Reading Level: Young Adult

Mosquitoland

After the sudden and unexpected divorce of her parents, Mim Malone is dragged from her Ohio home. Mim’s happy life collapses when she’s forced to live with her father and his new wife in “Mosquitoland,” otherwise known as the middle of Mississippi.  

When Mim overhears a conversation, she finds out her mother is sick, and something in Mim snaps. Mim runs home, packs a bag, steals her stepmother’s stash of money, and boards the next Greyhound bus out of town, starting her almost thousand-mile journey from Jackson, Mississippi to Cleveland, Ohio. 

On her bus is a cast of quirky characters—some annoying, some creepy, and some, like her seatmate Arlene, kind. When the Greyhound bus tips over in the middle of a rainstorm, what would have been a straightforward trip, spirals into an interesting journey into the unexpected. On this new journey, Mim finds unexpected friends in Beck, a college student on a trip to find his old foster sister, and Walter, a boy Mim’s age with down syndrome, who is homeless. With the help of these new friends, Mim begins to realize she is not alone in this world, and that while she is struggling with events in her life, she does not have to struggle alone. 

While the trip started as a plan to see her mother, Mim’s trip morphs into a journey of self-discovery and acceptance. Mim is a strong-minded and independent, but also an imperfect person. She describes herself as a “collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons.” Mim explains “my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.” Readers will relate to Mim because she does not strive to be perfect. Instead, she recognizes her quirks and problems, and, as a teenager, she knows she still has much to learn. 

Throughout Mosquitoland, Mim explains that she is “not okay.” She struggles with an unspecified mental illness, and her world seems to be falling apart because her family fractured when her parents divorced. At first, Mim is attempting to go home, back to the life she had with her mother in Ohio, but throughout the trip, she realizes “home is hard.” She learns that she will never have her old life back – a life she somewhat idolizes – and that leaving her old life behind is for the better. Mim realizes that home is not a “place or a time,” maybe “home is the heart . . . an organ, pumping life into my life.”   

Mosquitoland is beautifully written, with witty dialogue and memorable characters. The story is written from Mim’s point of view, who has a very unique narrative voice. Readers get insight into her perspective of the world and her hilarious internal dialogue on various topics, including baseball games, shop signs, and teenage girls. Moreover, her point of view is interspersed with letters to her unborn sister, explaining why she decided to leave Mississippi and documenting her feelings about the trip. 

Mosquitoland explores the heavy subject matter of mental illness and sexual assault. Mim explains that throughout her life, she has often questioned her sanity and her father has often thought there is something wrong with her. Mim goes to psychiatrists and therapy and is prescribed medication, but often questions if this medication is necessary. Mim’s family has a history of mental illness. Mim’s aunt committed suicide and her mother is currently hospitalized for depression. This book also discusses sexual assault, as an older man forces himself on Mim and kisses her. This experience traumatizes Mim and she often has flashbacks to this moment. Plus, she becomes anxious around men who remind her of the man who assaulted her. Furthermore, she feels incredibly guilty for not speaking up about this man’s actions before he assaults another girl. Mim shows the readers her vulnerability in these moments, the tough persona she presents to the world is broken down, and readers see Mim as someone who is just trying to figure life out and survive.  

Overall, Mosquitoland is a funny and entertaining book, with memorable, relatable characters. While it does touch on some difficult topics, this is balanced with a lighthearted tone and humorous plot. Beyond being a coming-of-age story about Mim coming to terms with her life and finding herself, it is also a story about the power of friendship. 

Sexual Content  

  • When Mim was younger she liked her friend’s older brother. Mim explains that she “was sexually attracted to Steve insomuch as I was an indiscriminate preadolescent girl.” When she was a year older, she still liked him. As he drove Mim home one night she explains, “new images sprang to mind: less boxing-ring-chest-pounding, more bedroom-floor-topless-romping.” 
  • Mim imagines what high school girls should be talking about. She thinks it’s “argu[ing] over who gives the most efficient blow job.” 
  • After a long, deep conversation, Mim and Beck, the older boy she has a massive crush on, fall asleep with “Beck hold[ing] Mim . . . on the floor well into the night.” Mim explains, “[w]e don’t talk. We don’t need to. Sleep is close, and I’m okay with that . . . At some point, he carries me to bed and lies down next me. . . He wraps an arm around me, and I swear we were once a single unit.” As Beck rolls over in the bed, “he rolls sideways, toward me, his face hovering over me. We stare at each other for a second, silent, unmoving . . .And I sense the move before it comes. Beck leans in, slowly, and kisses my forehead. It isn’t brief, but it’s gentle, and full of sadness and gladness and everything in between.” Mim wonders “how it would smell-taste-feel to have his lips pressed against my own, to feel his weight on top of me.” The two never go past the kiss as Beck reminds Mim, “I’m too old for you.” 

Violence  

  • In the beginning of her journey, the Greyhound tips over. Mim observes, “it’s a simmering stew of glass and blood and sewage and luggage, a cinematic devastation . . . Some people are moving, some are moaning, and some aren’t doing either. Carl is bleeding in about six places, administering CPR to one of the Japanese guys. I see Poncho Man help Amazon Blonde to her feet, right where I’d been sitting. I stand and stare for i-don’t-know-how-long, until an ax crashes through the left wall—formerly the roof of the bus. Firefighters crawl through the wreckage like ants, pulling limp bodies around their shoulders, administering first aid. Two EMTs . . . approach the limp body of a woman. The redhead leans over, puts his ear to the woman’s chest. Straightening, he looks at his partner, shakes his head.” Mim realizes the woman is dead and she is Arlene, Mim’s seat mate, who she has bonded with during the trip. In the accident, Mim received “just a cut.” 
  • Mim accidently becomes locked in the bathroom with a man she has nicknamed “Poncho Man.” He comes on to her, getting closer to her. When she pulls away, he grips her aggressively and tries to kiss her. “His lips are cold against mine,” Mim explains. In order to get away from him, Mim forces herself to throw up, launching “a vomit for the ages directly into Poncho Man’s mouth.” 
  • When she was younger, a bully calls a friend of Mim a “retard.” Mim punched the bully “breaking his nose and earning a one-day suspension.” 
  • Caleb, a suspicious young man she meets in the woods, tells Mim his dad “used the beat the hell outta [him] with household appliances . . . [and] for no good reason, too. [His dad] wasn’t a drunk . . . He was just fine at it sober. But one day, I was all growed-up, see. So you know what I did? Pulled the fire extinguisher out of his garage and beat the shit out of him.” 
  • When Mim figures out Caleb is planning to steal from Walter, she and Walter run back into town. Caleb chases them on to the roof of a gas station, where he pulls “a sizeable hunting knife” on them. Eventually, the owner of the gas station, Ahab, who just happens to know karate, comes up to the roof and begins to fight Caleb. “A blurred figure plummets on top of him, knocking him to the ground. Within seconds, Caleb is back on his feet, wielding the hunting knife at this new adversary . . .The fight doesn’t last more than a minute. In a roundhouse kick that would have made Jet Li proud . . . [Ahab] sends Caleb’s hunting knife sailing over the edge of the roof. With him disarmed, it’s hardly a fight at all. A couple of hook-kick combos and graceful strikes to the chest, arms, and head, and Ahab has a whimpering Caleb trapped in a half nelson on the gravel.” Ahab keeps Caleb in his “clenches” until the police arrive.  
  • When Caleb begins to insult Ahab, “without thinking twice, Ahab lifts Caleb up by his hoodie, and punches him once, twice, three times in the face. Blood splatters across the gravel roof, as well as a single tooth.”  
  • Beck reveals that he saw a young girl exit a bathroom, eyes “puffy and red from crying.” Afterwards, Beck sees a man exiting the same bathroom, and Beck realizes what this man had done to the young girl. Beck “punched him. Twice. In front of a cop.” The man is arrested because the “little girl spoke up.” Mim realizes that predator responsible was Poncho Man, the same man who assaulted her.  
  • Beck recalls that he had a foster sister whose father had just been released from prison. Unfortunately, a few weeks later her dad was “stabbed to death in a drug deal.” Beck’s foster sister “shut herself in the upstairs bathroom. We could hear her sobbing all through the house,” Beck explains. “I kicked down the door, found her in the tub. She’d slit her wrists.” 
  • When Mim is six her aunt “hung herself in our basement. . .I found her hanging there, her feet dangling inches from the floor – inches from life.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • Mim is prescribed “aripapilazone” or “abilitol.” Mim takes these pills a few times. Although it is prescribed by a psychiatrist for her mental health issues, she is unhappy taking this medication and stops.  
  • When she was young, Mim and her mom used to go to a block party every Labor Day. She remembers “beer buckets” and her mom drinking beer.  
  • As he talks to Mim, the Greyhound bus driver “lights a cigarette [and] takes a drag.”  
  • When Mim stops at a gas station, the “young girl behind the counter blows a giant bubble with her gum and offers [her] free cigarettes.” 
  • When Mim meets Caleb, he “pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, sticks one in his mouth . . . and lights up.” 
  • In memories from her childhood, Mim remembers her mother and father “drinking beer” in various instances.  
  • When Mim was nine years old, she discovered that her father smoked, and he allowed her to try one. Mim “pulled out a cigarette, surprised by how light it felt in my fingers. Dad lit the end, then told me to breathe in deep. I followed his instructions and inhaled deeply, deciding Dad was way cooler than I’d given him credit for. This was immediately followed by my hacking my lungs out, then throwing up on my mother’s favorite Venetian blinds. I couldn’t taste anything for a week. It was my first and last cigarette.” 
  • When Mim is forced to move to Mississippi she really wants to take her mother’s couch. She tells her father, “I would literally jump off the roof while simultaneously swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills,” before leaving the couch behind.  

Language    

  • Profanity is used occasionally. The profanity includes shit, fuck, bitch, jackass, dick, bastard. 
  • When she was younger, Mim witnessed a bully call a friend a “retard.” When she asks her mom what that word means, her mom explains “retard is a mean word used by mean people.”  
  • Beyond the use of regular profanity, this book also uses words that are profane-esque, including “effing” or “muthafuckas.” 

Supernatural  

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • Beck asks Mim if she “believe[s] in God.” Mim tells a story, explaining when she was “maybe four years old,” she was with her mom running errands. Mim saw a man with “a really deformed face . . . so with the tact of a four year old, [Mim] pointed right at his cheek and asked what happened. He smiled even bigger and said God made him that way.” Mim continues “the prospect of there being a God scares me. Almost as much as the prospect of there not being one.”  
  • Beck says he definitely believes in God. He says, “My heart must continue beating in order to pump a red liquid called blood through tiny tubes called veins throughout this unit called a body. All my organs, in communication with my heart, must work properly for this carbon-based life-form called Beckett Van Buren to exist on this tiny spinning sphere called Earth. So many little things have to be just so, it’s a wonder we don’t just fall down dead.”  
  • When visiting her mother, Mim “ponder[s] the peculiarities of an angry Almighty.” She explains, “[a]nd now I know. I see it in the medicated drool dripping from the face of my once youthful mother. I see it in the slew of trained specialists assigned to her keeping. I see it in the Southwestern motif, from floor to ceiling of this nightmare called Sunrise Rehab, and I know what makes God when He’s angry: a person with the capacity for emptiness . . . a drained emptiness. A person who was once full. A person who lived and dreamed, and above all, a person who cared for something – for someone. And within that person, he places the possibility of poof – gone – done – to be replaced by a Great Empty Nothingness.” 

Thanks for the Trouble

Parker Sante has not said a single word in 12 years; not since he witnessed his father die in a fatal car accident. Instead, he writes out his thoughts in a journal and watches other people interact; studying their movements and actions until it is the perfect moment to steal something that others would never know is gone. That’s exactly what he is doing when he locks eyes with Zelda. The striking, silver-haired vixen who seems to entrap him with just one look. Suddenly, not only does he want to steal from her, but he wants to get to know her. To talk to her.  

However, Parker quickly realizes that Zelda isn’t everything he thought she would be. She’s a dream, but one that may be coming to an end very soon. When Zelda receives a mysterious phone call, she makes it clear she plans to end her life. While she won’t tell him the details, Parker knows he must change her mind. So, the pair spend the next few days doing everything that Parker hopes will make Zelda fall in love with life again. It includes one wild night at a Halloween party (a scene that is very unlike Parker), becoming the middleman in a very public breakup at the movies, and even letting Zelda convince him to apply for college. However, as time passes, Parker falls more in love with Zelda and is increasingly frustrated because he knows nothing about her.  

Zelda remains an enigma to Parker until he demands she tell him who she is and why she is going to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. But the story that Zelda begins to tell Parker is one he never saw coming. Instead, it is filled with unbelievable lies that Zelda insists are her reality; a reality that causes her to remain young forever. But Parker isn’t buying it. People didn’t just stop aging and live forever…or did they?  

As Parker races against time, trying to change Zelda’s mind, he realizes that maybe she isn’t the only one who needs saving. After all, Parker was living his life at half volume until Zelda came along, and now that she’s here, he doesn’t want to let his life slip away again. He just may have to figure out how to live life to the fullest on his own. 

The odd, yet endearing friendship between Zelda and Parker adds a vibrancy to the novel that immediately draws in the reader. Considering all the challenges Parker faces, witnessing his social progression throughout the story will leave the reader with a sense of pride. For example, by the end of the novel Parker begins to make real friends at school and starts to form the connections that he always wanted but never had. While Zelda shows some signs of vulnerability, an air of mysteriousness remains around her. There are moments where even the reader will question if what Zelda is saying is true or just another made-up story to help her conceal her identity. Because of this, the reader may find themselves frustrated by Zelda’s consistent games, but they will simultaneously be entranced by her.  

While Thanks for the Trouble contains a great plot line and immense character development, there is a heavy presence of suicidal thoughts. Multiple times, Zelda mentions that she intends to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, and she eventually carries through with the action. While Zelda discloses to Parker that she cannot age and that is why she intends to commit suicide, the reader is still left with a feeling of uncertainty around that reasoning. Therefore, it never feels like we get a complete reason as to why Zelda wants to commit suicide, which makes the novel heartbreaking. While Parker consistently attempts to get Zelda to rethink her decision to commit suicide, that is the only form of suicide prevention that is present within the novel. The novel does not discourage suicide, and it does not discuss methods of intervention.  

Aside from the heavy topic of suicide, the plot will keep readers on their toes and the mystery never lets up. Readers never know what will happen next, which makes Thanks for the Trouble a must-read. The story is heartbreaking and honest in a way that many novels for young adult readers are not. The novel plays on the impulsiveness of teenage feelings when it comes to love and relationships, creating a sense of understanding between the reader and the characters. Parker’s devotion to Zelda reminds the reader that love is the greatest kindness you can show someone. Once more, Zelda’s journey through the novel and her eventual death brings light to the idea that life is fragile in every form, and that we may never know how much time is left. All in all, the novel makes resounding commentary on how love, life, and death are the three sole things that can never be stopped, even if we wish they could be.    

