven. . . Please, God. Please help Mr. Oliver.”
  • One of the characters could not get pregnant, and “she’d pleaded with the Lord for twenty years before her precious Philomena arrived, and her husband’s death soon after had only magnified the value of the blessing.”
  • When Valentine’s mother is hung, Mr. Oliver tells her, “But take comfort, for your mother confessed her sins. She is in God’s hands now, and he knows all.”
  • Some men think having a woman run a bank “is against God’s law.”

 

#Prettyboy Must Die

After his first failed mission, Peter Smith goes undercover at an exclusive school in Colorado. Peter is supposed to be keeping a low profile. When Peter goes out for a late-night run, a classmate snaps a picture of him and posts the caption “See Prettyboy run.” When the picture becomes a viral sensation, Peter knows he’s in trouble. Before the end of the day, Peter’s school is under attack as a terrorist wants revenge. This former-foster-kid turned CIA operative will have to use all of his skills and training to stay alive.

Told from Peter’s point of view, #Prettyboy Must Die starts out with action and intrigue. However, right from the start the plot is over the top and unrealistic. The action continues throughout the story, but there are too many scenes where Peter and his friends unrealistically knock out an adult, professional, or mobster.

Having the story told from Peter’s point of view did not necessarily improve the story’s appeal as he is arrogant and doesn’t believe that others can be an asset. Peter doesn’t think girls can be accomplished and smart, which is shown several times, including when he thinks the hacker cannot be a girl because she is pretty. Girls are portrayed in a negative light once again when a group of girls don’t worry about the danger they face; they just want a picture of #prettyboy.

#Prettyboy Must Die is not a serious spy book, but it is a fast-paced story that leaves the reader wondering who can be trusted. For those looking for an easy-to-read, fun story, #Prettyboy Must Die is a good choice. Even though the violence is not described in detail and is appropriate for younger readers, there is a wide range of profanity that is used often. If you loved Aly Carter’s Gallagher Girls series, you may want to leave #Prettyboy Must Die on the shelf.

Sexual Content

  • Katie changes her clothing in front of Peter. He thinks, “It takes me a second to realize I probably shouldn’t be staring like I’ve just seen the promised land . . . But I can’t help but comment because, you know, Katie. Half-naked. ‘Hey girl, as much as I’d like to, this probably isn’t a good time.’”
  • Peter thinks about a date with Katie, “. . . I remember our one date, our first kiss, and I want to kiss her again. . .” Later in the story, he asks Katie, “Are you sure you didn’t know who I was when I asked you out? Because the way you kissed me. . . I mean, after the movie, in your car—”
  • When Katie sees a black SUV and realizes it has come to pick her up, she kisses Peter. “. . . I damn near forget about Sveta, Rogers, and the entire universe. I hold her like it will be the last time. She kisses me again like it’s only a preview of more to come.”

Violence

  • The CIA raids an arms dealer’s hideout and a man is killed. “Marchuk Sr. is now on the floor three feet inside the house, knocked that far back by the shot that has to have killed him instantly.” The raid is described over four pages. During the raid, Peter is shot.
  • When a classroom is taken hostage, the chemistry teacher tries to tackle Bad Guy #2. The bad guy puts the teacher in a “choke hold. Before I can even process what’s happening, the bad guy is already done with Mr. Valaquez, who he lets slump to the floor, unconscious. Or worse.”
  • Someone kicks one of the bad guys. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where, considering all the moaning.”
  • A bad guy hits a school employee and Peter hears “the sound of a fist hitting bone.” Later in the story, Peter sees a teacher who is hiding, and “I throw a left hook across his face and knock him the hell out. . . I’m pissed he’s in here hiding out instead of heading back to his class. . .”
  • When Peter tricks a bad guy into coming into a classroom. “That’s when I land the steel baton against his pterion, the weakest point on the skull, immediately incapacitating him. Or possibly killing him.” He takes out two other bad guys in the same way.
  • Katie is captured and a bad guy beats her. “. . . Officer Andrews is holding Katie by one arm, or more like holding her up.” Peter is tied to a chair and when he struggles “he hauls off and lands a right cross that feels like a sledgehammer against my face.” Later, as the bad guy is talking to Peter, he hits him in the face. Katie saves the day with, “A brutal kick to his junk . . . she hooks her foot around his ankle, sweeps his legs out from under him, then straddles his back. I’m certain it’s an image I won’t soon forget—girl of my dreams on top of the guy who wants to kill me.”
  • When the bad guy begins to recover from “the ball-kick she (Katie) gave him and is starting to squirm . . . she grabs Marchuk’s hair and slams his face into the floor, knocking him out.”
  • Peter attacks a bad guy. “. . . I land my fist against the side of his head. . .and kick him in the jewels. That brings him to his knees, but I know it won’t be for long.”
  • Peter and Katie go after a bad guy and he threatens to shoot them, but Peter shoots first. “When the bullet hits his left knee, he goes down before he can get off a single round. I hear the sound of metal against bone. Maglite against skull.”
  • Someone tries to use a drone to kill Peter and Katie. “Just as Katie takes off running, I hear a car come over the ridge, followed by a loud thump. I turn back in time to see Sveta on the car’s hood, her phone flying through the air. . . The car screeches to a stop and Sveta slides off and onto the ground, moaning. For a brief moment, I regret that she’s still alive.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • A character said, “My layabout son takes nothing seriously, is only concerned about spending my money on women and drink.”
  • Peter gives the principal tickets to the game. After the game, the principal tells Peter, “I damn near went broke on stadium beer, but that’s what I get for celebrating a little too hard.” Later in the story, he tells Peter, “I’d been sick all morning, hungover. . .”
  • When Peter overhears someone say bank robbers are in the school, he thinks, “the average bank robber does so on impulse and out of desperation, usually some loser meth-head needing a hit.”
  • Katie injects several bad guys with carfentanil, a drug that is “ten thousand times stronger than morphine, so it acts quickly, and it only takes a drop or two.”
  • Peter and his friend are captured, and “then the crazy chick starts singing a kid’s chant to figure out which one of us she will shoot first.” Before she can shoot them, “Katie falls through the ceiling and onto the psycho’s back.”
  • When a bad guy crushes a boy’s hand, Katie fires her gun, but the bullet accidently hits Peter. Peter wants to know why he isn’t dead and Katie tells him, “It doesn’t shoot bullets. It was supposed to shoot nerve gas. . .”

Language

  • Profanity is used often and includes: ass, asshole, damn, dickhead, fucking, goddamn, hell, and pissed off.
  • When a teacher sees three incapacitated bad guys, he said, “Jesus H. Christ—are those terrorists?” Then he asks Peter, “Who the hell are you?”
  • “Oh My God” is used as an exclamation several times. For example, a girl says, “Oh my God. I sit two rows over from him in calculus. . . How did I not notice how hot he is?”
  • Peter sees a classmate and thinks, “I see Carlisle’s resident douche.”
  • When a teacher is looking for a bug, Peter thinks, “Despite the crazy that is happening all around us, watching The Douche have a near breakdown is fucking hilarious.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

80 Days or Die

Jules Verne’s left behind an unpublished manuscript, The Lost Treasure. When Max and his cousin, Alex, follow the clues and end up rich, they think all of their problems are solved. But when Max’s friend becomes gravely ill and Max’s mother’s illness returns, Max and his cousin take a deeper look into Verne’s history.

They discover that Verne miraculously recovered from a near-fatal gunshot wound. The Lost Treasure hints that Verne discovered magical healing elements that allowed him to recover from his wounds. Using clues from Around the World in 80 days, Max and Alex set out on a daring adventure to learn more of Verne’s secrets and heal Max’s mom and friend.

80 Days or Die begins with fun riddles that readers will enjoy trying to figure out. When Max and Alex head out on their journey, they meet several new people who they bring on their trip. Although Max seems fascinated by facts, he doesn’t take the time to do any research on the people who travel with him. Can these new friends be trusted? The question adds to the suspense, but the blind faith in random strangers doesn’t ring true.

Like the first installment of the Max Tilt series, 80 Days or Die jumps from location to location in a rush against time. Younger readers will enjoy seeing a fascinating underground cavern, strange wolf people, the icy Antarctica and a glimpse of the desert. Several times throughout the story, Max and Alex just happen to run into the perfect person to assist them. Although the additional characters were needed to advance the plot, their appearance and willingness to help is unrealistic.

Lerangis writes a solid adventure, sprinkled with surprises and interesting landscapes. However, having a cast of untrustworthy supporting characters made the story less fun. After all of the hardships Max and Alex endured in Fire the Depths, their trusting nature seemed misplaced. Max and Alex’s blind trust in other people will bother some readers, especially when one of the characters they trust ruins a perfectly happy ending.

Sexual Content

  • When looking for someone, Max and his friend “stopped at a booth where a couple in matching black leather jackets were in the middle of a long kiss.”

Violence

  • When Max takes an object, the natives threw a rock at a man in the group. “With a soft thud, the rock hit the back of Sergei’s head, and he dropped to the ground. The wolf people were surrounding him now. . . With a leap, he decked one of the wolf people with a solid martial-arts kick to the jaw. . . The wolf people backed away.” During the fight, a kid is pushed into a hole, where her arm is injured.
  • Max and another man race toward a house. They jump on yaks, but when Max pulls ahead, Nigel grabs him. Max “hit the ground hard, the pain shot up his spine . . . The pain came in waves.” Later, someone causes a yak to collide into Nigel and the man falls, and “he moaned, writhing in agony.”
  • A woman holds a gun on Max and is friends. There is a struggle for the gun, and the woman falls into a crevice. Max also falls into the crevice. “He was panting. Sweating. Achy.” His friends save him and help the woman.
  • Two people are arguing when a man with a gun approaches. Max jumps at the man, “With a cry, they both fell to the ground. The gun flew out of the man’s hand and slid off.” After a short scuffle, the man “Lifted Max off the ground. Mag struggled against the man’s grip, but his fists were like stone.” Someone helps Max by hitting the man on the head, and the attacker “fell to the ground, limp.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • In a moment of excitement, a character says, “Good God, what is it?”
  • Someone says, “I’ll be darned.”
  • One of the characters asks Max if “Plan B stands for ‘boneheaded’?”
  • “Oh dear Lord” is used as an exclamation once.