Sexual Content  

  • Zelda guesses what Parker does in his free time. “Seventeen? What a horrible age. I bet you spend most of your free time playing computer games and watching pornography on the Internet.”  
  • Parker recalls his first kiss when he was in seventh grade. He was playing spin the bottle with a friend and “the bottle had landed on her first, then on me, then blam! I was kissed. Kisses are weird that way. They’re supposed to be performed by two people simultaneously, but they don’t have to be. We even have a term for it- a stolen kiss– which is really just a euphemism for full-on-oral assault. I can remember looking up from the open mouth of the bottle only to find another open mouth rushing at me. A crush of lip and tongue and saliva and the chorus of yowls from the onlookers.” 
  • Someone tells Zelda what a cougar is. “A cougar’s an older woman who gets it on with young men.”  
  • Zelda lies about Parker and her being lovers. A boy at the Halloween party “asked me if you were my community service project. I told him we’d been lovers for months. That you’d made me feel things I’d never felt before.”  
  • Zelda and Parker kiss at a Halloween Party. “I turned to smile at Zelda and she kissed me, right on the mouth this time, and I kissed her back.”  
  • As Parker walks around a museum with Zelda, he says, “Usually, the only thing that keeps me awake is all the nudity. Though not nearly as common as bowls of fruit, naked ladies tend to feature very prominently in your average museum.”  
  • Parker and Zelda passionately kiss in the Shakespeare Garden. “I moved across the dark distance between us and put my arms around her waist, pulling her into a kiss. I felt the cluck of her phone dropping to the grass. A moment later we were on the ground too. She rolled on top of me, pinning my arms behind my head, pushing against me in a way that made me forget every single problem I ever had or probably ever would have.”  
  • Parker’s mother gives him sex advice. His mom says, ” Try to do it mostly with people you love. Use protection. Don’t be an asshole.”  
  • Parker and Zelda have sex. “We finished undressing each other and got into bed. The house was just cold enough that it felt really good under the covers, skin to skin. And then we were kissing, and then it was happening, and I’ll leave the gory details to your imagination if that’s okay by you.”  

Violence  

  • Parker steals from a woman’s purse at the hotel. “I glanced around the room, and when I was sure no one was looking, I reached over and undid the clasp of the silver-haired girl’s little blue handbag. I pushed through a cloud of Kleenex and deep-sea dove into the mysterious mire of femininity until my fingers found the wad.”  
  • Parker describes his version of the sleeping beauty storyline. “He’s actually a douche-bag king—one who already has a queen by the way—and he rapes her. She wakes up pregnant, so the king’s wife tries to kill her, bake her into a pie, and feed her to the king. The happy ending? The king decides to have his wife burned to death so he can raise a family with Sleeping Beauty.”  
  • Parker writes a fairytale and describes one of the characters abusing his wife. “As a punishment, he beat his wife around the belly with a bent piece of barrel wood.”  
  • Zelda tells Parker about her plans of committing suicide. “I am waiting for a phone call. And when it comes, I’m going to give this money to the first needy person I see. Then I’ll take the trolley to the Golden Gate Bridge and jump off of it.”  
  • Parker describes the car accident that killed his father. His father caught the back bumper of another car when he was switching lanes and “we were flipped over in the middle of the highway and my dad was dripping onto the fucking roof, you know.”  
  • Parker recounts a character in one of his stories being hit by his mother. “His mother slapped him upside the head again. Go back to bed child!”  
  • Parker tells Zelda about how he got charged with assault in eighth grade from pushing his bully. “I pushed him back one time, and I wasn’t paying…this one car was driving way too close to the sidewalk, and so yeah, he ended up getting hit. Trevor’s parents pressed charges, and maybe because he was white and I wasn’t, I got this minor version of assault put on my record.”  
  • When Zelda finds out Parker declined the phone call she had been waiting for, Zelda slaps Parker. “Finally, I grabbed her shoulder, and she spun and delivered a stinging slap right to my bruised cheek. I was blind with pain for a few seconds, and by the time I recovered, she was gone.”  
  • Parker finds Zelda about to jump off the bridge. “Now, you might think it doesn’t really matter one way or the other—if a person wants to kill herself, she’ll just find some other way to do it, right? Wrong. It turns out that most people make these decisions pretty lightly, on the spur of the moment when the thought occurs, they often don’t do it at all.”  
  • Parker describes how Zelda looks before she jumps off the bridge. “Imperfect sadness maybe, which was another way of saying there was a little splinter of happiness in there too. I’d given her that at least. And then she jumped.”  

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • Zelda pours rum into her drink. “She took a small leather flask out of her purse and poured some of it into her soda.”  
  • Parker goes to see his mom and she is drinking. “The eviscerated remains of a TV dinner were still in my mom’s lap, and she was holding a mostly empty glass of red wine.”  
  • Parker gets home and notices his mom is drunk. “My mom was clearly a little bit tipsy. . . ”  
  • Parker describes his idea of high school parties. According to Parker, high school parties are “a bunch of people getting together to be drunk, loud assholes, with a special emphasis on the loud. And another emphasis on the drunk. And a third emphasis on assholes, while we’re at it.”  
  • After being left alone at the party, Parker gets drunk. “I’ve never seen the appeal in getting hammered every time there’s alcohol on offer. But here I was at a party made up entirely of people I either didn’t know or didn’t like, so what else was I supposed to do?”  
  • Parker sees others at the party drinking. “Jamie Schmid, the host of the party, came running from the other end of the yard, a bottle of Budweiser gripped tightly in each fist.”  
  • Parker describes his mother’s bedside table. “Her drugs were on the bedside table – Prozac and Tylenol PM – alongside an empty bottle of wine.” 
  • Zelda confronts Parker’s mother about her alcohol use. Zelda says, “But you cannot expect your son to stand here and be lectured about self-control by an alcoholic.” 

Language    

  • Explicit language such as fuck, shit, and ass are used frequently. 
  • Parker says others describe him as “a thug.”  
  • A friend of Parker’s argues with him over who should go first in chess. “You’re Latino is what you are, son. And that whole white-goes-first bullshit is straight-up racist.”  

Supernatural  

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • Parker describes some of the artwork in the museum: “All those haloed saints and weeping Marys and bleeding Jeses (that’s the plural of Jesus, right?) and yawn-inducing landscapes and dead chickens.” 
  • Parker, Zelda, and his new friends discuss God. The friend said, “God and science are not incompatible. And Zelda just said herself. Nothing adds up unless you consider God.”  
  • Parker expresses his thoughts on the Bible. “That’s the problem with the Bible—or one of them, anyway—it doesn’t just tell you what to do, it tells you what to want. That’s too much to ask, IMHO.”  

Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane

Several months have passed since Gregor’s first trip to the Underland. Just as his life is returning to normal, his baby sister Boots is kidnapped by the cockroaches, and Gregor is forced to journey back to the subterranean city of Regalia. Once there, Gregor reunites with the rebellious Luxa and his bat Ares whom Gregor has pledged his loyalty and protection. Gregor soon discovers that the Underlanders have kidnapped Boots because of The Prophecy of Bane. This ancient prophecy implies that if Boots were to be killed, the rats would have the key to power. 

The Underlanders believe that Gregor is the prophesied Warrior who must kill an evil rat cloaked in a coat of white: the Bane, an enormous, snow-white 10-foot rat that threatens to destroy Regalia and subject all of the Underland to his rule. The Prophecy of Bane mysteriously says that the Warrior will be fatally weakened if: “Die the baby die his heart, die his most essential part. Die the peace that rules the hour. Gnawers [another term for rats] have their key to power.” Believing that Boots is the baby spoken of in the prophecy, the rats kidnap her.  

In order to save his sister, Gregor and his companions must embark upon a long and dangerous voyage, sailing into the heart of rat territory.  Gregor is determined to destroy the Bane before the rats can kill Boots. Gregor must learn to fight for those he loves while encountering dangers, close calls, and surprises along the journey. He must also discover what it means to be a warrior. 

Those who read Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane will enjoy its simple yet engaging plot, its pulse-pounding action, and its variety of characters and settings. The character and mythos of the Underland are deepened in this worthy sequel. New and dangerous creatures are introduced, the uncharted, watery depths of the Underland are explored, and at the end of this long voyage lies a mysterious and powerful foe: the Bane. 

Once readers enter the world of the Underland, the quick-moving plot and the dynamic characters will sweep middle school readers up, keeping their minds and imaginations engaged for the entirety of the book. To keep the suspense high, each new chapter introduces a new danger, an exciting development, and an intriguing complication to the plot. The action, often violent and bloody, is kicked up a notch from the first book. However, like the first book in the series, it is often the creatures and not the humans that suffer wounds and death in battle. Despite this, sensitive readers may be upset by the vivid battle descriptions. 

Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane is rife with themes of familial love and sacrifice, compassion, friendship, and duty. Gregor will stop at nothing to protect his friends and family. However, Gregor is faced with many difficult situations and moral dilemmas, all of which develop his character. Gregor discovers that he possesses incredible powers as a fighter. In fact, whenever he is near or in the midst of battle, Gregor’s mind enters into “rager mode;” a “rager” is a gifted warrior who possesses fighting abilities that approach the supernatural. Throughout the book, Gregor must learn to harness and control these abilities, lest they control him. The danger of letting his violent, rager instincts overpower his kind nature forces Gregor to consider the nature of violence and how it should be used only to protect and defend. 

Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane provides a story that is an incredibly entertaining blend of mystery, travel, and adventure. Every chapter ends on a cliff-hanger, providing ample reason for even the most reluctant of readers to devour it quickly. Furthermore, the ending perfectly sets up the sequel, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods. Readers will not be able to help themselves, they’ll have to immediately reach for the next installment. 

 Sexual Content 

  • None 

Violence 

  • The Underlanders practice their swordplay by having a contraption that throws small, golfball-sized balls at them in rapid succession. The Underlanders’ goal is to slice as many balls as possible. These balls are filled with red liquid that mimics blood. Gregor first goes into “rager mode” when training with the blood balls. “He was aware only of the blood balls flying toward him from all directions . . .  He could hear his blade making a whistling sound. Something splattered against his face. . . He could feel liquid dripping off his face and hands. The pounding of his heart was audible. He looked down at the ground. At his feet lay the oozing shells of fifteen balls.” 
  • The verbiage of the Prophecy of Bane itself is somewhat violent. For example, “If Under fell, if Over leaped,/ If death was life and Death life reaped,/ Something rises from the gloom,/ To make the Underland a tomb./ Hear it scratching down below,/ Rat of long forgotten snow,/ Evil cloaked in coat of White,/ Will the Warrior drain your light?/ What could turn the Warrior weak?/ What do burning Gnawers seek?/ Just a barely speaking pup / That holds the Land of Under up/ Die the baby, die his heart/ Die his most essential part/ Die the peace that rules the hour,/ Gnawers have their key to power.” 
  • Twitchtip, a rat that aids the humans in their mission, threatens a giant talking firefly, saying “. . . if you don’t stop your incessant babble, that big rat sitting in the boat next to you [referring to herself] will rip your head off.” 
  • While discussing effective ways to kill rats, Ares the bat says, “The neck is vulnerable. The heart, but one must get past the ribs. Through the eyes to the brain. Under the foreleg is a vein that bleeds greatly. If you strike at the belly, you may not kill instantly, but the rat will likely die within days from infection.” 
  • As the group is sailing, they are attacked by a giant squid. Gregor is grabbed by “a slimy red tentacle,” and nearly pulled overboard. However, Ares manages to grab him, and “a tug-of-war ensued, with Gregor as the rope.”  
  • As the battle against the squid continues, Gregor “sank his teeth into the tentacle as deeply as he could” and “slice[d] through a tentacle that had encircled his ankle.” Trying to free Gregor, the humans and bats slice and claw at the tentacles. Gregor enters again into rager mode and, “His sword began to move—not in a premeditative way, but with some instinctive precision and force utterly beyond his control. He hacked away at tentacle after tentacle.”  
  • After the battle, “Four angry red circles, sucker marks, swelled on his forearm” where Gregor was initially grabbed. These sucker marks “begin to ooze pus.” The scene is described over three pages. 
  • Gregor’s tentacle wound worsens. “The whole forearm was badly swollen. The sucker wounds, which had turned a revolting shade of purple, oozed fluorescent green pus. They burned as if they were on fire.” 
  • As Pandora, a bat, flies over a volcanic island, a large cloud of flesh-eating mites emerges from the jungle. “[Pandora] had no time to react. One moment she was darting around eating mites, the next moment they were eating her. In less than ten seconds they had stripped the writhing bat down to the bone. Her white skeleton hung for an instant in the air, then crashed into the jungle below.” Ares barely escapes these flesh-eating mites and is bitten on his tail several times while fleeing. 
  • The group is attacked by large, dinosaur-like serpents. As the monsters attack, large waves wash the rats “into the serpents’ mouths.” Various members of the quest are injured. “One of Mareth’s pant legs was soaked in blood. In front of him, Gregor saw the shuttering heap of wet fur that was Twitchtip. Blood poured from her nose, which appeared to have been smashed in, and oozed from the stump that had been her tail.” 
  • When a serpent tries to eat Twitchtip, Gregor stabs the serpent’s tongue. As a fellow quester is attempting to dress Mareth’s wound, he rips “off the remains of Mareth’s blood-soaked pant leg, revealing jagged flesh around a gaping wound.” 
  • Two rats, Snare and Goldshard, fight each other to the death. “The fighting was vicious . . . Snare lost an eye. Goldshard’s ear dangled from a shred of fur. You could see the bone in Snare’s shoulder. Goldshard’s left front paw was snapped in two. Finally, the gold rat came in on her opponent’s blind side and locked her fangs on his neck. In the final throes of death, Snare got his hind feet between their bodies and slashed open the length of Goldshard’s belly . . . Her intestines spilled out on the ground . . . With a terrible gurgling sound, Snare suffocated in his own blood.” 
  • After returning from their journey, the Regalian crowds that have gathered are outraged to learn that Gregor has not killed the Bane. They begin throwing objects at him and Ares. “Something hit [Gregor] on the side of his head. His hand went up and came away bloody . . . More objects began to rain around him . . . The one thing they had in common was that they were all made of stone . . . he and Ares were being stoned to death.”  
  • Because of his failure to slay the Bane, Gregor and the other Underlanders stand trial for treason. Ares informs Gregor that if convicted, “They will bind my wings and your hands and drop us off a very high cliff to the rocks below.”  

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • None 

Language 

  • In response to the taunting of Ripred (a rat), Gregor says, “Just shut up, okay?” 
  • After the mission’s failure, Ripred offers Gregor a warning saying, “And you know, there will be hell to pay in Regalia.” 

Supernatural 

  • Nerissa, a member of Regalia’s royal family, is a soothsayer, and interprets the Prophecy of Bane. 

Spiritual Content 

  • None 

Cemetery Boys

Sixteen-year-old Yadriel’s family doesn’t accept his true gender. Despite this, he’s determined to prove to his family that he is a real brujo. Yardriel embarks on a mission to help a spirit cross over to the land of the dead. However, instead of summoning his cousin, Yadriel summons the ghost of his school’s bad boy, Julian Diaz.

Julian agrees to let Yadriel release his spirit, but only after Julian does a few things first. During their time together, the pair grow closer and begin to develop feelings for each other. However, Yadriel, Julian, and his friend, Maritza, slowly begin to realize that Julian’s death might be linked with a series of disappearances across East LA. What could be causing them? Will Yadriel’s family ever fully accept him? And will Yadriel be able to set Julian’s spirit free to the afterlife?

Cemetery Boys is an excellent introduction to the genre of magical realism mixed with a sweet and genuine, if somewhat saccharine, YA love story. The fantastical elements of brujo magic remain consistent throughout the story and helps the reader clearly understand what can be accomplished by magic, but the realistic elements are where Thomas’s writing truly shines. They convey a down-to-earth story of a young man seeking acceptance from his traditional family. In addition, the author interweaves several problems that Latinx teenagers face in East LA.

Julian discusses how his friend, Luca, was sucked into a gang. Julian and his friends “didn’t see [Luca] for weeks and his parents didn’t care . . . By the time we tracked him down, he was living in a drug den and had gotten branded with tattoos.” Julian also talks about how his friend’s parents were deported. His friend was “the only one who’s got parents that actually like him . . . But they got deported . . . They sacrificed everything to get to the US and make sure Omar had a better life than them.” In addition, Julian is incredibly open about his rough relationship with his brother, Rio.

Thomas excellently disperses the more upsetting material among scenes of Yadriel and Julian growing closer. The pair go on an Odyssey of cute moments and teenage shenanigans, which makes them and their relationship both believable and sweet. Because of their relationships, Yadriel gains confidence and learns the importance of accepting himself.

Yadriel and his friends—Julian, and Maritza—are strong role models for teenagers because they do what they believe is right, even if it is not easy or socially acceptable. For example, Yadriel goes against his family’s wishes by investigating the death of his cousin. Maritza sticks to her values as a vegan even though she cannot use her magic abilities effectively, since her healing abilities depend on her using animal blood. Plus, Julian chooses to stay in the land of the living in order to help Yadriel prove himself as a brujo.

Cemetery Boys is deeply rooted within Latin American culture, especially through its supernatural elements. Latin American folktales are also sprinkled throughout the story. Additionally, a lot of Spanish is spoken within the book, especially when Yadriel performs magic. While this novel can be easily enjoyed without being bilingual, having some knowledge of both Latin American culture and the Spanish language enhances the reading experience.

Thomas successfully creates a story within the genre of magical realism that is both heart-wrenching and heartwarming. If your child is interested in urban fantasy or wants to read a book featuring diverse LGBTQ+ characters, Cemetery Boys is an excellent choice.

Sexual Content

  • Yadriel kisses Julian. “Yadriel threw himself against Julian and wrapped his arms around his neck kissing him fervently. He felt Julian’s smile under his lips . . . Someone let out a low whistle.”

Violence

  • Animal blood is used in several of the brujo rituals. For example, when Yadriel performs a ritual to summon Lady Death, “The black Hydro Flask full of chicken blood thumped against Yadriel’s hip . . . the rest of his supplies for the ceremony were tucked away inside his backpack.”
  • Yadriel cuts himself to offer his blood to Lady Death in order to summon her. “Yadriel opened his mouth and pressed the tip of the blade to his tongue until it bit into him.” He then puts this blood into a bowl.
  • When Yadriel attempts to heal an injured cat, the ritual backfires and hurts the cat, causing it to bleed. Yadriel “could still picture the drops of scarlet on his mother’s white skirt. The terrible yowl. The sudden, sharp pain of the poor cat piercing into his head.” The cat is later healed by Yadriel’s mother and survives the encounter.
  • When Julian dies, there is “thrashing and pain on Julian’s face. The blood seeping through his shirt. His gasps for breath.” When Julian’s body is found “right above his heart, was a dagger.” Later, Julian finds out his Uncle Catriz killed Julian to be used in a sacrifice to gain powers offered by Xibalba, a jaguar spirit who seeks human sacrifices in exchange for preserving the world and granting power. Yadriel later resurrects Julian and he makes a full recovery.
  • Catriz kills three other people. When they die, the stone under them is “streaked with dark, dried up blood.” Yadriel resurrects them when he resurrects Julian.
  • Yadriel’s evil uncle is dragged to a hellish realm by Xibalba. The spirit “sank its teeth into Catriz’s shoulder, molten eyes blazing. A scream ripped through Catriz, the whites of his eyes surrounding his dark pupils. With a lurch, the jaguar dragged him down. Catriz’s howls turn to wet gurgles as he was pulled below the surface. Dark blood and water spilled across the floor in a wave.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • In a ritual to call upon Lady Death, Yadriel uses tequila. “Yadriel had nicked a mini bottle of Cabrito tequila from one of the boxes that had been gathered for the Día de Muertos ofrendas.”
  • Yadriel carries alcohol that he uses in rituals. At one point he says, “Last thing I need is to get caught by campus security with alcohol and a knife in my backpack.”
  • Yadriel goes to a bonfire where there are “illegal substances” and alcohol.
  • People spread rumors that Julian’s older brother, Rio, is a drug dealer. These rumors are false.
  • While in the hospital, Julian is put on a sedative which causes, “a thick fog in his head, dulling his senses.”

Language

  • Profanity is used occasionally. Profanity includes asshole, badass, fuck, hell, and shitty.
  • When Julian sees Yadriel’s cat for the first time, he jokingly says, “Holy shit . . . That’s one messed-up looking cat!”
  • Julian tells his friend, “You got shitty taste in music, by the way.”
  • Someone calls Julian “a real asshole.”
  • After Yadriel questions why Julian doesn’t have a girlfriend, Julian says, “Because I’m gay, asshole.”
  • Julian, a gay man, says “Queer folks are like wolves . . . We travel in packs.”
  • After Julian has an outburst, Yadriel says, “What kind of machismo bullshit was that?”

Supernatural

  • The premise of the novel is centered around summoning ghosts, magical powers, and the idea of an afterlife.  Some rituals include summoning Lady Death, releasing spirits into the afterlife, and healing other people. Many of these rituals involve food and alcohol, and some involve blood.
  • Portajes, either daggers or rosaries, are used to release spirits into the land of the dead or heal people.
  • Quinces, fifteenth birthday celebrations, are when most brujos receive their powers from Lady Death.
  • Yadriel’s aunt tells him a story about Xibalba , a jaguar spirit who seeks human sacrifices in exchange for preserving the world and granting power. “Without human sacrifices to satiate his hunger, he threatened to unmake the land of the living.” Xibalba later enters the mortal plane to receive Catriz’s human sacrifices and, when Catriz fails to provide them, drags Catriz into his domain.

by Mia Stryker

Ghostology: A True Revelation of Spirits, Ghouls, and Hauntings

Have you been hearing strange footsteps and knocks, whispers, and rattling chains? Perhaps the early twentieth-century author of this newly discovered tome has some secrets to share. Within the book’s weathered pages you’ll hear of a headless French pirate in search of his missing noggin, a vanishing pair of young trickster twins, a ghostly woman who screams for attention, and other communications from the “fun side.” 

Readers who wish to explore the mysteries of the paranormal will find some hands-on challenges to lift their spirits, along with tips on a range of spectral subjects, such as what to pack in a ghostologist’s field kit, how to distinguish different types of ghosts, the best ways to hunt them, and spotting the unfortunate fakes and frauds. Too bad the late author never got to see her guide find its way into the world! But wait—what are those strange and scratchy asides that appear in odd places throughout the book? 

Ghostology is packed full of information about ghosts and explains the different types of ghosts as well as famous hauntings. Readers will be forced to interact with the book because the book is similar to a pop-up book that ask readers to open flaps that appear on some pages. Just because the book has only 30 pages doesn’t mean this will be a quick read. Each page is overloaded with information—definitions, ghostly stories, spells, information about psychics, and much more. 

Each page is a visual joy to behold. Large illustrations, photographs, lists, maps, and other graphic elements are scattered over the pages, which look similar to a scrapbook. While some of the illustrations are full color and beautiful, others are black and white and show ghosts in frightening detail. However, don’t expect to believe everything you see; Ghostology takes a look at some historical “proof” of hauntings and explains why you should or shouldn’t believe the evidence. Either way, you will have to decide if the book is truth or fiction. 

While Ghostology presents all the information as facts, occasionally the book has a fun, tongue-in-cheek tone. For example, toward the end of the book, in font that looks like handwriting, readers will see “Ha! HA! HA! You opened the page. At last I am Free! When darkness falls you’re sure to see . . . Lucinda (R.I.P.)” Be advised: some of the stories are creepy and some pages explain how to bring a spirit into the human world. 

Readers interested in all aspects of ghosts, including learning about historical ghost hunters and how to hunt ghosts, must read Ghostology. This book will give you a host of real ghost hauntings, haunted places, and other facts that you will be eager to learn more about. For those who want to jump into the fictional world of ghosts, The House on Stone’s Throw Island by Dan Poblocki and the City of Ghosts Series by Victoria Schwab are sure to get your heart thumping. 

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • Anne Boleyn’s ghost was “beheaded at the Tower of London in 1536 on the orders of her husband.” Now she “haunts the Tower, where she screams, slams doors, and leaves unsightly bloodstains on the floor on the anniversary of her death.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

Language    

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • The entire book is about different types of ghosts and famous hauntings. The book includes ways to entice spirits to make an appearance. For example, “to make a ghost visible in a mirror, stare at your own reflection in a dark room. . .” Then repeat these words, “Ookie, Wookie, Don’t say boo! Ookie, Wookie, I see you!” 
  • Poltergeist are explained. They can “cause physical disturbances, throwing or levitating objects, knocking at doors, even pinching, hitting, or using their teeth.”  
  • The book explains types of ghosts. The story lists a host of real ghosts such as Anne Boleyn’s ghost, Abraham Lincoln, and “even criminals such as the English highwayman Dick Turpin.”  

Spiritual Content  

  • None 

The Nature of Witches

Witches have been in control of the weather for hundreds of years, keeping the atmosphere calm and stable. Each witch has powers based in the seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. Shaders, or people without magic, depend too much on the witches to keep the weather steady, pushing the limits of the witches. Thus, shaders have been starting to think that the magic is infinite and, as Clara says, “As if this planet were infinite.” More and more witches are being depleted of their powers and dying, causing the witch community to grow tired.

Clara Densmore is not just any ordinary 17-year-old witch, she is an Everwitch. An Everwitch is a witch that is tied to all four seasons. It is a rare and powerful magic; she can use her magic year-round whereas regular witches can only use their magic during their designated season. However, Clara cannot fully control her magic, which resulted in the deaths of her parents and best friend, Nikki. Clara fears her powers, and she is scared that by using her magic she will hurt other people she loves.

Then, Clara’s mentor and teacher, Mr. Hart, dies. Clara must continue her Everwitch training with two new visitors: a teacher named Mr. Burrows and his assistant, Sang Park, from the Western School of Solar Magic. Sang, a spring witch who has an interest in botany, is tasked as Clara’s primary trainer, and soon becomes Clara’s love interest. As Clara struggles with her Everwitch magic and explores the romantic pull she feels toward Sang, she must decide if she wants to improve her control over her magic or be stripped of her magic.

The Nature of Witches is a riveting story filled with romance, self-discovery, and magic. Readers may become very emotional because they are immersed in Clara’s first-person perspective. The story focuses on Clara, which allows readers to understand her thoughts and actions. Readers watch as Clara switches between wanting to be stripped of her magic and accepting it. Clara’s mental struggle is relatable because she is deciding between what she wants, what would be “easy,” and her duty as the most powerful witch. In the end, Clara realizes that her magic is a part of her and is something she can’t live without. Through her experiences, Clara learns the importance of loving both herself and her powers.

Readers will meet several complex, lovable characters inside the pages of The Nature of Witches. Clara and the other characters are portrayed with depth, showing both their good and bad traits. LGBTQ themes are expressed through Paige’s and Clara’s romantic past; the two girls were friends who became partners. There were no labels put on either person or judgment from anyone, suggesting that it is wholly accepted and integrated into society.

Griffin also includes thought-out and vivid worldbuilding by using mystical and descriptive language. The Nature of Witches is engrossing and easy to read, so readers will fly through the pages. Although the inclusion of witches and magic that controls the atmosphere is highly fictional, the story’s main idea is based on the possibility of snowstorms in June and tornadoes in winter. Climate change has been a hot topic for years and this story serves as a reminder that our world is still suffering, and readers must do something before it’s too late.

The Nature of Witches lets readers know that the first step to help stop climate change is to understand the harmful things humans do that affect the climate. The book does not give specific ways to make changes. However, it implies that people will have to face some type of horrible disaster before they accept that things must change. As Clara points out, “We aren’t in this alone and shouldn’t act like we are; the atmosphere is hurting, and that’s a problem for all of us, witches and shaders alike. The challenge is great, and we have a lot of work ahead of us. But we’re in this together, and if there’s anything I’ve learned this past year, it’s that together is where the magic lies.” At the end of the day, we must communicate with each other and work together to effect change.

Griffin gives readers an earnest, thoughtful, and fantastical story about magic and self-acceptance. Both the characters and plot will keep readers interested. While The Nature of Witches has a timely and important message attached to it, the message is not shoved in readers’ faces. The story’s vivid worldbuilding, the interesting plot, and the lovable characters make The Nature of Witches the perfect book for readers who love fantasy and climate fiction. Readers interested in reading another fantastical story that shows the dangers of climate change should grab a copy of Spark by Sarah Beth Durst.

Sexual Content

  • Clara spends the day with her summer fling Josh. After a long day, needing the comfort of his warm body, she “take[s] Josh’s hand, and he follows me the three steps to the bed. He tugs me close to him, brushes his lips against my neck.” They “fill the darkness with heavy breaths and tangled limbs and swollen lips, and by the time the mood reaches its highest point in the sky, Josh is asleep beside me.”
  • After a training incident with Clara’s ex-girlfriend, Paige, Clara remembers the time when they dated. Paige asked Clara to kiss her. “When our lips touched for the first time, [Clara] knew there was no going back.”
  • Sang, a spring witch, as well as Clara’s trainer and love interest, almost kisses Clara. “‘Clara,’ he says, his voice rough with something that sets my insides on fire. ‘If you don’t want me to kiss you right now, you’re going to have to stop looking at me like that.’ But that’s exactly what I want, I don’t care that his lip is bleeding and I’m out of breath, I want it so badly it doesn’t feel like a want. It feels like a need.” But they do not kiss.
  • Sang tells Clara that he likes her. Clara admits she’s tired of fighting her attraction. They hug and share their first kiss. “He kisses me as if it might never happen again, slow and deep and deliberate. There’s a gentleness to the way he opens his mouth and twists his tongue with mine, the way he traces his fingertips down the sides of my face and onto my neck as if he’s memorizing me.”
  • After Sang and Clara’s kiss, Clara admits, “I couldn’t sleep last night, kept awake by the ghost of Sang’s lips on mine, by the way his hand felt pressed against my lower back.”
  • Clara meets Sang outside a school building before their meeting with their teachers. “I can’t help the way my eyes drift to his lips, the way the back of my hand brushes against his.”
  • Clara walks a campus trail early and goes into the woods. She suddenly hears Sang’s voice coming toward her, but she hides. When she sees him, she confesses, “I want to run to him and wrap my arms around his waist and kiss him beneath the branches of our tree, but something keeps me rooted in place.”
  • While driving, Sang calls Clara impressive. “And before I know what’s happening, he pulls over to the side of the road, and I’m closing the distance between us, crawling onto his lap and wrapping my arms around his neck, I kiss him with the urgency of the water roaring down the mountainside and my magic rushing out to meet it.” They continue to kiss into the night. “His hands find my hips and his lips drift down my neck. My head falls back and I arch into him before returning my mouth to his. I kiss him until the sun sets and the moon rises, until my entire body hums with want.”
  • During one of Clara’s classes, Sang comes in as a special guest. When she looks at him, “My face heats with the memory of his body under mine, his face tilting up to me, his mouth on my neck and his hands in my hair.”
  • Clara hopes Paige can’t tell her heart is racing when she sees Sang. Clara remembers “echoes of his mouth on mine and his fingers on my skin and the way he breathes out when I kiss the notch in his neck flood my mind when I see him.”
  • Sang tucks Clara into bed, and “he gives me a soft, slow, lingering kiss.”
  • During the Spring Fling, Sang and Clara hug and admit how happy they are with each other. “Kissing him under the light of the stars makes me feel as if he is who I was always meant to find.” Clara admits to herself that Sang is magic to her, causing, “My lips [to] part, and the kiss deepens, each of us breathing the other in as if we’re the cool night breeze or the perfect scent of daphne.” When Clara falls backwards, “Sang follows, his mouth back on mine, and I think for a moment how perfect it is that two spring witches are falling for each other in the gardens at night.”
  • When Clara breaks up with Sang, she put “my hands on either side of his face and kiss him through my tears and his.”
  • In the aftermath of the solar eclipse, Sang runs to meet Clara and, “his lips meet mine, and I kiss him without hesitation or fear or worry. He weaves his hands through my hair, and his breaths are heavy, matching my own. I open my mouth and tangle my tongue with his, kiss him deeply, kiss him with greed and desire and longing.”
  • As Sang and Clara lay in bed, “I close my eyes, bend down, and kiss him. He puts his hands on either side of my face and opens his mouth, and I get lost in him, lost in the way his fingers feel on my skin, the way his hair tickles my face, the way his lips are soft and taste like black tea and honey.”
  • When Sang gifts Clara a journal, she thanks him and leans in to kiss him. “He kisses me again, then looks out over the meadow.”
  • Sang summons a small storm in his hand and commands thunder while Clara commands lightning. Sang tells Clara thunder will always follow lightning and they walk up to each other, and Clara describes, “I pull Sang into me and kiss him, greedy, deep, long, and eager, soaking up every drop of him before I leave.”
  • The storms dissipate and Sang and Clara cling to each other as they continue to kiss until the Autumnal equinox starts. “His lips are on my mouth, my neck, my chest, and I hold his face between my hands, run my fingers through his hair and down his back.”