Supernatural

  • Wolf people watch over coils. The coils “fell from the sky one day, like holy rain. They do things—make people sick, punish for bad hunting season . . . the usual local superstitions.” The coils changed the people, making them look like wolf people. The people believe the coils are sacred and “they must protect holy coils from intruders.”

Spiritual Content

  • Max, who likes facts, said, “God is in the factoids.”

 

Fire the Depths

Thirteen-year-old Max Tilt’s life changes in a moment. When his mother becomes ill, his cousin Alex comes to care for him. When Max discovers his parents are in danger of losing their home, Alex and Max want to find a way to help. They head to the attic to find items to sell and discover Max’s great-great-great-grandfather Jules Verne’s unfinished manuscript The Lost Treasures. What begins as a quest for artic items becomes a treasure hunt as Alex and Max learn that everything Jules Verne wrote in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was true.

As Alex and Max begin their journey, a strange skunk-haired man named Spencer Niemand appears. He’s determined to steal The Lost Treasures’ manuscript and claim the treasure as his own. However, he needs the kids’ help. Can Max and Alex outwit the devious man who is willing to use violence to gain the treasure?

There is a lot to like in Max Tilt: Fire the Depths. Right from the start, the story is fast-paced and interesting. Although the story is a bit far-fetched, especially the part where his parents leave knowing the electricity will be turned off and the house repossessed, these events explain why Max and Alex are willing to go on a dangerous treasure hunt in order to help.

As the two cousins begin their journey, they don’t realize the danger that follows. As the two follow Jules Verne’s path, they use clues he left behind, but they are soon trapped in a submarine with a villain. As they struggle against an evil villain, they dive to a city beneath the ocean, explore an ice cave in Greenland, and fight a giant squid. This page-turner keeps readers engaged using suspense, adventure, and a bit of humor.

The interplay between Alex and Max helps readers engage in the story. Throughout the story, the two cousins build a friendship and learn to rely on each other in dire situations. Each shows their bravery in different ways. Alex is unique in that he has synesthesia (where one sense substitutes for another) and the effects of synesthesia are shown in a simple, unique way.

Although this adventurous story is written for the ages of eight and up, the story is more appropriate for middle school students because of the violence and the truly evil villain. Although the violence is not described in graphic detail, the villain kills others in order to satisfy his greed. The action-packed plot takes Max and Alex on a submarine ride to an epic adventure that will engage students and teach that, “Sometimes you can’t be ready to do the things you really need to do. You just do them. And that makes you ready.”

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • When a man grabs Niemand’s wrist, Niemand, “drew a knife from his pocket, and slammed it downward. As the man yanked his hand back, the blade sank into the tabletop.”
  • In order to eliminate witnesses, Niemand locks people into a warehouse and then sets off explosives. Niemand tells the event from his point of view, “on four, he heard sudden shouting and frantic footsteps inside the building. They finally realized. Good. Let them know there was no escape . . . On seven, the warehouse exploded.”
  • Niemand throws hot coffee in someone’s face. The man, “was squirming in pain on the worship floor.”
  • When bullies steal Max’s lunch, he uses a drone to get his lunch back. The drone hovers over the bullies’ heads and Max hits the release button. “The apple conked Dugan in the head. As he screamed and jumped aside, Max guided Vulturon downward, where Claw #3 grabbed onto his lunch bag.”
  • When a bad man tries to grab Alex, she hits him. The man, “recoiled with a howl of pain. But his reflexes were quick enough to wrap one beefy hand around Max’s throat.” Someone grabs the man’s foot and he lost his balance, “falling to the floor. His head smacked against the solid-steel edge of the Tilts’ coffee table.”
  • A man shoots at Alex and Max, but someone stops him before anyone is hurt.
  • In a letter, Verne writes about how Captain No One destroys an underwater civilization. “With a flash of fire, the carapace was breached. A hole shattered the thick material, jagged and mean as a lightning bolt. An explosion turned the sea to red.” Captain No One looted the city, and when two crew members tried to steal, they “were shot for their greed.”
  • A man falls from an icy ledge, “and then came the scream—deep, raw, animal-like—as Basile fell off the ledge and into the teeming white mass below.” Later, he is discovered alive.
  • Niemand ties Alex and Max to a snowmobile. “He circled it around each of them individually. He tied it down to various places on the snowmobile . . . Niemand flipped the lever to Drive. And he walked away.” The kids then fall into the frozen ocean, but they do not die. When the squid grabs Alex, Basile “swung the ax at the appendage that held Alex . . . The blade split it in two, the top part skirting upward in a violent spray of milky liquid.” The squid finally retreats.
  • A giant squid attacks the submarine and is able to get inside. Basile, Alex, and Max fight the squid in a battle that lasts eight pages.
  • When Niemand tries to capture Alex and Max, Max fights back. “As André approached, Max thrust himself off with his hands and kicked upwards, landing a solid hit on André’s chin. The scraggle-haired man fell backwards, arms flailing.” André grabs Alex and tosses her “like a bale of hay. Max saw her body fly over a thick copse and smack against a tree trunk. He heard her head thump and saw her limp body drop down to the forest floor.”
  • Niemand tells Alex to dig his own grave, but before he can get the work done, Alex hits Niemand on the head with a shovel. The kids are able to get away.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • “Crap!” is used once.
  • Max tells someone that they are about to feel like “asses.”
  • Someone yells at a bad driver, “Watch where you’re going, idiot!”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • While hiking, a character thinks “if God had meant for humans to live among hills, he would have made them goats.”
  • After defeating the squid, Alex said, “Thank God it’s over.”

Dream a Little Dream

Liv is used to strange and new things. For all of her life, she has bounced from city to city as she moved from one place to another. This time she and her sister, Mia, are packing up their belongings for England because their mother has garnered a teaching position at Oxford University. Little does she know that this move will be the strangest yet.

Liv finds herself thrust into a world of gossipy blogs, a rich new family, and vivid dreams that make her question her reality. She soon finds herself entangled in bizarre dreams in which she is led to the most popular boys in school, one of which is her new “brother.”  Before she can even adjust to her new life, she is swept away into deals with a demon to free the boys from a terrible fate. Liv’s curious mind drives her closer to the heart of the mystery of the dreams as she searches for the truth underneath all of the madness.

Dream a Little Dream is an entertaining and suspenseful novel that leaves readers on the edge of their seats as they wonder what will happen next. Many of the characters are introduced at the same time, which causes confusion.  However, the story has a creative and engaging premise that is very enjoyable. The reader is able to discover this new world along with Liv and relate to her confusion, fear, and curiosity. The book has a surprising plot twist that adds to the enjoyment of the novel, but what follows that event leaves much to be desired. The attempt to leave room for a sequel ruins the ending and causes the reader to be confused rather than curious about the next installment in the series. Additionally, the novel describes how characters conduct rituals to make deals with a demon, which may be concerning to some parents.

Sexual Content

  • Liv’s mom has a relationship with an English lawyer, who makes her happy. They are described as kissing a few times, but nothing more than that.
  • Florence is described as having, “voluptuous breasts.”
  • The school blog wrote about sports and said, “Aesthetically speaking, those sloppy shirts they wear are the worst (even polo kit has more sex appeal), but all the same I don’t object to the sweaty sight of our four musketeers.”
  • In one of the “dreams”, Henry and Liv hold hands. They also discuss kissing, but only briefly.
  • In reference to Jasper’s dreams, “Most of the people in his dreams are stark naked.”
  • Liv’s mom talks about how when she was fifteen, she “was sitting up at night writing poetry. I was unhappily in love. . . At that age you fall in love with someone else every three weeks.”
  • Liv tells Anabel that she looks like Botticelli’s Venus, to which she responds, “Yes, but only when I’m standing around in a seashell with no clothes on.”
  • Anabel says that Arthur is the great love of her life and that, “it was like a tsunami rolling over us. I knew we were meant for each other, I knew he was the man I’d been waiting for all my life.”
  • Mia and Liv jokingly say that they have an “Operation Marrying Off Lottie” in which they will find their au pair a soulmate so she’ll have something to do when they don’t need her anymore.
  • Grayson and his girlfriend Emily kiss at a party intensely to the point which Liv thinks that it is, “kind of embarrassing to watch.”
  • Liv and her friends walk into a cinema and find a couple in the top row of seats in the dark. The man “began frantically adjusting his clothes . . . he came storming down the steps, his shirt still unbuttoned.” When the woman comes down, Arthur says, “How nice to see you again, Mrs. Kelly . . . and give your husband my regards if he happens to be at the party too.”
  • The four boys repeatedly ask Liv if she is a virgin. It is later revealed that she is.
  • Anabel breaks the rules of the game by having sex. She then has to forfeit and her dog is killed by the demon. It is later revealed that she killed her own dog with poison in order to trick the boys.
  • In the dream world, Henry and Liv kiss several times. They are not described in detail, but are usually described as “soft kisses.”
  • A gossipy girl talks about Arthur and says, “I get goosebumps whenever I set eyes on him. But Henry Harper is totally sweet too. And sexy.”
  • Henry and Liv make out during her sixteenth birthday party. “For a few seconds I forgot to breathe, then I felt my arms rising and going around his neck of their own accord to draw him closer. We weren’t kissing cautiously now, but much more intensely.” They all so make out during a school dance. “I’ve no idea how he did it, but when he kissed me nothing else mattered.”

Violence

  • When Liv went to a middle school in Berkeley, California, a girl gang, “had threatened to force my head into a toilet.” They later actually do shove her head into a toilet and it is described in detail in one of Liv’s dreams. These bullies also say that they squash people’s hands in doors.
  • In a dream, Henry sees his old cat. “He looked just the way he was when I last saw him: all-over blood and with his guts coming out . . .”
  • In one of her first vivid dreams, Liv repeatedly hopes that Lottie won’t show up with a hatchet.
  • In a nightmare, there is a group of enraged basketball fans. Liv says, “It sounds like they are going to kill him any moment now!” The mob begins to chant, “Burn him now, burn the traitor. Burn him now, not a day later!”
  • Liv jokingly remarks about London and says, “Street gangs indulging in shoot-outs the whole time, sex fiends lurking in front gardens, and isn’t that Jack the Ripper just coming around the corner.”
  • During a ritual, Liv, Grayson, Arthur, Jasper, and Henry all take turns cutting their hand with a hunting knife and dribbling their blood into a Chalice full of red wine. This scene is described in detail over several pages.
  • Liv has many dreams about Hamlet after she sees the play, and in these dreams, there are references to the stabbings and deaths of many of the Shakespearean characters.
  • During her sixteenth birthday party, Liv requests that Mia stop her from looking like a “lovelorn sheep” in any way that she can. Mia decides to distract her anytime she looks at Henry in that manner. “I was black and blue around the ribs and had been hit by assorted flying objects: several chestnuts, a spoon, and a blueberry muffin.”
  • Arthur intends on offering Anabel as a human sacrifice in the dream world in order to satisfy the demon. This never happens, but later in the novel, Anabel captures Liv with the intention of killing her as a virginal sacrifice to the demon.
  • When Liv tries to stop what she thinks is the sacrifice of Anabel, she “swung up my right foot and caught him just under the chin as I jumped. Still in the air, I turned at an angle of 280 degrees, and when I landed, my left forearm caught him in the stomach.”
  • An iron torch holder falls on Liv and she blacks out. Following the incident, she has to get several stitches.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At the airport, Liv is stopped for suspicion of drug smuggling because a drug dog smells something in her backpack. It is just German cheese with a strong odor, but the ordeal causes Liv a lot of embarrassment.
  • On several occasions, Jasper helps himself to some of his mother’s sleeping pills in order to remain in the dream world longer.
  • Liv’s mom is accused of smoking pot when she was fifteen, but she defends herself by saying, “Nonsense. I never smoked pot until I went to college.”
  • Grayson tries to deter Liv from going to a party by telling her mother, “These parties are rather wild. I mean there’s a lot of alcohol flowing, and what with Liv being only fifteen.”
  • Liv describes Arthur’s house as looking like “a private clinic for the drug-addicted kids of millionaires.”
  • Jasper makes drinks that contain large amounts of alcohol during an important scene that lasts several pages. He is also later described as “tipsy.”
  • During a party, Arthur drinks gin straight from a bottle.
  • The British teens that Liv meets tell stories of when they were drunk on Halloween.
  • In one of Anabel’s dreams, Arthur walks toward her heroically while carrying a bottle of wine.
  • A drunk truck driver killed one of Anabel’s ex-boyfriends. The accident is not described.
  • At the school dance, Jasper “had somehow managed to get tipsy, although there were no alcoholic drinks.”
  • Anabel and Arthur leave the school dance under the guise that she is terribly drunk. They are actually setting a trap to lure Liv, so Anabel can kill her for the virginal sacrifice.
  • At the conclusion of the novel, Anabel is “lying in a hospital bed in Surrey, stuffed full of mind bending drugs and tied down.”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently throughout the novel, including hell, bloody hell, shit, and damn.
  • “God,” “my God,” “thank God,” and “oh my God” are used frequently as swear words.
  • Grayson is described as a “stupid show-off” and later as an “idiot.”
  • Mia thinks that her aunts named Gertrude and Virginia have “shitty names.”
  • Liv strongly dislikes Persephone and says that she, “follows me around everywhere, talking to me the whole darn time!”
  • A character is called a “midget.”

 

Supernatural

  • During a ritual, Liv, Grayson, Arthur, Jasper, and Henry all take turns cutting their hand with a hunting knife and dribbling their blood into a Chalice full of red wine. This scene is described in detail over several pages.
  • Liv does not believe in “unlucky numbers any more than I believed in horoscopes, or four leaf clovers and chimney sweeps that brought you luck.”
  • The main characters of the novel conjure a demon and in return for freeing him, have immeasurable power and their dearest wish granted. “If you followed the rituals in this book, Anabel claimed, you could conjure up an ancient demon from the underworld, a demon that could help you gain immeasurable power and grant your dearest wishes.” Their immeasurable power is in the form of dreams in which they can control what happens with a simple thought and enter the dreams of others to learn their deepest secrets and desires.
  • The initial approach to conjuring the demon was not serious. “Conjuring up a demon on Halloween . . . It was fun . . . it seemed to me as harmless as telling your fortune by reading tea leaves. No one expects the tea leaves to develop an independent life of their own and come tormenting you in your dreams by night. Or go about murdering dogs.”
  • When Liv wakes up from a horrific nightmare, her family comes running to make sure that she is okay. Florence asks her, “Did you see a ghost?”

Spiritual Content

  • To upset Florence, Liv makes sarcastic suggestions as to the horrible things that she and her family might be. She says they are, “hopelessly disorganized, or a kleptomaniac, a Republican, a Jehovah’s witness, or anything.”
  • The demon that the group conjures is the “Lord of Shadows and Darkness.” Anabel believes that he is all-powerful and dedicates herself to him like a god. This devotion stems from a time period in her youth when she and her mother were a part of a satanic cult.

          by Morgan Filgas

 

Surrounded by Sharks

Early in the morning, Davey wakes up in a small hotel room surrounded by his family. He sneaks out of the room because he doesn’t want to waste any of the vacation sleeping. Davey, with a book in hand, heads to the beach. The beautiful ocean is too much of a temptation for Davey to resist. When he sees the No Swimming sign, he decides to just dip his toes in the water. But the waves tear Davey away from the island and soon he’s miles offshore. He’s surrounded by water—and something else. Sharks are circling below the surface, watching, and waiting. Davey’s terrified he will become the sharks’ next meal. Then no one will find out what happened to him.

Northrop writes with the perfect balance of suspense and action. The short chapters allow the reader to see Davey’s struggle, the sharks’ thoughts, and the action that is taking place back on the island. As the people on the island search for answers about where Davey could have disappeared to, the reader knows that Davey is about to become shark food. Switching between perspectives keeps the reader in suspense to the very end.

Every character in Surrounded by Sharks comes alive and their unique personalities add to the story’s atmosphere. Although the story revolves around Davey’s predicament, there are also several other teens that make the story relatable. While Davey’s two-parent family is not shown to be perfect, they clearly love each other. Surrounded by Sharks is an easy-to-read, suspenseful story that will keep even the most reluctant reader turning the pages until the very end.

Sexual Content

  • Davey is distracted by a girl because “her T-shirt was so light that he could see her bathing suit right through it. Or, wait . . . was that her bra?”

Violence

  • A shark tries to bite Davey. When it attacks, “the black eyes rolled back in its head, and its permanent frown widened for the bite, revealing two rows of sharp, serrated teeth. BONK! It hit the water cooler bottle.” Davey has the air knocked out of his lungs but is otherwise uninjured.
  • A shark attacks Davey. As Davey is being pulled into a boat, “the smaller shark surged forward below the surface and clamped onto Davey’s leg, harder this time. It swung its head to the side with surprising power and pulled Davey out of Drew’s grasp and clean off the side of the boat. Davey’s head dipped under the water, and a mouthful of seawater slipped into his lungs.” Davey is saved.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Davey sits by a bar stand on the beach and worries about getting drunk off the fumes because then he’d get in trouble if he was “stumbling back into the hotel room completely blitzed on alcohol vapors.”
  • One of the characters, Zeke, had “been out at the local bars the night before. It was what they called ‘a late night’ in most places. . .” Later Zeke is described as having a “faint smell of booze.”
  • A man at the bar stand tells someone, “Come back at eleven. Mimosas and Bloody Marys. Full bar at noon.”
  • A character goes into a liquor store, but his wife doesn’t approve.

Language

  • “Frickin’” is used several times.
  • “Oh my god” and “god” are used as exclamations several times. For example, after being pulled into the ocean by a riptide, Davey thinks, “Oh my god, I’m an idiot!”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • While out in the ocean, Davey believes thata he sees land and thinks “Thank God.”

Polaris

During the 1830s, the Polaris sets sail on a scientific mission to the Amazon jungle. The crew is excited to bring back new discoveries, but when the landing party returns, only half are alive. After an argument, the crew loads a chest into the bowels of the ship. After they begin their trip home, a bloody mutiny leaves most of the adult crew dead. Those who live, flee the ship, leaving six children—none of whom are older than twelve. The captain’s 12-year-old nephew Owen, a botanist’s assistant, and other deckhands struggle for survival. Soon they realize that the sea isn’t their only worry. Something else is lurking below deck, and it’s growing.