Violence

  • As part of training, Clara and the other summer witches try to put out a fire. Clara is taken aback by the memories of the death of her best friend. Clara thinks, “This is the first time I’ve been involved in a group training session since I was on this same field last year, practicing with my best friend. Since the magic inside me rushed toward her in a flash of light, as bright as the fire in front of me. Since she screamed so loudly the sound still echoes in my ears.”
  • Clara’s teacher asks why she fights against her magic. Clara tells him that he knows the reason, elaborating, “He wasn’t here when my best friend died, when my magic sought her out and killed her in one instant, one single breath. But he’s heard the stories.”
  • Clara is paired with Paige for her training on how to handle storms. Clara recognizes that the storm is unstable and tries to pull Paige away. Clara tries to tackle Paige before the storm hurts her but the lightning strikes Clara and goes toward the gold chain around Paige’s neck. “Paige shakes beneath me. I scramble off her and stay by her side.” Paige ends up with a burn on her neck but is otherwise unharmed.
  • Sang accidentally poisoned his mother after growing a plant that has poisonous seeds that she put on her salad. He says, “She got really ill. Vomiting and pain, so weak she could hardly stand. My dad saw the seeds on her plate. He looked them up and realized they were toxic.”
  • After the Spring Fling dance, Clara, Sang, and some of their peers decide to play the ring of fire – a game where the witches need to keep a lightning bolt alive without it dying or touching them while passing it to each other. During a round where the lightning starts to get too strong, it aims for Sang, and, “lightning enters his chest and shoots down his left arm, exiting out his fingertips. He convulses and is thrown several yards before slamming into the ground, shaking, shaking, shaking.” Sang passes out and “a superficial burn is already forming on his skin, an intricate, fractal-like pattern that’s deep red and looks like the leaves of a fern. It covers all the skin I can see on his chest and neck.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • During the Spring Fling, Clara is talking to Paige. On Paige’s breath is “the sharp smell of alcohol.”

Language

  • Badass is used twice.
  • Shit and fuck are both used once.

Supernatural

  • The book is centered around witches and magic. Below are some, but not all examples of the witch’s magic.
  • Spring magic is calm as “its sole purpose is bringing beauty into the world,” says Clara. It helps plants grow and deals with spring atmospheric occurrences such as tornadoes.
  • Summer magic is intense and bold. Summer witches specialize in thunderstorms and fires. Clara says, “No other season can absorb as much magic from the sun as summers,” making the season strong because witch magic derives from their connection with the sun.
  • Winter magic is aggressive and precise. Witches with winter magic deal with blizzards, wind, the cold, and moisture. According to Clara, “Winters are more straightforward than anyone else. We don’t soften ourselves with indirectness or white lies or fake niceties. What you see is what you get.”
  • Autumn magic is slow and steady, building “on an undercurrent of thankfulness and sorrow.” Since it is a transitional season, it is attuned to its environment and can easily change to accommodate it.
  • Sang picks a fight with Clara, hoping to get her mad so she will use her magic without restriction and to relieve any anger built up between them. They have a small magic fight and by the end of it, Clara has unknowingly pulled spring magic from Sang to create a birch tree. When Clara uses her magic, “The earth shifts as a birch tree shoves through the ground and grows right next to us, tall and white and real. Spring magic heightened to its full strength in the dead of winter.”
  • When Mr. Burrows takes Clara to a field test, she is trapped with a family of shaders. They are stuck in a field surrounded by a wall of rocks and a sunbar, a concentrated wall of sunlight, and triple-digit temperatures. To help the family survive, Clara creates hailstones to keep them cool. Clara is “in a free fall of magic, power bursting from my fingers and into the air, tossing the hail higher and higher as if it’s weightless. I create as much hail as possible, stones dropping out of the sky in rapid succession.”
  • During the Eclipse of the Heart Music Festival, a huge storm breaks and threatens to flood the river. Clara must stop the storm and the river before thousands are flooded. As she tries to stop the storm, she “throw[s] my magic into the storm, and all four seasons follow, tumbling into the cloudburst and taking hold. Winter magic dries out the air, lessening the humidity. Summer focuses on the updraft, pushing down as hard as it can. Spring lines the bank of the river, forcing the water to hold. And autumn cools the air so it can’t rise.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Brynn Jankowski

Haunt Me

After years of struggling with her mental health and social life, Erin and her family have moved away to start over. She tries to put on a smile for her parents, reminding herself, “this is all because of me. The least I can do is act grateful.” Life in the beachside town isn’t all that exciting until she discovers a ghost haunting her bedroom. 

Joe was the same age as Erin when he died months ago. He struggles to recall details of his life and how it ended. The bond between Erin and Joe grows and quickly turns into love. Still, she can’t avoid the painful reality that “this isn’t a relationship. It isn’t real. It isn’t life.” Erin soon discovers that though Joe’s family has moved from the house she now calls home, they haven’t gone far. And it isn’t long before she meets his older brother.  

Once an athletic playboy, Olly has been left gutted by his brother’s death. Though he and Erin could not be more different, he is drawn to her and Erin can’t deny that she is drawn to him as well. As her life begins to spiral downward due to a betrayal from one of her new school friends, Erin realizes that there is only one way she could ever be with Joe. She must not only choose between two brothers but life and death. 

The first part of Haunt Me alternates between the perspectives of Erin and Joe, and the setting is mostly confined to her room. This is the part of the book that flows the best, as it’s easy to be charmed by their budding romance. Olly’s perspective is eventually introduced, which muddles the pacing. As Erin and Olly spend more time together, Joe’s perspective becomes less frequent as he spends most of his time alone. This change makes the book feel as if it has become another story entirely, which might disappoint readers who were drawn in by Erin and Joe’s relationship. 

As the protagonist, Erin is easy to sympathize with, but she doesn’t stand out. She is shy, troubled, and likes to write, but it’s difficult to gauge more about her. Readers are told about her struggles, but will rarely experience them with her, and it’s difficult to understand why she falls for Joe, and later Olly, so quickly. Meanwhile, Joe is witty and engaging. His narration easily draws in the reader. On the other hand, Olly is the weakest character; he is sympathetic but isn’t fleshed out. In addition, Erin’s family isn’t notable, and there’s a cliché cast of mean girls that does nothing but cause drama with unrealistic acts of spite. Unfortunately, most of the characters end up being forgettable. 

Besides the clunky pacing and the underwhelming cast, Haunt Me has another major issue: the rushed conclusion. A lot happens over a short period of time, and there is little room to process the events. Joe’s spirit fades and the story would have greatly benefited from a longer goodbye between him and Erin, but it happens so fast that it doesn’t elicit much emotion from the reader. Furthermore, Erin lacks the romantic chemistry with Olly that she had with Joe, and it isn’t satisfying to see them end up together. 

Readers who have struggled with depression themselves will connect with Erin’s struggles. She recounts her experiences with bullying and suicidal thoughts which is heartbreaking, but the book fails to show much of how her issues are being treated. Ultimately, it’s hard not to be let down by the poor execution of the story. While unique in concept, Haunt Me’s flaws ultimately cause it to fall flat. As an alternative to Haunt Me, grab a copy of Nina Moreno’s Don’t Date Rosa Santos which is about a girl who feels cursed and must deal with grief.  

Sexual Content 

  • Joe puts a hand on Erin’s head, and because she cannot yet see him she mistakes this for a large spider. She gets up in a panic and hastily removes her shirt while batting at her head. Joe says, “I can’t help myself. I glance at her as she rips her shirt off. Come on. I might be dead, but I’m still a sixteen-year-old boy.” 
  • Erin muses, “I have been kissed. But I don’t know if two snogs behind the gym and one in the back row of a cinema” counts. Snog is British slang for kissing. 
  • Erin describes kissing Joe as feeling like “nothing even exists except his lips on mine, his arms tightening around my waist . . . [pulling me] so close I am starting to wonder where I end and he begins.” 
  • Olly describes “snogging girls whose names I could barely remember.” 
  • Erin listens to Olly recall a party he went to with his former girlfriend. He says they went upstairs and came down after a bit, and Erin notes, “I don’t ask him what the ‘bit’ entailed. I don’t want to know.” 
  • Erin describes kissing Olly, “his hands in my hair, his lips pressed against mine.” 
  • A popular girl named Zoe confesses that she got to know the substitute gym teacher in eleventh grade and that he “had me working out a lot more than I’m used to.” She later admits this was a lie. 

Violence 

  • A stanza in one of Erin’s poems describes “opening a can of chopped tomatoes and slicing my finger and not knowing which red is mine.” 
  • On her first day of secondary school, Erin describes being hit by a car, saying it “broke my leg in three places and shattered my kneecap.” 
  • Erin finds a silver pendant in the closet. When she reaches for it, she describes, “a bolt of electricity runs through my arm . . . it throws me backward against the wall.” She hits her head and is knocked out. When she wakes, she can see Joe’s ghost. 
  • Erin was bullied at her old school. Her bullies once waved a plastic bag in front of her and “suggested that I put it on my head and tie it tight . . . they were practically begging me to off myself.” Erin says this torment continued for a considerable period, but she didn’t tell anyone. 
  • While a psychic medium is attempting to expel Joe from Erin’s room, Joe feels as if he is being attacked. He describes feeling as though “needles [are piercing] my arms . . . knives [are slashing] at my legs.” The struggle lasts about six pages before he is successfully expelled. 
  • Erin attempts to kill herself by jumping off a beach cliff. Unable to get to her, Joe protests from below. He describes, “she’s letting go, leaning backwards.” Olly arrives just in time and grabs her arm, pulling her back up.

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • A stanza in one of Erin’s poems describes “staring at the gray carpet until it blurs . . . a bottle of pills in my hand.” 
  • Erin admits to Joe that she once tried to commit suicide via painkillers she had been prescribed. She says, “I emptied the contents of the bottle in my hand and took them in one go.” Her parents found her and took her to get her stomach pumped. 
  • Olly says his past few years have been filled with “parties, girls . . .  and drugs.” 
  • Olly says that he began taking Joe to parties. At his first party, Joe took ecstasy. Olly reasons that half the people at these parties were “popping pills or sharing spliffs” and that he often smoked weed himself.  
  • While at a party, Joe would take whatever drug he could get his hands on, but usually ecstasy. 
  • At her first sleepover, Erin says she learned, “I quite like hard cider . . . after two pints of it, I think I’m rather good at singing, dancing, and air guitar.” 
  • While at a sleepover, Erin and her friends drink from a bottle of alcohol that one of the girls snuck past the host’s parents. 
  • Joe’s death was caused by a brain aneurysm. He thought he just had a headache. Joe took ecstasy that his brother was in possession of to “get completely wasted and not care about anything.” This caused the aneurysm to be fatal.    

Language 

  • None 

Supernatural Content 

  • Joe is a ghost, confined to Erin’s room. He states. “No one can hear me or see me. Because I’m dead.” Erin can see Joe after touching a silver pendant found inside the closet that gives her a sort-of electric shock. 
  • Joe is unable to touch at first, stating that his hand “goes right through [things].” He begins to realize he can interact with things if his emotions are strong, and he begins making physical contact with Erin more frequently throughout their relationship. 
  • While Erin’s mother is in her room trying to get her to come downstairs, Joe becomes so flustered that his energy causes her mother to be pushed back onto the bed, “the curtains [start] flapping . . . the window starts to rattle. . . [the bed] starts to shake as well.”  
  • After the above occurrence, Erin’s mother becomes convinced the room is haunted, saying that “the room is about ten degrees colder than the rest of the house . . . I’ve been hearing [bumps] for weeks.”  
  • Erin’s mother hires a psychic to expel the spirit. The act is described in detail, and the psychic instructs Erin’s mother to take some “of the sage, light the top of it and repeat after [her].” Joe is successfully expelled from the room, but his spirit is transferred to a cave by the beach. 
  • Joe realizes that his spirit is lingering because he needs to help his brother let go of the guilt he feels regarding his death. He also needs to help Erin find her will to live again. Once this is accomplished, “he melts, as he becomes the sea and the sky and air.” 

Spiritual Content 

  • None 

Dead Voices

 

Ollie, Brian, and Coco have had their fill of frightening experiences. After their narrow escape from the smiling man and his sinister scarecrows during their class field trip last fall, they are ready for some fun. Skiing at Mount Hemlock sounds promising, but their enthusiasm quickly dims as a snowstorm traps them at the loge with only their parents and Mr. Voland, a mysterious ghost hunter, for company.

Strange things start happening. Coco is seeing shadowy figures, Ollie is having nightmares about frostbitten girls, and Brian is positive that the stuffed bear in the lobby was on its hind legs when they arrived—not on all four.

Their fun-filled trip is quickly turning into another terrifying encounter with another dimension. There are ghosts at Mount Hemlock and their voices are demanding to be heard, but the price of listening may be too high.

In this haunting follow-up to Small Spaces, Ollie, Coco, and Brian must rely on their friendship and sharp minds if they are to survive their next harrowing adventure. Readers who are ready to be frightened will enjoy seeing Ollie and her friends go up against the smiling man one more time. However, Dead Voices increases the fear factor because both the living and the dead use deception to try to lure the children into Mother Hemlock’s frosty arms.

Unlike Small Spaces, Dead Voices focuses more on Coco’s point of view. While Ollie plays a main role in the story, Brian disappears early on, leaving Coco responsible for saving Ollie. This shift gives the book a new perspective and allows the reader to see how Coco is often misjudged because of her small size. Because Coco appears childlike, she is underestimated. However, she is a master at chess, which has taught her to look at a problem from many angles. It is this skill that allows Coco to beat the smiling man and free Ollie.

In the first book of the Small Spaces Quartet, Ollie and her friends spent most of their time running from danger. However, Dead Voices increases the suspense by increasing the danger. In addition, the ghosts are more frightening both in appearance and in their actions. Ollie meets a ghost, who appears to be friendly and helpful, but instead leads her into a trap. And when the smiling man makes an appearance, the reader learns that he is capable of completely changing his appearance, which allows him to disguise himself and trick Ollie into being trapped behind the mirror. To make matters worse, the smiling man puts all the other adults into an unwakeable sleep, thus making the kids rely on themselves.

Dead Voices is an action-packed ghost story that includes mystery, ghosts, and a deceptive villain that readers will love to hate. The simple plot leads readers into a creepy world where Mother Hemlock wants to make Ollie sleep forever. Dead Voices is perfect for middle-grade readers who want to be frightened without the graphic images that often appear in YA books. Readers who enjoy scary stories should also read Nightbooks by J.A. White and The Forgotten Girl by India Hill Brown

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Ollie and her friends meet a ghost named Gretel. While alive, Gretel would wander the orphanage where she lived. One day, Mother Hemlock, “hauled her upstairs, and locked the girl in a closet. . . Gretel was afraid of the dark. She screamed and screamed, but no one came. . . the little girl had died of fright.” Throughout the story, Gretel says she is looking for her bones.
  • After Gretel died, Mother Hemlock “threw herself out the attic window in remorse.”
  • Mother Hemlock grabs Ollie who “thrashed in the thing’s grip, head-butted her, bit her horrible tasting arm, let her legs go limp so that she was dragged across the floor. . . Ollie felt panic starting to choke her.”
  • In order to get away from Mother Hemlock, Ollie lunged “with all her strength, and grabbed a fistful of hot coals. She shoved them up at Mother Hemlock’s grayish, furious face. Mother Hemlock fell back, smoldering, screeching.” Ollie escapes and runs to hide.
  • A dead bear comes alive and chases Ollie. “As Ollie watched, frozen, the dead bear fell to all fours. Licked its chops. Then, creaking, the dead bear charged. . . [Ollie] raced through the dining room. The footsteps of the dead bear sounded close behind her, and she could smell its reek: a combination of dust and formaldehyde.” Later, the bear chases Ollie again.
  • Dead coyotes come alive and chase Brian and Coco. Brian pulls Coco “up the stairs just as howls broke out from every part of the lobby and the shadows seemed, all at once to leap from the stairwell. . . There was a louder clatter of dog nails as dead paws slipped on the lobby floor.” As they are running from the coyotes, the kids get separated.
  • In order to help Ollie, Gabe (a ghost) “had thrown an old sack of some kind over Mother Hemlock’s head. She was groping around in a fury trying to get it off.”
  • Mother Hemlock grabs Ollie. “To her horror, Ollie felt her eyelids growing heavy. . . Frost was stealing up over her eyes, sealing them shut. Ollie screamed when she felt the frost creeping up over her own face.” Ollie falls asleep.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Coco says, “We’re about to have a pretty darn rough night.”
  • Coco calls the smiling man a jerk.

Supernatural

  • Ollie’s dead mother is able to communicate with Ollie through her watch. Ollie explains, “My watch helps me . . . My watch was—it was my mother’s. I think she talks to me with it. I think she’s trying to warn us now.”
  • Ollie and her friends see many ghosts. The main ghost, Gretel, wore “a long white nightgown. Her face was gray-white; her nose was black. Her eyes were frozen open, huge and unblinking.” Gretel says she is looking for her bones.
  • The kids are told that some ghosts “act. They want something. That’s when they’re dangerous, when they want something.”
  • When Ollie looks into a mirror, a ghost is able to grab Ollie’s hand. “A creeping horror started to overtake her: a feeling that if she stayed there long enough, she would become a reflection instead of a girl. She felt herself take an involuntary step toward that dark mirror, then another.” Mr. Voland breaks the connection by breaking the mirror.
  • Voland uses an Ouija board to communicate with the dead. Ollie thinks her mother is using the Ouija board to talk to her; however, Mr. Voland was using the Ouija board to trap Ollie behind the mirror.
  • Ollie looked into a mirror and saw a woman. “She was blue-lipped and black-nosed. . . When she smiled at Ollie, her teeth were sharp. . . Ollie tried to yank away, but black-nailed fingers had curled out of the mirror glass, catching her hand and holding it.” Ollie is pulled into the world behind the mirror.
  • When Coco and Brian get separated, she hears Brian’s voice coming from behind a lot of hallway doors.” Coco doesn’t find Brian, but Ollie’s watch leads her down a steep staircase.
  • Gabe, a ghost, cannot speak because his mouth is frozen shut. However, he uses a Ouija board to talk to Coco and Ollie.
  • Coco and Ollie need to find out how the world behind the mirror is connected to the real world. Ollie thinks, “Gretel is on this side. Gretel’s bones are somewhere on Coco’s side. The ghost and her bones are connected. If Gretel stands in front of a mirror on my side, and her bones are reflected in the same mirror on Coco’s side, then a door will open.” Gretel’s bones are never found, but Coco finds another way to open the door.

Spiritual Content

  • Brian says, “Dead people—they’re gone. We aren’t meant to talk to them.” Because of Brian’s comment, Ollie thinks Brian is Catholic. “It came out at odd moments.”
  • Mother Hemlock is closing in on Coco, who yells for Brain. Coco prayed “that Brian could hear.”

 

Remember Me

The day before her seventeenth birthday, Blue Owens wakes up feeling like something is wrong. Her memories are hazy, and everything seems vaguely familiar, yet so foreign. Her friends and family are acting weird and suspicious, tiptoeing around her, as if she will fall and break at any minute. Blue explains, “You ever get the feeling something’s going on and you don’t know what it is?”  

In the back of her closet, she finds a strange note that reads: meet me on the little blue bus at 7:45. Blue has no idea who wrote the note or any idea why someone would want to meet her. But she only has one day to decide what she’s going to do. 

Following her gut, Blue gets on the little blue bus at 7:45 and meets Adam, who seems like a stranger. But as they talk and connect, she is flooded with familiarity; it is as if they have always known each other. Because they have. Adam hesitantly explains that they have dated since the tenth grade. “In fact,” he says, they’ve “done everything together for two years.” Blue discovers that she “canceled” Adam, and chose to erase him from her memory. 

Realizing what she has done, Blue sets out to recover her memories and figure out why she “canceled” them. As she explores deeper into her past, she is faced with painful memories. Should Blue leave her forgotten memories in the past? Should she bring her memories back and experience her grief all over again?  

Set ten years in the future, Remember Me mixes sci-fi and mystery elements with a story about grief and finding yourself. While Blue is a determined, independent, and brave young woman, she is also broken and imperfect, as she is dealing with great tragedies. After Blue’s sister’s tragic death, Blue spirals into a deep depression, waking up “most days [wishing she was] dead.” Blue’s friends and family begin to worry, as she becomes detached, irritable, and overly spontaneous. Blue must decide if she wants to erase all memories of her sister, finding a supposed cure to her pain, or spiral further, hoping one day she will wake up “and be [the] kind of person who glows and has goals and a self that doesn’t torture them.”  

In the end, rather than truly canceling her past, Blue learns to live with her grief. Although “it still hurt[s] whenever” she thinks of her sister, as these memories can “break [her] apart,” Blue is able to “come back together” and be whole. She comes to terms with her past and realizes that memories of her sister, for better or for worse, are still a part of her and make her who she is. 

Remember Me is best for mature readers, as it deals with topics like depression, suicide, death, and grief. It also delves into the effects of divorce on children. Furthermore, it has an explicit sex scene and substantial use of profanity. Overall, Remember Me, is a must-read, with a diverse cast of characters, a strong female lead, and an interesting plot. The story discusses the difficulties of grieving and losing someone you love. Plus, it highlights the importance of learning to live with the painful events of your past and accepting them as a part of who you are. 

Sexual Content  

  • Blue’s friends, Turtle and Jack, are dating and “in love.” They often act intimate with each other in front of others. 
  • Turtle is practicing for a play and has to make out with Kevin, a boy who is gay and uncomfortable kissing a girl. While practicing for the show the two struggle to connect. The teacher who is directing their practice has Turtle and her partner Jack (who is also in show choir) kiss to show them how it’s done. “Kevin is watching, uncomfortably, from the side. Jack leans forward slowly, pulling Turtle flush against their own body, and they melt into a deep kiss.” 
  • In eighth grade, Blue kissed Jacobo Mancini. Blue “let him put his hands in my bikini bottoms. I remember playing a game where I was supposed to be in the closet with Calvin Locus and we were supposed to spend six minutes in there and we didn’t come out for a much longer time.”  
  • While riding the bus with Adam, Blue thinks that she does not “remember kissing [him]. . .  my body does. My body positively writhes with knowing.” 
  • After reuniting, Blue and Adam kiss. “Our lips touch and he presses the middle of my back toward him. I feel like an elevator falling up.” Later, their families pull them apart, Blue thinks “out of nowhere I’m back in that kiss, in the breathlessness that took me over.” 
  • Blue thinks about sex. She thinks, “I’m not so much thinking about sex per se, like me having it but I am thinking about the idea of sex, or why people want to have it.” She then imagines her and Adam together. “And it’s not like I want to have sex with him right away or something. . . But I would like to kiss him. Very much I would like that. I wouldn’t mind running my hands over the skin under his shirt, feeling his breath on my neck, his fingertips on my belly.” 
  • Blue notes that her friend lives in the older part of town, in a crumbling building where you “can hear their neighbors having sex when they’re trying to go to sleep.” 
  • When Blue and Adam first began to date, they spent “hours and hours on end” kissing. Then “the shirts came off. We spent about a month like that . . . then pants got inched down and finally off.” The two become sexually intimate with each other. Blue recounts a moment when Adam had “his head between my legs” for the first time.  
  • Before she cancels him, Blue visits Adam for what is supposed to be the last time. The two kiss. Adam “opens his mouth and it’s hot when he nips at my lips. It’s not a sexy kiss so much as a communication . . . an apology.” 

Violence  

  • Ten years into the future, there is an “international epidemic” of suicide, especially among young people.  
  • There is a bridge in Blue’s town that “people throw themselves off… all the time, and it’s been getting worse.” One instance causes the whole community to come together, when “Taylor Strong chucked himself off the edge”of the bridge. 
  • When Blue arrives at the beach, she sees Adam and explains “my throat drops into my toes… He has V draped across his arm and is swimming ferociously toward the shore. She is limp, head hanging backward, neck tilted back and exposed like she’s offering herself up to the sky.” She imagines V swam “straight to the spot where Dad told us not to go, swims out there vowing to prove that we all underestimate her. She swims straight into a riptide, gets pulled under, flails and kicks but the riptide is too strong for her. She’s carried away screaming when she reaches the surface, until she can’t fight anymore…. By the time the ambulance comes, I am as gone as V…  My sister is dead.” 
  • After her sister dies, Blue explains “most days when I wake up I wish I were dead.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • On her fifteenth birthday, Blue gets drunk. She explains that she “didn’t mean to get drunk but [she’s] such a lightweight that even though [she] only took a couple of sips” she was drunk. 
  • Blue attends a party with her friends and drinks.  
  • Blue observes the “worst my parents do is smoke joints out back after they think I’m asleep.” 
  • After her parents’ divorce Blue wonders if her father is hooking up with “one of those rafting girls he works with, sturdy, beer-drinking, tan, young.” 
  • Blue’s father explains to Blue before she was born, he “drank too much beer and cursed.” 

Language    

  • Profanity is used often. Profanity includes shit, fuck, bitch, ass, and pussy. 

 Supernatural  

  • None 

 Spiritual Content  

  • Blue and her grandmother attend a funeral. As they walk into the church, Gran “makes the sign of the cross twice, once as we pass the Lady of Guadalupe statue in the courtyard and again when we stumble over the threshold into the actual church.” 
  • Blue describes the funeral service. “A priest says some things about Jesus. . .  I just listen[ed] to the prayers, the talk of God having a place in heaven for Arturo, the God will look over his wife and his children, that Arturo is free now.” 

Storm of Lightning

The Elgen’s plans for world domination begin on the island of Tuvalu when the nefarious Dr. Hatch orders an invasion of the small nation following an unsuccessful attack on the resistance headquarters, the Timepiece Ranch. Meanwhile, the Electroclan return to America with Jade Dragon, the girl they rescued before she fell victim to Dr. Hatch’s schemes. When they learn what happened to the Ranch, Michael and the others rush there to inquire about the safety of their families, who were hiding at the base at the time of the attack.

After checking the Ranch and finding it devoid of survivors, the Electroclan goes on the run again. Their plan is to lie low until news of their families reaches them, but their period of rest ends abruptly with the news that Dr. Hatch has stationed warships from the Elgen fleet in the waters near Tuvalu. The Electroclan heads to Christmas Ranch in Utah, another resistance base, to devise a plan to stop the invasion of Tuvalu.

Meanwhile, the story shows the perspective of Hatch’s loyal electric children (Tara, Bryan, Quentin, and Kylee) as they discuss whether to rebel against Hatch, especially after he tortures Welch, a former Elgen commander, who is close to Quentin. Quentin has been Hatch’s “favorite,” but he no longer knows if Hatch’s plans align with his own.

Hatch successfully overthrows the Tuvaluan government and places Quentin in charge. Hatch offers Quentin advice on his new monarchy: “a divided people is a conquered people. . . Divisions in humanity can always be found. Turn men against women and women against men. Divide the young from the old, the rich from the poor. . . Teach them to shame others and to use shame as a tool to their own ends.” Hatch’s advice illustrates the difference between him and Michael, which is the focus of Storm of Lightning.

There is not much confrontation, and the Electroclan spends most of the book on the move, as the story focuses on Michael’s character and the effects of war. It’s clear that the Elgen and the Electroclan can never coexist, and Michael must be the one to stop them. He struggles with wanting to give up, and the fact that his power has been increasing, possibly leading to his own death. His power also gives him the ability to kill others on a large scale. While this threat has been present from the beginning of the series, Michael grapples with it throughout Storm of Lightning.

While Storm of Lightning is not the most interesting book in the series, the story discloses the next step of the Electroclan and highlights the value of hope – hope that the resistance can overcome the Elgen. While Michael’s role in the war is may be unrelatable to readers, Michael’s inner turmoil is understandable and crucial to the development of his character. Readers should pick up the next story, Fall of Hades, to find out if Michael is able to overcome his fate and confront Hatch once and for all.

 Sexual Content

  • Michael and his girlfriend Taylor kiss occasionally. “After a moment, she leaned into me, and we kissed. Suddenly I felt a current of electricity flowing through our mouths.”
  • Quentin and Tara have a developing romance. They kiss once.

Violence

  • A Mexican gang tries to rob Michael which ends in violence. As Michael “was walking away from them, an empty beer bottle hit me on the side of my head. Fortunately, it wasn’t a direct hit, or it probably would have knocked me out. Instead, it caught me in the back of my jaw, cutting the skin beneath my ear. . . It took every ounce of willpower I had not to fry them to ashes. . .”
  • The gang threatens to cut Michael, so Michael defends himself. “I spun around and pulsed, blasting the little dude so hard that his feet left the ground. He slammed into an adobe wall, and plaster fell around him as he crumpled to the ground, unconscious. . . I spread out my arms and pulsed. The force blew out from me in a shock wave more than fifty feet in diameter. When I looked around, all of the gang members were lying on their backs. Most of them weren’t moving. The tall guy was still conscious, staring at me in fear. As I started toward him, he pulled a gun. . . The guy fired six times, and the bullets flew around me, ricocheting against cars and buildings. One of the bullets hit his buddies. . . When he had used all his bullets. . . I blasted him so hard, his clothes caught on fire. Then I looked around. All of the gang members were still unconscious except for one. . . he had gotten to his feet and now raised a knife at me. . . I produced a lightning ball about the size of a volleyball. . . He weakly raised his hands to block it. It exploded on contact with his flesh, knocking him out with the force.” In the end, Michael is unsure if he killed them or not.
  • Michael sees the aftermath of the Elgen attack on the resistance base. They completely destroyed the area. Michael “could see the bones of a horse in a clearing. Other than that, there was no evidence of life. Or death. It looked like those war pictures from our history books. I had never seen such devastation in real life. I bent over and vomited.”
  • The Electroclan find one survivor from the aftermath – an Elgen soldier. “When I first saw the man, I didn’t recognize him as human. He was grotesque looking. His skin and clothes, which hadn’t been burned off, were charred black, and most of his hair was singed off his head. . . his injuries were so severe, it was difficult to even look at him.”
  • Jack talks briefly about his brother’s service in Afghanistan. “A Taliban soldier tried to stab my brother, but my brother turned the knife on him. While my brother’s squad was waiting for reinforcements, my brother had to sit in the room with the dead man for two hours. He took out the guy’s wallet. The man had a picture of his wife and a little boy. My brother said even though the guy had tried to kill him, it still made him sad.”
  • While staying at a hotel, Michael hears someone trying to break into the room when multiple Electroclan members are inside. They attack when the intruder enters. “Jack grabbed [the intruder] by the front of his shirt, then pulled him forward, slamming him face-forward onto the ground. I pushed the door shut with my foot as I grabbed the man’s leg and pulsed. His body went limp.”
  • Hatch threatens to flog the Tuvaluan people if they disobey his new laws. He also says that the citizens will be sent to “reeducation camps.” Hatch also says that those who don’t accept reeducation will be imprisoned and branded as fools to be publicly humiliated and punished.
  • Due to the former President of Tuvalu refusing to bow to him, Hatch has him punished as a public display. “You will be stripped of your clothing, bound, and your tongue will be cut off; then, for the rest of your life, you will be kept in the central square in a cage with monkeys. . . If you try to take your life, your sons and daughters will take your place.” Hatch follows through on his word. The prime minister is later displayed in front of the people. “Inside the cage were about a dozen bald-faced rhesus macaque monkeys and, in one corner, the naked prime minister huddled in the fetal position. He looked pale and sick; his mouth swollen from the amputation of his tongue.”
  • A man who protests Hatch’s rule is severely punished in front of the crowd. “The protestor was able to knock down just one of the guards before he was tased by three different guns, then beaten nearly unconscious by truncheons. The guards then dragged the man out before the crowd. He was lifted to his knees and pushed up against the pole next to the monkey cage. His arms were bound behind the pole, and a belt was cinched tightly around his waist to hold him up. . . The Elgen squad captain brought out a long, serrated knife and cut off the man’s ears as he screamed in agony.”
  • Hatch punishes Quentin for betraying him. “Hatch slapped Quentin hard enough to knock him back into his bed. A thin stream of blood dropped from his nose. . . Hatch stood, then grabbed Quentin by the foot and dragged him off the bed. Then he kicked him while Quentin tried to protect himself from the blows.” Hatch also punishes Quentin with an improved RESAT device called a RAVE, which inflicts physical pain on the electric children and renders them powerless.
  • Cassy, one of the electric children loyal to the resistance, threatens Schema, a former Elgen chairman, by using her powers on him. “As he stepped out onto the cement floor, he suddenly froze, unable to breathe. For nearly a minute he grasped at his throat; then he fell to his knees, then to his side, unable to even make a sound, his panicked, questioning eyes locked on Cassy. When he was just about to pass out, Cassy released him. Schema loudly gasped for breath, coughing and wheezing.” Cassy says to him, “In case you were feeling bold, I wanted you to know just how easy it is for me to kill you. . . this time, I paralyzed your lungs. If you disappear from my sight, even for a minute, I will stop your heart.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • The group talks about a hot sauce that’s named “hotter than hell.”
  • Tara and Bryan, two kids loyal to Hatch, have an argument in which Tara calls him an “idiot.”
  • Ostin and Michael call Dr. Hatch a “crazy freaking moron.”