From the first page, Polaris will capture reader’s attention and they will not want to put the book down. With just the right mix of suspense and action, Polaris makes the fight for survival come to life. Full of realistic detail and nautical facts, readers will be pulled into the frightening atmosphere of Polaris. The story is appropriate for younger readers with tame battle scenes. This fast-paced story has well-developed characters that show the importance of working together despite the fact that they do not like each other. With a diverse cast of characters, an engaging plotline, and an epic battle scene, Polaris will not disappoint those looking for an excellent horror story. But be warned, the creepy creature may make its way into the nightmares of readers.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • A character thinks about a boy, who “had blown up trying to carry two cartridges (of gun powder) at once.”
  • A mutiny begins among the adult crew. The children listen to the fighting through a locked door and hear gunshots as well as someone being thrown into the sea. Then the boys hear, “three shots rang out in quick succession—the officer’s pistols. Shrieks of pain mixed with the shouts of rage, telling Owen that the rest of the work would be done with blades and hands.”
  • Owen shoots the creature. “Owen heard a quick sound behind him—tik-taclik! —like metal on bone.” Then, the boys pour boiling water on him. When the creature flees, someone stabs it with a spear.
  • When the creature snatches one of the boys, someone shoots the creature. “Per-KRACK went the pistol. A flash of flame and a billowing plume of smoke shot forth.”
  • A boy hits Owen over the head with a hatchet. Owen is not seriously injured.
  • When the creature tries to snatch another person, there is a fight that takes place over several pages. When someone shoots it, “the lead ball ricocheted off the thick armor plating of its thorax.” When Owen throws the pistol at it, “the butt of the pistol smacked heavily into what had been Obed’s forehead. The creature staggered backwards. . .” No one is injured.
  • The creature attacks the boys. The battle takes place over several chapters. During the battle, “A dark red rat-like creature emerged from the hatch, then a second, and then they all began to pour out. One dozen, two dozen.” The kids rig a device to blow up the ship after they have jumped off.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Owen thinks about his uncle and father. “His uncle had taken him in after his mother’s death and his father’s descent into sorrow—and the bottle.”

Language

  • When the crewmembers discuss being infected with spores, someone thinks, “Oh God. . . What if it’s me?”

Supernatural

  • The children believe the ghost of Obed Macy is haunting the lower deck of the ship. They discuss if a Bible and cross will ward off the ghost.

Spiritual Content

  • During a storm, a character begins “the Lord’s prayer.”
  • A character prays, “Lord help us all.”

 

Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster

Orphaned as a child, Nan Sparrow is forced to work for a cruel chimney sweep named Wilkie Crudd. She and several other children toil day after day, sweeping out chimneys for nasty Mr. Crudd.

Cleaning chimneys is a dangerous job, and when Nan gets stuck in a chimney fire she thinks death is near. Instead, she wakes up in the house’s attic—and she’s not alone. A small piece of char has somehow come to life and needs Nan’s help to survive. Since everyone believes Nan died in the chimney fire, she takes advantage of her misfortune and decides to create a new life for herself and her monster, who she names Charlie.

From the very first page, Sweep captivates readers with beautiful writing that vividly displays the horrors of being a Victorian London chimney sweep. The story seamlessly flows back and forth between Nan’s life before she was orphaned, and her life afterward, when the man who took her in mysteriously disappears. Even though life with him was difficult, her life was full of love. The connection between Nan and the man (who is referred to as “the Sweep”) is deep and vibrant, and will leave readers curious to discover why the Sweep disappears.

The characters in this story are so well developed that every character’s unique personality shines through. As Nan begins to create a new life for Charlie and herself, she learns important life lessons. For example, while Nan would like to stay hidden from others, she eventually discovers that “We save ourselves by saving others.” Sweep’s suspenseful, surprising conclusion will leave readers in tears as they realize that cruelty and kindness are locked in a never-ending battle.

This story focuses on difficult topics such as poverty, child labor, and anti-Semitism. As Nan’s story unfolds, the difficult life of a child sweep in described in detail. Children faced harsh masters who fed them little, beat them, and sent them up chimneys where they were injured and sometimes died horrific deaths. One of the characters, Roger, became a sweep when his parents sold him. He turns into an unpleasant boy who dreams of becoming rich enough to buy his parents’ house so he can “raise the rent. Raise it so high, they’re put out on the streets.”

The publisher recommends Sweep for children as young as eight years old. However, this book contains long passages, difficult vocabulary, and shows humanity’s cruelty, which could be quite difficult for younger readers to handle. The book ends with historical information on sweeps, Victorian London, and a list of suggested books for readers curious to learn more. In this section, the author points out that, “today over 160 million children worldwide are forced into child labor. The battle is far from won.”

Sexual Content
• Master Crudd attends weddings. When Crudd said he wouldn’t be home for dinner, one of the kids teased, “Too busy kissing the brides for luck, eh, sir?”
• Nan tries to get other sweeps to march for a cause. One of the boys says, “Hammie’s just hopin’ to get a kiss from the flower girl on Hastings!”

Violence
• When Nan tries to grab her bowl of gruel, “a wooden spoon came down on her hand. She shrieked, clutching her fingers.” The woman caring for her told her she would not eat that day because she was late for breakfast.
• While cleaning a chimney, Nan gets stuck. In an attempt to get her out, Roger sets a fire. Nan shouted, “ ‘Roger, no—’ Her cries were cut off by a hollow whoof as the match hit the coals. Air sucked down through the chimney, like a beast drawing a deep breath. First came the smoke, a thick black tendril that slid up the flue and snaked around her neck. . . Next came the heat. It started as a prickling sensation on her back and heels, then spread up her legs. Within seconds, the warmth had turned to a blistering heat. . . Her entire body felt as if it were burning from the inside out.”
• Nan and the Sweep see “a pack of boys who were beating a smaller boy, calling him a ‘Jew.’” The Sweep chases the boys away.
• When Nan was little, she had a doll. A group of “young ladies” teased Nan and “one of the younger ladies snatched Charlotte (the doll) and waved her in the air . . . the doll circled and spun and then struck the ground with a sickening CRACK!”
• When a small boy drops a bag of soot, Roger “stomped up to Newt and struck him hard with the butt end of his broom.”
• Nan throws a snowball at Roger. “Perhaps it was her form, or perhaps it was her ire, but the snowball hit Roger with such force that the boy was knocked right off his feet and landed—splat—in the slushy gutter.”
• Master Crudd threatens to kill Nan and Charlie protects her. “Crudd gave a feral cry and lunged at Charlie, swinging the poker at his head. It connected with a dull crunch. Bits of sooty rubble feel to the floor.” Charlie grabs Crudd’s head and “Crudd screamed at the scorching touch. The room filled with acrid smell of burning hair, burning flesh. Charlie hoisted the man up and hurled him through the air . . . Crudd’s body smashed clear through the shuttered windows and into the frozen street.”
• When Nan was little, some men tried to put her in an orphanage. “The men grabbed the girl and locked her in a carriage. She had kicked out a loose board from the roof and climbed out to escape.”
• When the sweeps protest their work conditions, the master hits the kids. “The crowd gasped as the man brought the brush down on the boy with a thwap.” When people try to help the kids, “The sweeps—drunk and enraged—attacked anyone who touched them.” A riot breaks out.
• Master Crudd grabs Nan, and her friend tries to help, but “Whap! Crudd struck Toby in the face with his fist. The boy fell backwards and collapsed to the ground, unconscious.” In order to get away Nan, “threw her head forward—striking him straight in the nose.” Crudd chases her up a tower. “He reached out and snatched her ankle. . . She felt her grip break loose from the monument—And then Nan Sparrow fell . . . They struck the ground with tremendous force. The man died instantly.” Nan lays “bleeding on the street, moaning in pitiful agony, her body shattered beyond repair.” Charlie finds Nan and carries her away.

Drugs and Alcohol
• During a parade, the “master sweeps were already deep in their cups, enjoying free drinks in public houses all across the city.”
• A sweep “sounded drunk” when he yelled at his climbers. He said, “What do you ungrateful rats think yer doin?”

Language
• Roger calls a boy a “lazy maggot.”

Supernatural
• Master Crudd attends weddings because “everyone knew that paying a sweep to attend your wedding guaranteed years of happiness.”
• A piece of char comes to life. “Whatever happened inside that chimney must have changed the char—brought it to life.” The char, named Charlie, isn’t sure what it is, but he’s not a monster. Nan thinks Charlie is a golem, which is a “gabled monster in the Jewish tradition, a homunculus crafted from mud or clay and animated through Kabalistic ritual.” A teacher tells Nan that a golem is made when “a sage or rabbi–that is, a Jewish priest—forms a body out of mud or clay and then brings that creature to life with a sort of magic word called shem.” The teacher explains shem “is kind of like a spark. . . Some say the word is a true name of God.”
• Charlie accidentally breaks a bird’s egg. Charlie holds the egg and his hands, “were smoldering. His dark fingers crackled and began to glow red and then white. Smoke billowed from his open hands. . . And then Nan saw something that snatched the breath from her breast—The egg moved.” The bird pecks its way out of the egg, and although the bird’s wing is damaged, it’s alive.
• Charlie holds an acorn and “there was a smell of cracking embers. Charlie’s hands began to smolder, just as they had done with Dent’s eggs.” The acorn grows into a tree. After he makes the tree grow, his fingers, “did not bend. They did not crumble. It was like touching a statue.”
• Charlie holds Nan, injured and bleeding, in his arms. “Nan could feel a flicker of warmth spreading through her broken body, bringing her back. . . She could feel his arms turning rigid around her.” Charlie uses his magic to save Nan.
• When Nan buries an ember from Charlie’s body, “the snow beneath her boots melted to reveal black soil. And there, pushing up from the earth, were little shoots of green grass.”

Spiritual Content
• Nan befriends a Jewish teacher. Nan sees a Jewish prayer book in the teacher’s room. Nan tells the teacher what she has heard about Jewish people. “The way some folks talked about Jews, it seemed as if all the pains of the world were because of what they had done. She knew that wasn’t true though; she’d suffered plenty at the hands of God-fearing Christians.”
• Nan reads a poem about sweeps. In the poem, the sweeps, “rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind. And the Angel told Tom if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for his father and never want joy.”
• Nan tells Charlie the story of baby Jesus, who was “born in a basket and how a wicked king tried to kidnap him but then a big bearded angel named Father Christmas fought the king. ‘And then he tossed the baby Jesus down the chimney of a girl named Mary, and that was the first Christmas present.’ ”
• The teacher celebrates Passover. She explains that “the Jewish people eat these things to remember when God delivered us from slavery in Egypt. . . Before the Jews escaped from Egypt, God sent an angel of death to the city. The angel visited the homes of the Egyptians and killed every firstborn child as they slept. It was punishment for the wickedness of their parents. The angled passed over the homes of the Jews and spared their children.”
• When the teacher meets Charlie, Nan asks, “Does it make you believe in God?” The teacher replies, “It makes me believe that the world is full of wonders that I can scarcely imagine. Perhaps that is the same thing.”

The Hidden Oracle

There is no way to punish an immortal god, right? That is what almighty Apollo, god of the sun, thought, but he is quickly proven wrong as his father, Zeus, casts him down to the mortal world as a powerless, friendless, and—even worse—ugly sixteen-year-old boy named Lester Papadopoulos. As if it can’t get any worse, Apollo (now Lester) can’t even remember how he incurred Zeus’s mighty wrath.

With nowhere and no one to turn to, Apollo lays his trust in a runty twelve-year-old girl named Meg and the teenage demigods that reside in Camp Half-Blood. There he seeks help from the campers, including some of his own children, and begins to discover disturbing secrets that may endanger those he grows close to.

Fast-paced and witty, The Hidden Oracle is a humorous read for younger and older readers alike. Fans of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Heroes of Olympus series will rejoice as Riordan once again paints a world of mystery and mythology that enthralls readers. However, the book touches on sensitive topics such as sexuality and battle violence that may be of concern for some parents. Nevertheless, it is an entertaining novel that is well worth the read.

Sexual Content

  • Apollo mentions his hope that Meg does not develop a crush on Percy Jackson.
  • Apollo has two loves of his life that he mentions several times throughout the novel. Both of his relationships ended in tragedy. One of his loves was Hyacinthus, a strong hero who happened to be a man. The other love was Daphne, whom he dreams of and describes as having, “those lips I had never kissed but never stopped dreaming of.” Due to losing these loves, he swears off marriage as others “had never possessed my heart” as his true loves once had.
  • Apollo encounters some of his demigod children at camp Half-Blood. When he meets each of them, he remembers the romantic relationships that he had with their parents. “To my teenage self, our romance felt like something that I’d watched in a movie a long time ago—a movie my parents wouldn’t have allowed me to see.”
  • Apollo is embarrassed by the attention of some female campers, and he says, “My face burned. Me—the manly paragon of romance—reduced to a gawky, inexperienced boy!”
  • Nico di Angelo and Apollo’s son, Will Solace, are dating. Apollo has no problems with their relationship because he has had “thirty-three mortal girlfriends and eleven mortal boyfriends? I’ve lost count.”
  • Apollo once created a child with another man.
  • Apollo “accidentally saw Ares naked in the gymnasium.”
  • One of Apollo’s former girlfriends, Cyrene, got together with Ares to get revenge on Apollo.
  • Apollo argues that gods are almost always “depicted as nude, because we are flawless beings. Why would you ever cover up perfection?”

Violence

  • When Apollo crashes on Earth, a group of hoodlums beat him up. “My ribs throbbed. My stomach clenched . . . I toppled out and landed on my shoulder, which made a cracking sound against the asphalt.” His opponents pull out a knife, but it is not used. One of the boys “kicked me in the back. I fell on my divine face. . . I curled into a ball, trying to protect my ribs and head. The pain was intolerable. I retched and shuddered. I blacked out and came to, my vision swimming with red splotches.”
  • A lightning wielding cyclops kills one of Apollo’s sons. The death is not described.
  • Percy, Meg, and Apollo get into a car crash in which their car is totaled. No one is seriously injured.
  • A mythical grain spirit called a karpoi bites the head of a nosos clean off in one chomp.
  • Meg slaps Apollo’s face to wake him from a dangerous trance. He promptly vomits afterward.
  • Meg “poked Connor Stoll in the eyes and kicked Sherman Yang in the crotch.”
  • There is a famous story about Apollo in which he slays the mighty monster Python. He “killed Python without breaking a sweat. I flew into the mouth of the cave, called him out, unleashed an arrow, and BOOM!”
  • There is a legend about Apollo “skinning the satyr Marsyas alive after he challenged me to a music contest.”
  • After a dangerous camp activity, “Chiara had a mild concussion. Billie Ng had come down with a case of Irish step dancing. Holly and Laurel needed pieces of shrapnel removed from their backs, thanks to a close encounter with an exploding chainsaw Frisbee.”
  • Two satyrs die attempting to retrieve and bring the Oracle of Delphi back to Camp Half-Blood. Their deaths are not described.
  • Apollo wishes that he could have “picked a nice group of heroes and sent them to their deaths.”
  • Apollo and Meg battle killer ants who attack in groups, snap through Celestial bronze, and spit acid. “Meg’s swords whirled in golden arcs of destruction, lopping off leg segments, slicing antennae.”
  • The pair meet a geyser god that suggests that they do not jump in his water unless they “fancy boiling to death in a pit of scalding water.”
  • A man almost stabs himself to obey the orders of his master, Emperor Nero.
  • Apollo attempts to fight Nero and “let out a guttural howl and charged the emperor, intending to wring his hairy excuse for a neck.” Later, he fights one of the emperor’s bodyguards and “spun Vince like a discus, tossing him skyward with such force that he punched a Germanus-shaped hole in the tree canopy and sailed out of sight.”
  • There is a large battle near the conclusion of the novel in which many characters fight a giant mechanical statue. It is described over several chapters and many are hurt in the process, but the ending is victorious for the heroes.
  • Nyssa slaps Leo in the face because he was missing for several months.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Ambrosia is the food of the gods and their immortal bodies allow them to eat it as their normal food. Demigods eat ambrosia if they are sick or injured because it instantly heals them. However, if mortals attempt to eat it, they burn up inside and possibly combust.

Language

  • “Crud” and “darned” are each used once.
  • Meg tells Apollo that he has landed in Hell’s kitchen and he thinks, “It seemed wrong for a child to say Hell’s Kitchen.”
  • Apollo is dragged across a river, “scolding and cursing.”
  • Many demigods mutter ancient Greek curses when they are angry.
  • A demigod calls a friend, “Idiota,” when she does something wrong.
  • Many characters use the expressions, “thank the gods!” and “oh, gods.”
  • Percy “yelped a curse that would have made any Phoenician sailor proud.”

Supernatural

  • Most of the characters are demigods and have magical powers that they have inherited from their godly parent. For instance, Meg can control elements of nature (plants, soil, grain spirits, etc.) because her mother is Demeter, the goddess of agriculture.
  • Many Greek mythological creatures and monsters appear in the story.
  • Nico, the son of Hades, uses his powers to sit with his boyfriend by saying that the “zombies stay away” if he is seated near him.
  • It is mentioned that Leo died and then came back to life. The details of this event are found in one of Riordan’s previous books.
  • When a demigod is claimed at Camp Half-Blood, a glowing symbol appears above their head to show their parentage.  This happens to Meg during the campfire ceremony.
  • Some trees in the woods of Camp Half-Blood are the ancient Grove in Dodona, which is a powerful force that whispers prophecies. Finding this grove is the catalyst for the majority of the novel’s plot. The wood from these trees was used for the mast of the Argo, which could “speak to the Argonauts and give them guidance.”
  • Meg tells Apollo about a looming threat to which he responds, “I had been hoping she would say something else: giants, Titans, ancient killing machines, aliens.”
  • Magical creatures emerge from the woods to aid Apollo in his quest to stop the evil Emperor Nero. “The shimmering forms of dryads emerged from their trees—a legion of Daphne’s in green gossamer dresses . . . They raised their arms and the earth erupted at their feet.”

Spiritual Content

  • In this book, the Greek gods are real and have a presence in the world. All of the legends about them are true, and they are immortal. The main character is a god who has been turned mortal.
  • The source of the gods’ powers is their presence in the minds of humankind, and if they are forgotten they will eventually fade. “Gods know about fading. They know about being forgotten over the centuries. The idea of ceasing to exist altogether terrifies us.”
  • It is discussed how in ancient Greece, priests tended and cared for the sacred Grove of Dodona.
  • When the character of evil Emperor Nero is introduced, Christians are mentioned as being scapegoated by him. In response to these accusations, he says, “But the Christians were terrorists, you see. Perhaps they didn’t start the fire, but they were causing all sorts of trouble.” A terrifying event is then mentioned in which Nero had “strung up Christians all over his backyard and burned them to illuminate his garden party.”

by Morgan Filgas

 

Not If I Save You First

When they were ten, Maddie and Logan were best friends. Maddie thought they’d be friends forever. Maddie never cared that Logan was the president’s son. But fate dealt their friendship a deadly blow. When her Secret Service Agent father almost dies trying to save the president’s son, everything changes.

After he almost dies, Maddie’s father exchanges the White House for a cabin in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. Maddie had no phone. No internet. No friends. And no Logan. When she first moved to Alaska, Maddie wrote letter after letter to Logan, but he never replied.

Six years later, Logan appears outside of her cabin and Maddie wants to kill him. Before she can take action, an assailant appears, almost killing Maddie and dragging Logan off into the wilderness. Maddie could go back for help, but the weather is treacherous and getting worse. Maddie goes after Logan, but she’s not sure if she’s going to save him or kill him.

In typical Ally Carter style, Not If I Save You First begins with suspense and leaves the reader turning pages until the very end. Maddie is a strong heroine who doesn’t need to rely on a guy—not even the Secret Service men—to save the day. She hides her strength and smarts behind a girly persona, which makes her incredibly likable. Her conflicting emotions regarding Logan add interest and suspense to an action-packed story.

Unlike her other books, Not If I Save You First contains violence that is often described in bloody, but not gory, detail. The storyline revolves around a kidnapping, which is a more realistic storyline than Carter’s previous books. Because of this, readers can put themselves in the character’s situation. The story has several plot twists that will surprise readers and the ends with an epic fight between good and evil. When readers finish Not If I Save You First, they will feel as though Maddie is a new friend.