Supernatural

  • Many of the youths in the story have electricity related abilities. There are 17 electric children in all. Michael can shock and pulse like an electric eel. Taylor can read minds via electrical signals. Nichelle can drain electrical power, Abi can take away pain, and Mckenna can create light and heat.
  • While staying at a hotel, Nichelle wants to stay in a room that is rumored to have a ghost haunting it. One of the workers says they encountered it when checking a fuse box in the basement. “The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I had this feeling that I was being watched. Then I saw a cloud in the shape of a man come toward me.” Michael, Nichelle, Taylor, and Ostin end up staying in the room and hear strange sounds at night.

 

Spiritual Content

  • When Hatch takes over Tuvalu, he orders the former President to kiss his hand to show his allegiance. The man replies, “I bow only to God.” Hatch replies, “Where is your God in your time of need. I will tell you where your God is. You are looking at him.”

by Madison Shooter

The Duel at Araluen

King Duncan and Princess Cassandra are trapped in the south tower of Castle Araluen and under near-constant attack from the Red Fox Clan. Sir Horace and Ranger Commandant Gilan are holed up in an old hill fort, surrounded by the enemy. And Ranger’s apprentice, Maddie, is the only one who can save them all.

With the help of Hal, Thorn, and the rest of the Heron brotherband, Maddie will have to break her father and his men out of the hill fort, but will they reach Castle Araluen in time?

As the third installment of the Royal Ranger Series, Duel at Araluen continues the story of the Red Fox Clan who plan to kill King Duncan, Princess Cassandra, and Maddie. Unlike the previous two books in the series, Duel at Araluen describes many skirmishes between the rebels and the Araluens. While the book has less adventure, there is non-stop action as three groups—the Scandians, Horace and his soldiers, and Cassandra and her loyal army—prepare to defeat the Red Fox Clan.

While the book revolves around war, there is never senseless killing. Even though the Red Fox Clan planned to kill Horace and his men, when the rebels are defeated, Horace doesn’t execute the traitors. Instead, Horace orders his men to “leave the tents there for them so they won’t die of exposure. . . We’ll leave them what medical supplies and bandages we can spare and they can take care of one another.” Like the previous books, many people die, but all of the killings are in self-defense.

Duel at Araluen highlights the importance of loyalty, friendship, and bravery. For example, Jesper, one of the Scandians, makes several mean comments to one of his shipmates. Afterwards, Jesper claimed he was just joking. Hal scolds Jasper, saying, “A joke is when everyone can have a good laugh together. But when you do something that’s spiteful and hurtful and causes misery to someone else, that’s not a joke. That’s cruelty.”

Duel at Araluen uses the same format of all The Ranger’s Apprentice books. Even though the format is familiar, readers will be happy to see returning characters such as the Scandians from the Brotherband Series. Seeing the world from Maddie’s point of view gives the setting a fresh outlook. Plus, both Cassandra and Maddie have strong roles that involve leadership, planning, and fighting. Instead of being portrayed as stereotypical damsels in distress, Cassandra and Maddie are well-developed, capable characters who have many admirable traits. Readers who want to explore books with a strong female character and plenty of action should also add the League of Archers Series by Eva Howard to their reading list.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • After the Red Fox Clan took over the castle, the King, Cassandra and a group of loyal soldiers lock themselves in a tower. The Red Fox Clan started throwing projectiles at the tower. In response, Cassandra’s archers shoot arrows at the invading army. “Two of the first three shots found their targets. One man fell away from the windlass, an arrow in his upper body. Another. . . went down with a shaft in his thigh.”
  • The Red Fox Clan builds a trebuchet and uses it to throw rocks at the castle tower. Cassandra’s archers shoot fire arrows at the trebuchet and the invading army. “Two men went down. One of them stayed down. The other one hauled himself to his feet. . . an arrow through his lower leg. . . All the while, the tree archers peppered the trebuchet with arrows, but to no real effect. The only reward for their efforts was a sole figure lying unmoving on the flagstones.”
  • The Red Fox Clan begins throwing fire bladders at the tower. “Cassandra started in fear as the bladder struck the tower. . . Almost instantly, there was a roar of flame as the oil and pitch ignited, and a flood of fire erupted over the balcony, some of it clinging to the walls, while the rest dripped down and spread tendrils of flame over the floor.” No one is injured by the fire bladders.
  • The Red Fox Clan plan to swarm the fort that Horace, Gilan, and their army are hiding. “The light flared up, revealing a mass of some twenty men on the walkway. Instantly, the archers on the east and west walls drew, aimed and shot. A storm of arrows slammed into the attackers as they bunched together. . . more arrows slammed into them as they hesitated.”
  • During the attack, the rebels use ladders to scale the fort’s walls. “Their leader ran to be the first down one of the ladders. But, five spaces short of it, he was struck by an arrow and hurled back against the rough timbers of the palisade.”
  • One of the rebels lunges at Gilan with a sword. “Gilan’s sword, gleaming blood-red in the smoky firelight, struck like a viper, driving the man’s upper body, piercing the chain metal there. The swordsman gasped and stepped back. . . [Gilan] swung in a diagonal overhead cut at the man on his left. The stroke went home and the man fell to his knees, crying out in pain and shock. Then he toppled sideways.” The battle is described over nine pages.
  • After the battle, a man gives a casualty report. The Araluen’s lost two men and three others were injured. The rebels lost at least a dozen men and eight are wounded and cannot flee.
  • Along with the Scandians, the Araluens attack the rebel army. The Araluens use their lances to try to break up the enemy’s shield wall. “Some of the lances penetrated, forcing their way between the shields, hitting bodies, legs, and arms.” The battle is described over eight pages.
  • During the battle, one of the rebels “reared up in agony, clutching vainly at an arrow that had magically appeared between his shoulder blades.”
  • One of the leaders of the rebel army, Trask, steals his own soldier’s horse and tries to flee. But Maddie sees Trask and uses her sling as a weapon. Trask “felt a thundering impact on his helmet, right in the center of his forehead. . . Vaguely, he felt himself topple backward from the saddle and crash onto the soft grass. Then everything went black.”
  • The rebels set a door on fire, trying to chase Cassandra and her army to flee. One of Cassandra’s sergeants goes around the wall and a crossbowman “raised his weapon and shot. . . Then the crossbow bolt hit him and he reared back, falling dead at Cassandra’s feet.”
  • The book ends with a multi-chapter battle between the Araluens and the Red Fox Clan, where many people die. During the battle, one of Cassandra’s archers is stabbed and “with a startled cry of pain, the archer fell back on the steps, his spear clattering on the stonework as he dropped it.” Many men are killed in a similar manner.
  • During the attack, one of the rebels “felt a chill of fear clutch his heart as he realized he was seriously outmatched. . . In total panic, he turned to run, but Hal leaped forward and, reversing his sword, brought the heavy hilt down on the back of the man’s head, sending him sprawling unconscious on the boards of the walkway.”
  • Cassandra and the rebel leader, Dimon, fight. Cassandra injures him. “Blood dripped slowly from Dimon’s left arm, but not in sufficient quantities to weaken him.” At one point, Cassandra “twisted desperately to the right. The blade scored across her ribs, opening a long, shallow slash in her side. Blood welled out instantly, staining her jerkin.” Cassandra kills Dimon. The sword fight is described over five pages.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of Cassandra’s sergeants was “nursing a mug of ale—a small mug, in view of their limited supply.”

Language

  • Damn is used three times. For example, Dimon says, “I should have thought of this damned tower, should have remembered how impregnable it can be.”
  • Maddie’s horse says, “By Blarney’s perpetual beard, when you sleep, you really sleep, don’t you?”
  • Maddie calls her horse a know-all and a blowhard.
  • Twice a Scandian uses “Orlog’s ears” as an exclamation.
  • The king calls the rebel’s leader scum.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Maddie’s horse makes a comment about Blarney, “a minor Hibernian deity. . .His beard grew constantly down to his feet, no matter how often he cut or shaved it.”

Gallant

Olivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for Girls, and all she has of her past is her mother’s journal—which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home; it doesn’t matter if her cousin Matthew is hostile, or if she sees half-formed ghouls haunting the hallways.

Olivia knows that Gallant is hiding secrets, and she is determined to uncover them. When she crosses a ruined wall at just the right moment, Olivia finds herself in a place that is Gallant—but not. The manor is crumbling, the ghouls are solid, and a mysterious figure rules over all. Now, Olivia sees what has unraveled generations of her family and where her father may have come from.

Olivia has always wanted to belong somewhere, but will she take her place as a Prior, protecting our world against the Master of the House? Or will she take her place beside him?

As a gothic, ghost story Gallant is surprisingly dull and unexciting. While Olivia can see “ghouls” and communicate with them through her thoughts, none of the ghouls she encounters are developed in detail. Instead of being interesting, the ghouls fade into the background and they evoke little emotion. Even though Olivia learns that she can communicate with ghouls, she doesn’t try to initiate a conversation with her dead uncle, who obviously killed himself. She also doesn’t try to communicate with her dead mother, who could answer many of her questions. Because of this, Olivia’s gift is not fully developed or explored.

Olivia is an interesting and unique protagonist, who is non-verbal and communicates only through sign language. This caused her childhood to be lonely and unpleasant. Not only does she have to struggle with being abandoned at Merilance, but she also has to deal with the other children who are cruel, and the matrons who are indifferent. Because of this, Olivia is willing to go to Gallant, even though her mother has warned her to stay away.

While the story has some interesting story threads—what happened to Olivia’s parents, why should she stay away from Galant, why can she see ghouls—none of them are well developed. Even though Olivia encounters the personification of Death, his soldiers, and other ghouls, the story only evokes mild curiosity, contains little suspense, and little scare factor. In addition, the conclusion is lackluster and depressing. In the end, the reader is left wondering why Olivia would stay at Gallant. Readers who are looking for an exciting paranormal story should read Schwab’s other series, The Archived, or The Breathless by Tara Goedjen.

Sexual Content

  • Sometimes boys would “linger at the edge of the gravel moat,” trying to get the girls’ attention. One day, Olivia goes to talk to a boy and “he kissed her, she waited to feel whatever her mother had felt for her father the day they met, the spark that lit the fire that burned their whole world down. But she only felt his hand on her waist. His mouth on her mouth. A hollow sadness.”

Violence

  • Anabelle, a girl at Merilance, tears pages out of Olivia’s mother’s journal. Olivia “fell on Anabelle, finger wrapped around her throat. Anabelle yelped, and Olivia squeezed until the girl could not speak, could not breathe, and then the matrons were there, pulling them apart.”
  • To get back at Anabelle, Olivia “went down into the cellar. . . she managed to fill the jar with beetles, and spiders, and half a dozen silverfish. She added a handful of ash from the head matron’s hearth.” Olivia dumps the content on Anabelle’s head.
  • Olivia cannot yell and she wonders if pain could free her voice, so she cuts herself. “The cut was deep. Blood welled and spilled onto the counter, and heat screamed up her arm and through her lungs, but only a short, sharp gasp escaped her throat, more emptiness than sound.”
  • In a dream, Olivia witnesses her uncle’s death. “The gun swings up against his temple. . .” then Olivia wakes up.
  • While in Death’s world, a ghoul pushes Olivia away. “And then a blade sings through the ghoul’s back, and it staggers, and Olivia knows the ghoul cannot die, knows it is already dead, but the sight of the metal spilling out of its chest, its knees buckling silently to the dirt, still sends a shock of horror through her bones.”
  • In order to get out from behind the wall, someone killed Matthew’s brother. “The door on the other side was soaked with blood. There was so much of it. Too much. Someone had painted the door with my brother’s life. Covered every iron inch . . . But that thing slaughtered my brother for nothing. Only a Prior’s blood can open the door, but it has to be willingly given.”
  • Olivia goes behind the wall, hoping to find Matthew’s brother. When she sees Death, “Olivia spins, drawing the blade. She doesn’t wait, but twists and drives the knife into his chest.” The knife doesn’t hurt Death.
  • Death tries to subdue Olivia, who “fights like a girl set loose on the world with nothing and everything to lose. But it’s not enough. A gauntlet closes over her wrist, flinging her into a plated chest, and the last thing she sees is the gleam of an armored shoulder as the third shadow looms.”
  • Olivia takes a piece of bone and “the sliver of bone becomes a beak, becomes a skull, becomes a crow, muscle and skin and feathers.” Olivia tells the crow to attack Death. “Olivia is on her feet, racing toward the door, even as she hears him pluck the bird from the air, the brittle snap of its neck. . .”
  • In a multi-chapter conclusion, Olivia and Matthew fight Death. Death captures Olivia. “His embrace tightens until she cannot move, cannot breathe. Her bones groan, and she lets out a stifled gasp.” Matthew comes through the door to help Olivia.
  • One of Death’s soldiers goes after Matthew, who “slashes out with his blade, but the wolfish soldier dodges lithely and kicks him in the chest. He collapses to his hands and knees, gasping for breath . . . The soldier lowers the dagger to his throat.”
  • One of Death’s soldiers grabs Olivia, “she writhes and tries to breathe, tries to think and time slows down. . . She slams her head back into the soldier.” Olivia is able to free herself and grab one of the soldier’s weapons. “The soldier rears back, but Olivia is already swinging, bringing the sword down a third time, carving deep into his shoulder. The collarbone comes free. . . he is already falling back into dust as the bone hits the grass.”
  • In order to save Olivia’s life, Matthew “pushed her out of the way the instant before the sword cut down. Matthew, who leans in the doorway, the blade driven through, the point jutting like a thorn from his back.” Matthew dies.
  • When death finds a way into the living world, Edgar “aims at Death a second time and fires, the bullet melting in the air above his floating cloak.”
  • Olivia calls on the ghouls, who “close over [Death] like ivy, their edges dissolving into one teeming mass of shadow as they force him back through the garden, back through the open door, back beyond the wall.” Then Olivia seals the door with her blood.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of the matrons at Merilance hides a bottle of brandy in a drawer.
  • In order to help Matthew sleep, Edgar drugs him.