Sexual Content

  • When Maddie kisses Logan, he wishes he wasn’t in handcuffs because he “couldn’t hold her, touch her, pull her close and keep her near and never, ever let her go.” He’s disappointed when he discovers that she kissed him, so she could give him the keys to the cuffs.
  • Logan and Maddie kiss several times. One time, “he was growing closer and closer and then her lips were on his again, warmer now. She tasted like snow and berries and it was the sweetest thing that Logan and ever known.”
  • When Maddie and Logan are at school, Logan kisses her, “right there in front of their school and his Secret Service detail—right in front of the world. So she kissed him back again. And again. And again.”

Violence

  • Russian terrorists attempt to kidnap the president’s wife. In the process, one of the terrorists shoots at the president’s son. Maddie’s father jumps between the man and the president’s son and shoots at the terrorist. The terrorist, “looked down at his chest, at the place where blood was starting to ooze from beneath his ugly tie, and he dropped to his knees. Then the floor. He didn’t move again.”
  • While trying to protect the president’s wife and son, Maddie’s father is shot. Even though he is hurt, he tries to go help the first lady, and “he was still dragging himself toward the box. Blood trailed behind him. . .” During the altercation, the president’s son was shot too.
  • A man kidnaps Logan and in the process, hurts Maddie. “And Maddie spun just in time to see the butt of a gun slicing towards her. She actually felt the rush of air just before the sharp pain echoed through her face, reverberating down to her spine.” When she tries to get up, the man kicks her, “a sharp pain slammed into her stomach.” The man then pushes her off a cliff and leaves her to die.
  • Logan attempts to escape, knocking the man to the ground. “The two of them rolled, kicked and tangled together. Logan managed to strike the man in the stomach, but it was like he didn’t even feel it.” Logan stops fighting when the man has him pinned down.
  • Logan attempts to escape again. Even though his hands were cuffed, “he slammed them into the man’s gut, pounding like a hammer with both fists. . .” The man pulls a knife and begins “cutting into the soft flesh between his pinkie finger and its neighbor. . . then he saw the bright red drop of blood that bubbled up from his too-white skin.”
  • Logan tries to take a satellite phone from the man. “Logan elbowed him in the ribs, but a moment later he was pinned against the ground. . . Facedown in the mud, the cold seeped up from the ground and into Logan’s bones. . .” When Logan’s face is pushed into the mud, Maddie appears and the fight stops.
  • To prove that he doesn’t value Maddie’s life, the man, “pulled back his hand, and hit her hard across the face. Her head snapped and Logan actually heard the blow. . . His hand was around her throat, fingers not quite squeezing, but close.”
  • The man shoots a ranger. “He fired. Once. Twice. And the ranger fell.”
  • In a plot to escape, Maddie blows up a bridge. “. . . the old ropes and wood exploded in a wave of color and fire and heat. . .”
  • The man recaptures Maddie and, he “jerked Maddie against him, sliding the barrel of the gun along the smooth skin of her cheek like she needed a shave.” Logan tries to help her and the two men fight, so Maddie “kicked Stefan’s shin, right where the bear trap must have caught him, because he howled in pain, dropping the gun and bringing both hands to his legs.”
  • Another bad guy surprises Maddie by grabbing her and “the man pulled her back against him and squeezed her tight, his own gun suddenly pressed to her temple.” Later Maddie, “dropped to the icy ground and kicked at his legs, knocking him off balance. . .” She shoots at the trees causing limbs to break and fall on the man. “. . .When the ice-covered limb landed atop him, he didn’t move again.”
  • The climax takes place over several chapters in which punches are thrown, people are shot, and Maddie’s father has a knife held against his throat. In order to save a life, Maddie throws a knife at a man, and, “he looked from the knife in his own hand to the blade that was stuck hilt-deep in his chest, right where his heart would have been if he had one.” The man dies.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Freaking is used twice.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

The Unexpected Everything

Andie has her life carefully planned out, beginning with this summer. She is going to attend John Hopkins University’s prestigious young scholars program, giving her a one-way ticket to one of the best colleges in the country for pre-med. This all changes when a scandal rocks her world and she must deal with her father, ranking Congressman Alexander Walker, being home for the first time in five years.

Her summer plans quickly change as she finds out that her crucial benefactor removed his letter of recommendation from her young scholars application due to her father’s circumstance. Now she’s stuck walking dogs all summer, leaving a tragic gap in her transcript.

Much to her surprise, her summer takes a turn for the better and her life is irrevocably changed by the adventures that ensue. She finds herself having the best three months of her life as she spends time with her friends, grows closer to her formerly distant father, and meets Clark, a cute teenage author. Her unexpected summer leads her to discover her true self and what’s important in life.

The Unexpected Everything is a delightful read that makes audiences yearn for those warm summer days spent with friends. This book is satisfying like drinking lemonade on a porch on a hot July day. The characters are endearing and their little charms will draw readers into this cute, though slightly predictable tale. The Unexpected Everything is a romance novel in which the main characters discuss sex. The abundance of sexual content may not be appropriate for some readers. For readers ready for a steamy romance, this enjoyable book is well worth the read.

Sexual Content

  • Andie is perpetually in cycles of dating boys for three weeks. She develops a crush, dates them, and then sets them free. Her friends nickname her a “serial heartbreaker.” Her dates are “a formality before we got to the making out part at the end.”
  • Toby believes that she is cursed to never have a boyfriend and constantly begs her friends to be her “wingwomen.”
  • At a party, Andie sees two people, “standing in the shadows of the living room, talking close, only minutes away from starting to hook up.”
  • Andie makes out with the same guy, Topher, at parties when they are both available. They never go beyond making out because Andie continually says that she is not comfortable with that. “Sometimes making out with Topher was like quenching a thirst, and sometimes it made me thirstier.”
  • Andie describes the diner as a place where she’d “made out with guys in the darkness of the parking lot, guys who tasted like milkshakes and French fries. And it was where we’d all gathered the morning after Palmer slept with Tom for the first time.”
  • Palmer is upset that being a stage manager, “means watching your boyfriend macking on some random college freshman.”
  • Bri thinks Andie saying, “I’ve got dogs to walk” sounds “vaguely dirty.”
  • After getting asked out by Clark, Andie “found my eyes drifting down to his mouth. By the end of tonight, we might have kissed.”
  • When Clark and Andie hold hands for the first time, Clark’s hand, “sent a spark through me that I felt all the way in my toes.”
  • On her kissing philosophy, Andie says, “Normally, I kissed first. I liked to take matters into my own hands, squash that moment, and get right into the make-out session.”
  • Make-out scenes between Andie and Clark are described in vivid detail. “We lingered there, our lips brushing gently. And then he raised his hand and cupped it under my chin, drawing me closer toward him, and we started kissing for real.”
  • In the world of Clark’s novels, an elder says, “Believing that such a thing—just a kiss—has ever, for even a second, existed in this world.”
  • During a pool party, Palmer and Tom make out on the diving board.
  • Over the course of her relationship with Clark, Andie’s “formerly rigid boundaries—just kissing and nothing more—had gotten a little fuzzier… everything was just feeling so good and so right that I was having more and more trouble remembering why I’d decided that was all I could do… And as I started to care very little for anything that wasn’t the two of us, alone in the darkness, it fell to Clark to pick up the slack.”
  • Before a scavenger hunt, Clark, “pulled me [Andie] in close to him, dipping me into a Hollywood-style kiss.” He then takes her keys to try to have an advantage in the competition.
  • Clark and Andie’s relationship becomes very serious. When they decide to watch a movie, they wouldn’t actually watch it. “Even if there were a movie playing, it would simply be in the background, a pretense for fooling around.”
  • In one instance, Andie and Clark are passionately making out and it escalates. “He leaned down to kiss me, and I kissed him back, and then we were kiss-walking across the room, until we fell down onto the bed together, and then there was only his lips and his hands and our breath, falling into a rhythm until I couldn’t think about anything except him, and us, and now.” They don’t actually have sex in this scene or any scene in the book.
  • Clark and Andie block off a certain date on which they decide to have sex. There is much anticipation as each prepares in their own separate ways, but the night is called off when they get into a fight.
  • Andie walks in on her two friends, Wyatt and Bri, making out with each other. This was a dramatic revelation as Bri’s best friend, Toby, had a huge crush on Wyatt. This event is the stimulus for the destruction of their friend group as they know it. It is later revealed that Wyatt and Bri were “hooking up.”
  • When Andie reconnects with Topher after breaking up with Clark, she forgets her former policy and slips her hand under his shirt. Topher goes along with it, which makes her realize that she is in love with Clark.
  • In the final scene, Andie and Clark reunite in a bookshop. “Clark was picking me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and we kissed, and it was like I was blocking out the commotion all around us.”

Violence

  • When Wyatt greets Tom, he always hits him in the back. Tom always says that “it hurts.”
  • Andie’s parents met when her dad was a public defender and her mom was a police sketch artist. They bonded over the sketch of a murderer they nicknamed “Stabby Bob.”
  • In Clark’s books, the main character, Tamsin, dies “a terrible death in the highest tower.”
  • When on top of a roof, Bri kicks Toby’s legs in a petty argument. Palmer throws a Sprite bottle at them to stop their bickering and to keep them from falling off.
  • In a fictional story that Andie and Clark make up in a silly game, the main characters kill each other.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a party as a freshman, Andie was, “drinking a beer from a red Solo cup, like an idiot.”
  • Following the prom, Toby and Wyatt “tipsily made out.”
  • At parties, Andie brings a soda bottle and fills it with “anything but brandy.” “It was the only way I let myself drink at parties.”
  • At a party, “the kitchen counter was covered with bottles and mixers and a half-filled blender, and through the open doors to the patio, I could see a keg. The people who always headed to the edges of people’s yards to smoke were smoking.”
  • Palmer is described as being amazing at “manly stuff” and had been “the one who taught us how to tap a keg, pack a bowl, and play quarters, beirut, and beer pong.”
  • At a place called the Orchard, teenagers congregate to party and drink alcohol because it is on the border of two towns and neither side’s police force wants to interfere. The characters go here often and drink. It is described as having “someone selling overpriced keg beer or cans from a cooler that never seemed to get very cold.”
  • After Wyatt has had beer, he annoyingly plays acoustic guitar.
  • During an argument with her father, Andie “could feel the anger coursing through me like a drug.”

Language

  • At a party, the host was, “telling people that the party was over and to either help him clean up or get the hell out.”
  • Toby says, “This Dr. Rizzoli guy sounds like a dick.”
  • Andie thinks a dog is saying, “get the hell away from me and the girl with the leash.”
  • Profanity is used a few times throughout the book. This includes “goddamn,” “shit,” “damn,” and “heck.”
  • While watching play rehearsal, Andie asks Palmer, “What the hell was going on.”
  • “Oh God,” “Oh my god,” “god,” “thank god,” and “swear to god” are said frequently as curses.
  • Andie’s father asks her, “Where the hell have you been?”
  • In an excerpt from Clark’s book, “Tamsin cursed under her breath.”
  • When Andie talks about the seriousness of her relationship, Toby says, “I didn’t read anything about hell freezing over today.”
  • Andie calls Bri’s cat a “jerk” and Clark’s dog “stupid.”

Supernatural

  • A vocal warm-up that the actors in the play practice makes a reference to ghosts.
  • Clark writes fantasy novels that have magic spells, dragons, and curses.

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Morgan Filgas

 

Heat

Twelve-year-old Michael Arroya dreams of playing in the Little League World Series. His pitching arm has some serious heat, but so does his day-to-day life. Michael must pretend that everything is all right, even though his father has died, and his seventeen-year-old brother is trying to take care of their needs. Michael and his brother keep their father’s death a secret from almost everyone. But then a man from social services gets curious and begins asking questions. Fear fills Michael because he’s afraid if anyone finds out the truth he’ll be separated from his brother or sent back to Cuba.

To make matters worse, some of the coaches wonder how a twelve-year-old boy can throw with so much power. When the league demands a birth certificate, Michael becomes ineligible. With no birth certificate, no parent, and no way to prove his age, how will Michael be able to make his baseball dreams come true?

Heat is not just a book about baseball; it is a book about family, friendship, and never giving up on your dreams. The story integrates play-by-play baseball action, with the suspense of Michael’s home life and the secrets he is trying to keep. The relationships between Michael’s friend, Manny, and his brother, Carlos, add interest and heart to the story. Even though Michael’s father has died, his voice still rings through his sons’ memories. This allows the father to voice important life lessons to his sons even after his death.

The story deals with the difficult theme of losing a parent, maintaining secrets, and the struggles immigrant families face. Carlos struggles to become the man of the house and keep Michael focused on his dream. The characters’ conflict has just enough detail to add suspense to the story while staying kid-friendly. By watching the characters struggle, the reader will learn the importance of staying positive and never giving up. Heat is an easy-to-read story that will appeal to sports lovers. Because the story has a lot of play-by-play baseball action, this book will not appeal to those who do not enjoy sports.

Sexual Content
• None

Violence
• When a boy steals a purse from Mrs. Cora, she “hit the ground hard, rolled on her side, feeling dizzy. . .”
• Papi watched an argument and then, “he saw the man raise a hand to the woman, knock her down to the ground.” When Papi told the man to stop, the man, “took one swing before Papi put him down . . . The man got up, tried to charge Papi like a bull. But Papi put him down again.”
• A pitcher “went into his full wind-up and threw a fastball that hit Michael in the head.” The story implies the pitcher hit Michael on purpose.

Drugs and Alcohol
• None

Language
• One of the characters is referred to as “Justin the Jerk” throughout the story.
• When a pitcher throws a ball and hits Michael, someone says, “I can’t believe they didn’t throw that puss out of the game.”
• Michael’s friend calls him “jerkwad” and later a “jerkball.”

Supernatural
• None

Spiritual Content
• Michael’s Papi told him that, “You cannot teach somebody to have an arm like yours . . . It’s something you are born with, a gift from the gods, like a singer’s voice.”
• When Michael has a baseball in his hand, he doesn’t “have a list of questions he wants to ask God.”
• Michael’s Papi would say, “If you only ask God ‘why’? when bad things happen, how come you don’t ask him the same questions about all the good?”
• Michael’s brother reminds him that, “Papi said if we had all the answers we wouldn’t have anything to ask God later.”
• Michael tells his friend to stop talking because “the baseball gods you’re always telling me about? They’re hanging on every word right now.”
• On the wall of the Yankee Stadium clubhouse a sign read, “I want to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee. Joe DiMaggio.”

Perfect Scoundrels

Katarina Bishop grew up in a family of criminal masterminds. Her family knows how to stay under the radar. They know how to steal. And Katarina knows that her family has her back. Although Kat’s family welcomes Hale into their lives, Kat was never meant to enter Hale’s ultra-rich world. When Hale’s grandmother dies leaving her billion-dollar corporation to Hale, everything begins to change.

With the death of Hale’s grandmother, Hale’s family gathers around to fight for the family fortune. In Hale’s family, when money is on the line, all bets are off. Everyone wants a piece of the family dynasty. As Hale becomes more entangled in the family drama, Kat realizes that there is no place for her in Hale’s world. When Kat learns that someone might have tampered with his grandmother’s will, she comes up with an elaborate plan to learn the truth. But first, she has to decide if learning the truth is more important than keeping her boyfriend.

Through Katarina’s eyes, Perfect Scoundrels brings Hale’s extremely wealthy world to life. From the outside, Hale’s life seems to be full of freedom that only money can buy, but in reality glamourous, greedy people surround him. Right from the start, the reader will be pulled into Kat’s struggle, as she keeps secrets from Hale in order to help him. As Kat and her family rally around each other to find the truth, their ambitious plot brings intrigue, suspense, and surprises around every corner.

The third installment in the Heist Society series will not disappoint readers. However, this is not a stand-alone novel. Those who have read the first two books in the series will be invested in the lives of the characters, which makes the conclusion even more surprising and satisfying. In typical Ally Carter style, Perfect Scoundrels is appropriate and will be enjoyed by both junior high and high school readers.

Sexual Content

  • After an argument, Kat and Hale are alone, and “Hale’s breath was warm on Kat’s skin. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, and she wanted to kiss him, hold him, breathe him in . . . For a split second, he looked down at her, and she knew he was feeling that way too.” The moment is lost when Kat apologizes.
  • In order to hide, Kat and Hale go into a closet. While there, “Kat felt Hale’s mouth press against hers. His fingers wove into her hair, holding her close, gripping her tightly. It was the hungriest kiss she’d ever known, and Kat let herself get lost in it.” Hale then apologizes for kissing her.
  • Kat and Hale kiss several times, but the kisses are not described.

Violence

  • Hale’s family lawyer confronts Katarina, and he traps her against a wall. When he grabs her, Kat notices that “his breath was acrid and hot on her cheek. He brushed a finger down the side of her face until his hand rested on her throat. He squeezed gently at first. Then harder.” He then lets her go.
  • Kat and her Uncle Eddie meet up with the family lawyer to make a deal. When the deal goes wrong, Eddie ran at the lawyer and, “in a flash, Eddie was on the lawyer, the lawyer was spinning, striking the old man across the head with the metal briefcase. Blood rushed from Eddie’s mouth and he stumbled, disorient, too close to the edge. . .” Eddie falls over the barrier and a bystander says, “The man’s dead.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • While at a corporate event, Hale and another character “got into the liquor cabinet” and got drunk.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Uncommon Criminals

Katarina Bishop and her crew robbed the greatest museum in the world, which is why someone has asked her to steal the Cleopatra Emerald. Despite the curse of the Emerald, Katarina decides to take the job and return the jewel to its rightful owner. But when Kat and her crew go after the Cleopatra Emerald, they soon learn that the emerald is connected to their family in unexpected ways. Is there any con that can help Kat steal a treasure that has cursed all those who have tried before her?

The second installment of the Heist Society series has the same suspense and thrill as the first book. The characters’ personalities are described in more depth, which makes the book more enjoyable. Kat’s family secrets keep readers is suspense. The story’s intriguing, fast-paced plot ends with a satisfying conclusion. With plenty of plot twists, surprises, and a little bit of romance, Ally Carter’s Uncommon Criminals will delight readers of all ages.

Sexual Content

  • After a heist, Kat falls into Hale’s lap. “She didn’t think twice about the way her arms feel around his neck. When her lips found his, she didn’t pull back, she just pressed against him, sinking into the kiss and the moment until . . .” She then realizes that “Hale didn’t kiss me back.”
  • Kat kisses Hale. “She kissed him, quick and feather soft.” She tells him she kissed him “for luck.”

Violence

  • As a distraction, Nick and Hale argue over a girl. Hale hits Nick. Hale’s “fist was suddenly flying through the air. It struck Nick on the jaw, and sent the smaller boy spinning, the sound echoing in the empty hallway.” Security guards break up the fight.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Someone offers Kat a drink, and then changes her mind because Kat is a “child.”

Language

  • None

 Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Heist Society

Katarina Bishop knows how to steal. She knows how to lie. After all, at the age of three, her parents took her to the Louvre to case it. Katarina’s family—all of her family—is made up of masters at thievery. She had hoped to leave the family business. She had hoped to live a normal life. But when Kat’s friend, Hale, appears, Kat realizes that walking away from her old life and her family may not be possible.