Language

  • Damn is used once.

Supernatural

  • Olivia can see “ghouls.”
  • There is a stone wall at the back of Gallant’s garden. At night, a person can walk around the wall, but they end up in a different world—a world where Death lives. Olivia’s mother once went around the wall and saw Death “with his four shadows and his dozen shades, all silent in the bones of the ruined house.”
  • When Olivia crosses the wall, she sees “the shriveled remains of a garden. Withered limbs and wilting blooms, their petals, pale, their leaves devoid of color. . . And there, at the top of the ruined garden, sits another Gallant.”
  • In Death’s world, Olivia has the ability to give life. When Olivia picks up a tooth, it “jumps. Shudders like a bee against her palm. . . by the time it hits the ground, it is not a writhing bit of bone, but a mouse.”
  • Olivia meets Death. “His skin is not creased, yet here and there it peels away, the polished bone beneath showing through like stone under thinning ivy. And that is how she sees that there are pieces of him missing. . . The joint of one finger. The edge of one cheek. . .”
  • Death watches a group of people dancing. Death dances with a woman. And then, “the dancer crumbles against him, her body sagging into ash and he sighs. . . A pale white fragment shines on the wooden floor where the dancer stood . . . then it rises and tucks itself against the tear along his jaw, and she realizes it was a shard of bone.” Then other bones return to Death’s body and flesh regrows over the bones.
  • Matthew explains how his family, the Priors made the demon go back beyond the wall. The Priors “put the wall back up. And this time, they soaked it edge to edge in their blood and swore that nothing would ever cross that gate without their blessing.”

Spiritual Content

  • At Merilance, Olivia “was told to kneel and knit her fingers and speak to a God she couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t touch. . . She never believed in higher powers.” But when she meets death, she prays to the ghouls for help and they come.

The Dark Matter of Mona Starr

Sometimes the world is too much for Mona Starr. She’s sweet, geeky, and creative, but it’s hard for her to make friends and connect with other people. So much so, that her depression seems to take on a vivid, concrete form. Mona Starr calls it her Matter.

The Matter seems to be everywhere, telling Mona she’s not good enough and that everyone around her wishes she’d go away. But with therapy, art, writing, and the persistence of a few good friends, Mona starts to understand her Matter and learns she can turn her fears into strengths.

Many readers will relate to Mona, who struggles with insecurity, indecision, and negative thoughts. Even though Mona tries to hide her dark thoughts, she realizes that she can rely on others for emotional support. As Mona tries to understand her depression, she has the help of a therapist, her parents, and her friends. While this takes away much of the shame associated with depression, the constantly shifting scenes make the story disjointed. Despite this, Mona’s personal journey allows teens to understand depression and how depression can impact people.

Throughout the graphic novel, Mona struggles with dark thoughts and wonders if “I’m doomed. . . and it’s all doomed. That I don’t matter. . . none of it matters.” Her emotions are expressed in both the text and the illustrations. For example, in one scene the picture shows her surrounded by speakers that blare comments such as, “You deserve to be alone. You’re lame. You’re a bad person.” Her dark thoughts take several different forms, such as a huge blanket, loudspeakers, and space. While the illustrations are beautiful and complex, the inconsistency may confuse some readers.

One negative aspect of the graphic novel is that some of the comments don’t connect with the story’s plot. For example, Mona tells her counselor, “I know I shouldn’t complain as a privileged white American” which may imply that Mona’s problems aren’t valid. Plus, there are several other comments that needed to be developed in more detail. For example, Mona thinks her depression caused a benign tumor to grow. However, this thought is never explained or discouraged.

The Dark Matter of Mona Starr will give readers insight into how to cope with depression. Not only does Mona go to therapy, but each chapter begins with advice that helps Mona deal with her dark thoughts. For example, “draw it out,” “turn emotion into action,” and “break your cycles.” Mona learns to lean on her friends and to be honest about her difficulties. She also learns that “I can’t erase the negative story in my head that says I’m crazy but maybe I can replace it with a story that is more accurate.”

The black-and-white illustrations are captivating because of their complexity. Instead of just relying on facial expressions, Mona’s emotions take on forms of their own. For example, at one point Mona is overwhelmed and the illustration shows her surrounded by a brick wall. In another image, Mona’s hope is highlighted by a yellow glow and when Mona’s parents support her, they have yellow hearts surrounding them.

Readers who would like to explore how other characters deal with anxiety should read Guts by Raina Telgemeier and Breath Like Water by Anna Jarzab. Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge also deals with a teen’s overwhelming emotions and self-doubt, but it does a better job explaining these emotions better

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Mona’s father talks about his sister who was “mentally unwell. She ended up taking her own life.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Mona overhears her parents’ conversation. Her mother says, “Maybe she needs medication? My sister is on antidepressants and says it helps.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

The Vanishing Stair

The Truly Devious case—an unsolved kidnapping and triple murder that rocked Ellingham Academy in 1936—has consumed Stevie for years. It’s the very reason she came to the academy. But then her classmate is murdered, and her parents quickly pull her out of school. For her safety, they say, she must move past this obsession with crime.

Stevie’s willing to do anything to get back to Ellingham, be back with her friends, and solve the Truly Devious case. Even if it means making a deal with the despicable Senator Edward King. And when Stevie finally returns, she also returns to David: the guy she kissed and the guy who lied about his identity—Edward King’s son.

But larger issues are at play. Where did the murderer hide? What’s the meaning of the riddle Albert Ellingham left behind? And what, exactly, is at stake in the Truly Devious affair? The Ellingham case isn’t just a piece of history—it’s a live wire into the present.

The Vanishing Stairs will keep readers interested as new information is revealed both in Stevie’s personal life and in the Ellingham case she is investigating. Stevie is a sympathetic character, who struggles with panic attacks, isn’t always sure how to interact with others, and is curious enough to dig into the lives of the past. Now that one student has died and one student has disappeared, Stevie is more focused on finding out why Ellingham Academy seems to court danger.

While readers learn some information about the kidnapping of Ellingham’s wife and daughter, they also get a firsthand look into the events of 1936 as the book goes from past to present. Stevie’s investigation is able to shed light on some of the events in the kidnapping, but the crime also unfolds from several different characters’ perspectives which allows the reader to understand all aspects of the events. The crime is more complicated—and has more secrets—than expected.

The second installment in the Truly Devious Series begins right where the first one left off. Despite this, the story quickly and excellently explains the main events and important characters from the previous book. However, in order for readers to have an emotional connection to the characters, the series should be read in order.

The Vanishing Stairs is a fast-paced mystery that readers will not be able to put down. Both the interesting characters and the twisty mystery make this a perfect book to wrap up in a blanket and enjoy. However, be warned The Vanishing Stairs does not downplay violence, or the lengths people will go to hide their secrets.

Sexual Content

  • As Stevie is investigating the Ellingham case, she learns about Francis, who was a student at the school. While Francis does not know this, her biological father was a “handsome barman” that worked at a casino that many of New York’s rich frequented. The casino was where “bored society women like to spend their afternoons sipping drinks. . . and apparently doing other things.”
  • In 1936, two students, Francis and Eddie, meet in the woods where “he pressed her back into a tree. She took his face in both hands and kissed him roughly, running her hands down his back. . .” Both Francis and Eddie were “dirty” and “wild.”
  • Eddie was determined to disappoint his rich family. “There were tales of seducing maids, wandering naked through formal dinners, filling an entire bathroom with champagne.” His bad behavior was why he was sent to Ellingham Academy.
  • While making out with Eddie, the narration explains, Francis “had been with other boys before, but they fumbled. Eddie knew precisely what he was doing. . . He drew her down now and ran his hands along her side inch by inch until she hardly felt like she could bear it.”
  • While in the school cafeteria, someone says Janelle and her girlfriend, Vi, are “about to make out on top of those mugs.” Two other times, someone comments on their public displays of affection.
  • David and Stevie explore a hidden tunnel in the academy. David “ran his fingers down her jawline gently. . . He kept coming closer, slowly, testing his way, until his chest was against hers and she didn’t move. . .When her lips met his, she felt something release inside of her. . . There was something frantic about the way she kissed him, like being with him was the only way she could breathe.” The scene is described over half a page.

Violence

  • Stevie reads an article about Eddie’s death. “Edward Pierce Davenport spent the day consuming opium and violet champagne. . . After toasting the city and the setting sun, he downed a last glass of champagne and swan-dived from the building into the street below. His body landed on a Nazi vehicle, denting the roof.”
  • Dottie’s body was found by a delivery man. “He saw what appeared to be a sack on the ground. . . he realized there were two legs coming from the sack—at least parts of legs. They were discolored, ravaged by weather and wildlife.”
  • David said that his mother had an affair with “a guy in the state legislature who went to Beck’s gym.” During the affair, his mother got pregnant.
  • Ellingham purchased a clock that was reported to be owned by royalty. Ellingham wondered, “When had the murdered princess last looked at it? It had been spared the sight of her death, her head put on a spike and paraded through the streets of Paris. The head had even been displayed at her friend the queen’s prison window, a ghastly puppet.”
  • Stevie is in town when she sees a group of skaters. “One of them was repeatedly punching David in the face. . . There was a gash along his right cheek that was trickling blood. There was another cut above his eye. . . There was a bit of bloody spittle coming out of the side of his mouth.” Later Stevie discovers that David paid the skaters to beat him, but he doesn’t explain why.
  • Ellingham learns who was responsible for kidnapping his wife and child. The person explains how Dottie died. When trying to escape, Dottie “jumped right down into that hole trying to get away. . . I climbed down after her. There was so much blood. She was groaning and trying to crawl, but she couldn’t make it. . . Her skull must have been cracked wide open. . . So I grabbed a pipe. . . and just hit her once and she stopped moving.”
  • To confront the suspect, Ellingham takes the man out on a boat. When the man refuses to tell Ellingham where his daughter is, Ellingham blows up the boat killing both himself and the suspect. “Bits and pieces of boat and human would be found for weeks to come, washing up on the shore.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Ellingham Academy first opened, Ellingham “told the staff to turn the other way when students were caught drinking.”
  • When meeting a university professor at a coffee shop, Stevie notices that the professor has difficult walking alone. Later, at the professor’s house, Stevie sees the recycling full of “many wine bottles, two whisky bottles, a vodka bottle.”
  • When David was seven, his mother went into the bathroom “with a bottle of Chablis and passed out. She was red all over—the water was turned all the way up on the hot side.” When David found his mom, he called 911.
  • While “a little drunk,” David told a friend a secret.
  • While anxious, Stevie takes “one small white pill. The emergency Ativan that she carried ‘just in case.’”
  • It is revealed that Ellingham’s wife had been using cocaine.

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes ass, bastard, crap, damn, fuck, holy shit, and shit.
  • Jesus Christ, my God, God, and oh my God are used as exclamations frequently.
  • Stevie thinks Edward King is a “sanctimonious ass.”
  • Stevie calls several people dicks. For example, Stevie comments that a student’s friends are “real dicks.”
  • A security guard says, “Some jackass bought pumpkin-flavored K-Cups.”
  • A security guard tells Stevie, “Edward King is a son of a bitch and his son is a piece of work.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra

After tracking down incredible discoveries by Einstein and Darwin, Charlie is back. This time, the great ruler Cleopatra has left behind an extremely valuable and powerful treasure, its location encoded on an ancient stone tablet.

In 30 BCE, Cleopatra and her husband, Marc Antony, lost their war against Octavian for control of the Egyptian Empire. However, Cleopatra knew Octavian was really after the mysterious item that was the source of all her wealth and influence, so she hid it before committing suicide. She left a series of devious clues behind for her children to find, but they were lost to history. . .until now.

In a breathless adventure that takes her across the globe, Charlie must fight for her life against ruthless enemies, match wits with Cleopatra, and solve the two-thousand-year-old mystery to prevent the most powerful treasure of the ancient world from falling into the wrong hands. 

Because the story revolves around finding Cleopatra’s hidden treasure, the story contains many historical facts about Cleopatra, Caesar, and other important people. The history lessons are not boring; the interesting facts help the reader understand the political issues surrounding Cleopatra and will help readers empathize with Cleopatra, who was misjudged because she was a woman.  

Charlie is an extremely likable character, who is intelligent, capable, and brave. In order to keep Cleopatra’s treasure out of the wrong hands, Charlie puts her trust in her half-brother and CIA agent, Dante, and his partner, Milana. Along the way, they must avoid both the CIA, the Israeli, and the Egyptian agents who are willing to kill to take control of Charlie. Despite being chased around the globe, Charlie is remarkably down to earth. At one point, when the Israelis capture her, she tells the agent, “If you were actually nice people, you wouldn’t have dragged me down into the bowels of the Colosseum to talk to me. You would have taken me out for gelato.” 

Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra is best suited for older readers because of the violence, power-hungry villains, and deadly agents who are trying to capture Charlie. The action-packed story has a complicated plot, intense fight scenes, and life-or-death chases. The constant danger makes for an exciting book that readers will not want to put down. The mystery of Cleopatra adds an interesting dimension that will engage readers. Readers who are looking for another fast-paced mystery should check out the City Spies Series by James Ponti and the Secrets of the Seven Series by Sarah L. Thomson.  