Hale wants Kat to return to her life of crime, and he has a good reason. A powerful mobster’s priceless art collection has been stolen. The mobster is convinced that only one thief could have taken his priceless paintings—Katarina’s father. In order to help her father, Kat goes on a hunt to find the missing paintings. The job would be risky for even the most seasoned thief. Kat is determined to find the paintings. She has two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family’s history. And in the end, she hopes she can steal back the normal life she left behind.

Is there any way a fifteen-year-old girl can pull off this con?

For a story that revolves around a mobster and the threat of death, Heist Society tells a suspenseful story that will have readers engrossed in Kat’s story. The plot contains twists and turns that will have readers guessing what characters can be trusted. The interplay between the diverse characters makes the story interesting and enjoyable. By the end of the story, readers will wish they could join Kat’s family at the kitchen table and plan a heist of their own.

Similar to Carter’s Gallagher Girls series, Heist Society is appropriate for younger readers but will engage readers of all ages. Heist Society delves into the themes of family, loyalty, and good versus evil.  Fast-paced, easy to read, and just plain fun, Heist Society will allow readers to fall into the world of the super-rich and leave with lessons on artwork stolen during the Holocaust.

Sexual Content

  • Gabrielle’s beauty and short skirts are mentioned several times. When she goes into a museum, “there was something about her that simply demanded the guards’ attention. Some said later it was her short skirt. Others wisely observed that it was more likely the legs that protruded beneath it.”
  • As a distraction, Nick kisses Kat. “. . . She was in Nick’s arms and he was kissing her right there in the middle of the Henley’s hallway.”
  • When Kat dresses for an event, her cousins notice her boobs. Her cousin asks, “Seriously, Kat . . . when did you get boobs?” The conversation about her boobs takes place over two pages.

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of the characters pretends to be drunk to distract the museum guards.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Stealing Parker

Parker loves her family, her church, and her life. But all that changes when her mother divorces her father and leaves with her new lover—a woman. When Parker’s church and best friend turn their back on her, Parker sets out to prove that she likes boys. But when the boys’ assistant coach catches her eye, Parker’s life spirals out of control.

As Parker struggles with how to deal with her secret relationship, she is besieged with more problems. Parker’s father is in denial. Her brother is always high. And her best friend, Drew, is hiding the fact that he is gay.

Parker works through her insecurities and frustration through a prayer journal, which gives the reader insight into Parker’s emotional state. The reader will be able to understand Parker’s desire to be loved and how that leads her to kiss so many boys, although the illegal relationship between Parker and the boys’ baseball coach leads to frequent and steamy sex scenes and ends with an investigation.

 Finding Parker hits on difficult topics relevant in today’s world. Parker explores her faith in God and how that faith impacts those who are gay. The story also tackles the difficulties of high school friendships; most of Parker’s friends abandoned her after her mother came out, classmates that don’t even know her talk trash her, and even her best friend stops talking to her. Finding Parker brings realistic problems to light and shows the dangers of being promiscuous. In the end, Parker learns to love herself and accept her mother’s new lifestyle.

Although Parker is a well-developed and relatable character, her sexual relationship with the adult coach contains graphic sexual details. The story contains mature content, which some readers may want to avoid.

 Sexual Content

  • Parker’s mom “announced she’s a lesbian and ran off with her friend who was more than a friend.”
  • Parker has kissed many boys, trying to prove that she isn’t a lesbian like her mother. She lost weight so she wouldn’t look “butch.” “All the guys know I look good. They know I want them and I love kissing and sometimes rounding a couple of bases (I never go further than second).”
  • Parker thinks about when, after church she, “let him kiss me beside the turtle sandbox thing, so people will know I like boys.”
  • When Parker decides to manage the boy’s baseball team, the coach tells her not to date or “mess around” with team members. The coach said, “the girl who managed the team last year, uh, well, we had some incidents on the bus and in the locker room.”
  • Parker and her friend talk about her “one-night thing” with Matt Higgins. She thinks, “I didn’t enjoy kissing Matt Higgins very much. He kept trying to go up my shirt.”
  • A boy said, “Everyone knows she (Parker) puts out.” Parker gets upset and thinks, “I’m still a virgin.” She then thinks about how she can’t insert a tampon.
  • At last year’s prom, Parker’s date “kept trying to feel me up in the middle of the gym.”
  • Parker has a few minutes, “before we need to leave for church, so I unzip my dress. . . lie down on my bed, and slip my fingers under the elastic of my underwear, wondering what it would feel like if a guy touched me there.”
  • Parker thinks that Seth likes a girl but “he’s too embarrassed to get involved with her, considering the whole scandal with her dad, the district attorney, screwing his secretary and all.”
  • Parker has a crush on the baseball assistant coach. During class Parker lets out a moan when she, “picture(s) myself tangled up in his crumpled sheets, our legs knotted. The idea scares me a little because I’ve never gotten naked with anybody.”
  • While at practice, someone yells, “Corndog’s got a hard-on for Coach!”
  • When a group of boys try to get Corndog to tell them how far he’s gone with his girlfriend, Corndog said, “Hell, no. I can’t tell you. She’d rip my balls off.”
  • A boy tells a story about, “how he saw a hot pink dildo laying on the concrete behind the cafeteria . . . ”
  • Parker and Corndog write notes back and forth discussing someone’s penis size.
  • At a party, a girl “French kisses” a boy she doesn’t know.
  • Parker has a sexual relationship with the assistant coach, who is an adult. The first time they kiss, “He digs fingers into my hip. . . My mouth found his, and I wrap my arms around his neck. . . I deepen the kiss. His tongue explores the inside of my mouth. My knees go wobbly.”
  • Parker and the assistant coach begin making out in the parking lot of the laundromat, behind the dumpsters. The first time they meet there, they make out. “He tastes like mint toothpaste. My hands are on his neck and his are in my hair, and I can tell he’s experienced. . . He pushes me backward and climbs on top, his weight heavy, yet comforting.”
  • Parker gets a hall pass and goes to the assistant coach’s office. “Then his lips were on mine and he lifted me onto his desk. He pulled my hips to his and kissed me until I was so dizzy I could barely breathe. Brian began to grind against me and I was so drunk on him, I couldn’t think at all.” They stop because someone knocks on the door. Parker then thinks about a couple nights before when, Brian went up my shirt again and unsnapped my bra, and ran his hands over my bare breast. Him running his calloused fingers over my skin . . . I couldn’t stop trembling. . . His teeth sank into my shoulder.”
  • One night when Parker and Brain were making out, “he kissed my breast and felt me through my jeans. I wasn’t comfortable enough to touch him yet. But he took my fingers and put my hand there anyway.” They stopped when a “cop knocked on the truck window and told us to move along.”
  • Brian asks Parker to give him a blow job, but she doesn’t. Instead, he “pushes my panties aside, making me moan softly as he works a finger inside of me. . . Later I straddle him and he wraps his hands around my waist and we kiss and kiss. . .”
  • Brian and Parker park behind the dumpsters and, Parker “felt him too. He shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat while my fingers moved up and down. I could tell by the noises he made that he liked how I made him feel, but it was almost as if I could be anybody. It didn’t matter who I was, it was only that somebody was giving him pleasure.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a party, a boy gets drunk and falls in a ditch. “. . . He was so drunk he started screaming about how he’d broken his leg. And Marie Baird had to convince him that his leg was already broken.”
  • The assistance baseball coach takes Parker out to eat and orders a beer.
  • Parker’s brother, Ryan, has a drug problem. She makes him eggs to “hopefully clean out whatever he drank/ate/snorted/shot-up last night.”
  • Parker goes to a party where teens are drinking beer. Some play beer pong and someone “takes a shot directly out of a Smirnoff bottle and wipes his mouth, then does another shot.”
  • Parker finds her brother passed out with “an empty bottle of Robitussin in his fist.” Parker and her friend take him to the hospital.
  • Parker’s mom tells her she needs to get on birth control.
  • Parker’s best friend is gay but hasn’t told anyone. Parker attempts to get him and another guy together. Later, Parker finds out that her best friend likes the same boy she does.

Language

  • Profanity is used often and includes ass, bitch, dick, fucking, hell, pissed, and shit.
  • When Parker and her friend look at a book of Kama Sutra, the friend said, “Jesus Christ, is that move physically possible?”
  • God is used as an exclamation often.
  • Someone lectures Parker on “how I screw over his friends.”
  • After being mean to Parker, Corndog apologizes, “Last night I heard my mom crying, and I got upset. That’s why I was a dick today. I’m sorry.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • The story contains entries from Parker’s prayer journal beginning when she was little. In the first entry, she writes, “as I prayed, I didn’t ask you for anything. I only thanked you for giving me Mom.”
  • Parker blames God for ruining her family. She often asks, “Why did God let this happen to my family?”
  • When Parker’s mother came out as a lesbian, members of the church began ignoring the family. However, Parker’s dad makes her attend church. They have a conversation about if the Bible says, “thou shalt not become a lesbian?” Her father replies “no.”
  • When the pastor’s daughter spreads rumors that Parker is “a butch softball player who probably likes girls,” Parker wonders where God went.
  • Parker makes a list of “Reasons Why I’m the Worst Christian of All Time.” Her list includes, “I don’t see how a loving God would split a family up like he did mine.”
  • When Parker was little, the pastor accuses her of lying and, “gave me a lecture on how lying is a straight path to Hell.”
  • When Parker flirts with the assistant coach, she thinks, “When God created the Earth, he had such a sick wicked sense of humor. He made everything that’s wrong feel really, really good.”
  • Parker’s dad breaks up with his girlfriend because his church friends tell him to. Parker prays, “Please help my family. Hasn’t our church taken enough from us?”
  • Parker and her mom have a conversation about God and church. Parker’s mom said, “God still loves me and he loves you too . . . All that matters is your personal relationship with God.”  Parker’s mom tells her that she doesn’t need to go to church because “I can talk to God while I’m walking the dog or running in the woods just the same as if I’m at church.”

 

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