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • Charlie sneaks into Ahmet’s office. When he appears, “Charlie tricked him into turning his back on her. Now she clamped the chloroform-soaked rag. . . over his nose and mouth. . . He tried to fight back. . . Charlie simply leapt onto his back as if he were giving her a piggyback ride, wrapping her arms around his head and keeping the rag pinioned directly over his face.” Ahmet collapses to the floor. 
  • While leaving Ahmet’s party, two bodyguards chase after Charlie. Before she can take off on a motorcycle, Charlie “headbutted another man who was trying to catch her.” She escapes the house but is followed. 
  • Hoping to lose her pursuer, Charlie drives into the desert and allows her motorcycle to fly over a sand dune. Then, Charlie sees “the stocky, muscular shape of his body. He was aiming a gun at her.” The man forces Charlie to surrender. The chase scene is described over two chapters. 
  • The men who captured Charlie encounter a roadblock. “And then the shooting started. The snipers were aiming at the tires of the van, and they were extremely accurate. All four tires were blown out within seconds.” Charlie is let go. 
  • The Egyptian secret service questions Charlie’s captor, Semel. When Semel doesn’t answer the questions, “someone clubbed him on the back of the head with the butt of a rifle. Not hard enough to knock him unconscious but close. He saw stars, felt blinding pain, and fell forward in the dirt.” 
  • While interrogating Semel, someone shoots the agent, who “yelped in pain, spun, and fell.” Multiple agents are shot in the leg, and Semel and his men escape.  
  • In order to get Charlie to comply with orders, one of her friends is captured by a man named Lembris. “Lembris stood behind Eva, pressing a crowbar against the front of her neck. Eva was crying.” Eventually, Milana fights Lembris and frees Eva. 
  • The following scenes are described over eleven pages. Ramses has his men surround Charlie, Milana, and Dante. In order to escape, Charlie “reached behind [Ramses’s] back and yanked on the electrical cord that dangled like a vine from the scaffolding above. The power drill attached to it tumbled off the scaffolding and landed squarely on Ramses’s head. . . The heavy drill hit Ramses hard, and he dropped like a stone.” 
  • Then, Milana goes after Ramses’s bodyguard. “She quickly disarmed him, then jabbed him with the sedative she had. . . it was just enough to incapacitate the big man.” 
  • When Ramses begins to get up, Dante “drove the Egyptian’s head down into the marble floor, knocking him out for good.” One of Ramses’s men, Baako, throws a crowbar at Dante. “Pain shot through him, but he could tell no bones were broken.” 
  • Baako and Dante continue to fight. Baako slammed into Dante, driving him backward into the scaffolding so hard that all four stories of it trembled. . .” Eventually the scaffolding falls onto Baako and he “lay unconscious beneath it all.”  
  • After finding one of Cleopatra’s clues, Charlie, Dante, and Milana are ambushed by their own agency, the CIA. Without warning “bullets came from all around. . . Dante sprang from where he’d been crouched and fired back, aiming at where the shots were coming from. There was a cry of pain in the darkness, and then at least one of the shooters stopped.” In order to escape, the group flees separately. 
  • As Charlie runs from the bullets, two cars begin following her. “The second car struck the first again, sending it into a low embankment, where it flipped and landed upside down. The second car was badly damaged as well. Its front axle snapped and it ground to a halt in the plaza in front of Charlie, blocking her escape.”  
  • When the driver of the car attempts to “escape through a shattered window. He was only halfway out when Semel clubbed him on the back of the head with the butt of his gun, knocking him cold. . .” 
  • The chase scene is described over 10 pages. Dante had “a burn across one bicep where a bullet had nicked him. Milana had a gash from a knife in her left arm. . .” 
  • In an epic multi-chapter conclusion, several CIA agents try to take down Dante and Milana, who they believe are rogue agents. Milana “disarmed the stunned CIA operative and threw her to the ground” and then ran into Central Park. Eventually, Milana is able to incapacitate all of the agents. 
  • A rich villain, Ahmet, tries to kill Charlie with cobra venom. “Charlie hated to use the elixir to defend herself, but she had no other choice. The remaining drops of liquid flew through the air, caught Ahmet in the face, and instantly began to react. His flesh smoked and sizzled.” Ahmet’s skin begins to burn. 
  • Despite being injured, Ahmet chases Charlie. “He stepped on the jagged glass of the syringe with his bare foot. It cut into his flesh, and he suddenly realized that, in addition to everything else, the very cobra venom he had brought with him to kill Charlie Throne was now in his system as well.” When Ahmet continues to chase Charlie, she hits him with a helmet made of medieval armor. Ahmet is too injured to continue after Charlie.  
  • Two villains, Israeli agents, Egyptian agents, and the CIA agents all try to capture Charlie, Dante, and Milana. During the chase, several people are injured. One villain lunges at Charlie, trying to poison her with cobra venom. “Charlie hit him with the mace. . . the heavy iron ball struck his forearm, snapping both bones. . . He cursed at Charlie and charged toward her, leaving her no choice but to defend herself. She leapt aside and swung the mace at him once more. . . the iron ball glanced off his head, sending him reeling.” The villain falls off a ledge and “onto the rocks below.”  

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • Instead of allowing Octavian to capture her, Cleopatra “drank her poison and imagined how horrified Octavian would be when he learned what she had done.” 
  • At a party full of adults, Charlie talks to a man who “had a glass of scotch in his hand and was slightly unsteady on his feet; this obviously wasn’t his first drink of the evening.” 
  • In order to find one of Cleopatra’s clues, Milana needs to get an archaeologist out of the way, so she drugs her.  
  • Milana uses sedation darts to incapacitate rival agents who are trying to kidnap Charlie.  
  • During dinner, Dante drinks wine. 

Language    

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • Cleopatra’s treasure is the philosopher’s stone which turns “base metals into gold.”  

Spiritual Content  

  • Some people considered Cleopatra “more than human. They thought her to be a goddess, the living incarnation of Isis.” 
  • Isis was “the most important goddess in Egyptian mythology, the goddess of life and magic, and the protector of women and children. Cleopatra sometimes claimed to be Isis in the flesh and a lot of Egyptians believed it.” 
  • During Cleopatra’s time, the Nile flooded almost every year. People believed “a good flood year meant the gods were smiling on the Egyptians.” 

Family of Liars

Caroline Lenox Taft “Carrie” Sinclair is the eldest of four daughters. Her prestigious old-money family, the Sinclairs, spend their summers on their private east coast island. As a family, they follow certain rules: “We keep a stiff upper lip. We make the best of things. We look toward the future.” This does not change when the youngest sister, Rosemary, drowns.  

The summer after, seventeen-year-old Carrie goes back to the island where she sees her lost sister. However, Rosemary’s ghost is not the only surprise the summer will bring. 

Newly confident from surgery that has left her with a chin that is “set forward” and an addiction to painkillers, Carrie is more than ready for love. Carrie discovers that her cousin Yardley has brought along three boys. One of the boys, Pfeff, captures Carrie’s attention right away. Irresistible and unpredictable, Pfeff changes everything for Carrie.  A summer of passion, long-buried secrets, betrayal, and terrible mistakes has only just begun. 

In Family of Liars, Carrie is the narrator, who is vividly fleshed out. The story is framed as Carrie telling it to the ghost of her son, Johnny, who died in a fire in We Were Liars. Carrie admits that she is unreliable, so the reader is kept on their toes and will be questioning things until the full truth is revealed. For a portion of the book, readers will feel sympathetic towards Carrie because she begins her story amid a loss, and she spends time reminiscing over the long-ago loss of her sister. By the end, Carrie is not exactly likable, but she is interesting, and the reader will have a good grasp of who she is. 

Unfortunately, the story has several flaws. First, most of the other characters feel flat. There are so many of them, and some exit the story for long periods and reappear unceremoniously. The large cast of characters will force the reader to pay close attention to who’s who. In addition, certain plotlines feel unnecessary. In particular, the haunting that Carrie experiences does little for the story aside from showcasing her relationship with her deceased sister. The reader might expect a twist or revelation regarding Rosemary’s death, but there is none to be found.  

Despite its flaws, Family of Liars is still gripping enough to forgive most of the book’s shortcomings. The pacing has little twists and turns occurring throughout the story rather than a slow burn to a revelation at the end. The book can be understood without having read its predecessor, but it should be noted that the famous twist of We Were Liars is spoiled on the first page of Family of Liars. If a reader intends to read both books, We Were Liars should be read first. 

Family of Liars is nevertheless a gripping read that fans of We Were Liars are sure to enjoy. Lockhart’s writing style and storytelling ability are captivating and easy to get sucked into. Readers will not find it hard to get invested in the complicated Sinclair family.  

Sexual Content 

  • Carrie recalls her teenage years and fantasizing about kissing, at one point saying, “I longed for love, and I had a pretty urgent interest in sex.” 
  • Carrie remarks that her sister Penny has “kissed too many people to count.” 
  • When Pfeff is changing, he playfully calls out for the others not to come in and look at his “weenie.” When one of his friends says nobody would be interested in a weenie like his, Pfeff retorts, “It’s a perfectly normal weenie. A good weenie, even.”
  • While swimming with the boys for the first time, Carrie thinks “the nerves in my fingertips cry out to touch someone.” 
  • When Carrie’s cousin’s parents get a divorce, the cousin tries to ignore evidence that her dad had “girlfriends, or hookers, even.” 
  • Carrie sees her cousin and her boyfriend passionately kissing. She was “pressing him against the house with her hand up his shirt.” She then invites him up to her room. 
  • Shortly after meeting, Carrie and Pfeff become romantically involved. Pfeff kisses her and slides his hand “up [her] waist to [her] chest.” 
  • Pfeff reconnects with a girl from his past and spends several hours with her. A friend speculates to Carrie that he spent the afternoon “‘boning that girl.’” 
  • After kissing one night, it is implied that Carrie and Pfeff have sex. They go to “his room in Goose cottage. [They] take off [their clothes]. . . . [their] skin salty, [their] breath uneven.” 
  • After their first sexual encounter, Carrie and Pfeff struggle to keep their hands off each other. At one point, they are kissing in the ocean and Pfeff takes off her bikini top and “presses his chest up against [her] underwater.” 
  • Carrie catches Penny “kissing Pfeff.” 
  • Pfeff begins “forcing himself on [Penny]” while they are “messing around.”  
  • Carrie briefly mentions “reveling in sex” during the summer when she was nineteen. 
  • Carrie remarks that Rosemary would have been reading books and “folding down the pages on the sexual bits.” 

Violence 

  • Rosemary drowns in the ocean, presumably “knocked down by a wave and caught in an undertow.”  
  • Carrie recalls the original Brother’s Grimm tale of Cinderella, which involves the two stepsisters mutilating their own feet, “one cuts off her big toe. The other slices off the back of her heel.” 
  • In a Brother’s Grimm story called Mr. Fox, the titular character brings home the dead body of a woman and cuts her hand off. At the end of the story, two men “cut [Mr. Fox] into a thousand pieces.” 
  • When Pfeff tries to assault Penny, Bess kills Pfeff by “[bashing] his head with a board.” The three sisters cover up the murder by dumping his body far out in the ocean. 
  • Near the end of the book, Carrie reveals that she was the one who killed Pfeff in a blind rage. She “brought [the board] down over and over,” not knowing if it was Penny or Pfeff she was hitting. Bess witnesses this, and it turns out that Pfeff was attempting to assault Penny, so both sisters believe Carrie was acting out to defend her. The scene is described over a page. 
  • The ghost of Rosemary reveals she keeps coming back to haunt Beechwood because she’s worried Carrie will kill herself, or as Carrie puts it, that “I would cut my wrists or drown my own unworthy self, then worried I would kill myself with pills.”

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • Carrie’s parents smoke cigarettes one time. 
  • After surgery, Carrie took several medications and painkillers and became addicted to codeine. She describes her teenager self as “an athlete and a narcotics addict.” 
  • Penny steals a bottle of wine from the cellar and she and her sisters, all underaged, drink it on the dock. 
  • At seventeen, Carrie steals Halcion sleeping pills from her father and takes one out of curiosity. She develops a habit and notes that in the future, “it will take me some years and two stays in rehabilitation clinics to stop taking pills.”  
  • As an adult, Carrie struggles with alcoholism. 
  • While walking to her room, Carrie sees Penny and her friend passed out with “an empty bottle of whiskey on the floor.” Carrie wakes them and gives them Tylenol. 
  • Pfeff and Major say that they are “high” on one occasion and they admit that they often are. 
  • Fourteen-year-old Bess is drunk on whiskey when Pfeff is killed.  
  • All the teenagers drink frequently.  
  • Adults are described as drinking on a few occasions. On one occasion they allow the teenagers to drink with them, and Carrie gets fairly drunk.
  • Bess remarks that Penny had “three beers in an hour.” 
  • After dumping Pfeff’s body, the sisters get drunk on whiskey.

Language 

  • The word ass is said a couple of times. 
  • The word bastard is said once. 
  • Penny calls Pfeff a “fucking rapist.” 

Supernatural Content 

  • The entire story is framed as an adult Carrie telling it to the ghost of her son, Johnny. 
  • The sisters believe they hear a voice one night, and Penny speculates that it could be the ghost of their youngest sister, Rosemary. 
  • Early on, Carrie begins seeing and interacting with the ghost of Rosemary. She describes her as “solid, not ghostly at all.”  
  • The ghost of Rosemary tells Carrie that she tried to visit her mother but she turned away from her. Their mother indirectly confirms this later in the book when she says, “one night, I thought I saw Rosemary… she looked like she had crawled up from the sea.” She dismissed the vision as a figment of her imagination. 
  • Carrie recalls a Brother’s Grimm story called The Stolen Pennies, which centers around bringing the ghost of a young child to rest. 
  • Carrie sees Pfeff’s ghost on the beach. He apologizes for the trouble he’s caused and swims out into the ocean after she tells him to leave. 
  • Rosemary keeps visiting Carrie summer after summer until Carrie tells her she doesn’t need to worry about her anymore. Rosemary’s spirit leads Carrie to the attic where she leaps from the window and vanishes, presumably at peace. 

Spiritual Content 

  • Bess says, “I kind of pray to Rosemary. Like she’s an angel or something.” 

Scarlet

Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother has been missing for nearly three weeks. After her pleas to the police are largely ignored, Scarlet resigns herself to focus on the responsibilities at her family’s farm—tending to chickens and selling vegetables at gossip-leaden bars in her small town of Rieux, France. When selling the vegetables, Scarlet suffers under endless taunts from the Rieux townsfolk, all who claim her grandmother to be as crazy as Cinder Linh— the cyborg girl known to have challenged the Lunar Queen Levana. Scarlet finds herself surprisingly defended by a strange man new to the town: an underground fighter is known simply as Wolf. As the two continue to cross paths, Wolf reveals an estranged connection to the gang which kidnapped Scarlet’s grandmother. Desperate to find her grandmother, Scarlet must choose to trust a man connected to the kidnapping, or else never see her grandmother again.

On another part of the globe—in the prison of the Eastern Commonwealth—Cinder is now a disgrace across her nation. Cinder becomes partners with felon Captain Thorne, and the two manage to flee with a spaceship. In hiding the fact Cinder is the lost Lunar Princess Selene—the only royalty savvy enough to overthrow the bloodthirsty Queen Levana—Cinder must decide whether to understand and accept her past or run away from it. As Queen Levana sends wolf-mutants to wreak havoc upon the world, her hold on the Eastern Commonwealth grows ever stronger. Cinder’s outlook on her past may decide the world’s future.

Scarlet continues the sci-fi rendition of the Cinderella story. The story maintains the intricate and clever character development among the characters Cinder Linh, Emperor Kai, and Queen Levana. Meyer also works through the perspectives of new characters Scarlet and Wolf, thereby managing to interweave another Brother’s Grimm fairytale: Little Red Riding Hood. Myer bases the characters on classic stories that a wide spectrum of readers already know. However, Meyer eloquently twists these original tales into a unique narrative of space operatic scale. What results is a set of classic tales so twisted and surprising readers will be kept on the edge of their seats.

Scarlet continually shifts between the perspectives of a multitude of characters. Cinder and Scarlet, as the main characters of the Lunar Series books one and two, are focused upon the most in Scarlet. However, even minor characters like Captain Thorne, Emperor Kai, Wolf, and even the Queen Levana have chapters from their point of view. By giving switching the character’s point of view, Meyer’s is able to transport the reader across the globe according to where, and when, each source of the action takes place. In doing so, Mayer effortlessly sutures the worlds of Cinder and Scarlet together, while also creating an intensely detailed and complex narrative world. Additionally, the shifting perspective of the narration gives readers room to consider the motivations of each character individually, allowing a clearer picture of the compelling politics at play.

While Scarlet may not be suitable for younger middle-grade readers due to its, occasionally intense, descriptions of violence and torture, the narrative is sure to be a captivating start for any mature YA readers interested in stepping into the realm of sci-fi and fantasy fiction. Enough of the narrative from Cinder is explained so readers can pick up Scarlet and be able to easily navigate the world that Meyer describes. (Though of course, starting the Lunar Chronicles from the beginning is still recommended!)

It is also refreshing to find a narrative so heavily lead by two strong female characters. Both Cinder and Scarlet are self-assured and formidable forces who have the ability to handle the intensity of split-second, world-determining decisions. By so confidently and intently working to learn from their past turmoil and losses, Cinder and Scarlet show readers how one can still hold their own agency even during the times when the pressure of the world seems heavy. In Scarlet, Meyer encourages readers to look towards their past, not as something dreadfully out of their control, but as something they have the freedom to sculpt how they wish— even from where they stand in the present. Readers who enjoy the Luna Chronicle should also read the Chemical Garden Series by Lauren DeStefano and the Tin Star Duology by Cecil Castellucci.

Sexual Content

  • When discussing Cinder, a customer at the Rieux Tavern says, “I think she’s kind of cute, pretending to be all helpless and innocent like that. Maybe instead of sending her back to the moon, they should let her come stay with me?” After this comment, another customer replies by saying, “No doubt that metal leg of hers would make for a real cozy bedmate!”
  • When speaking to the fighter about potentially offering him a farmhand job in exchange for food, Scarlet jokes, “After seeing the evidence of your appetite in there, I think I’d lose my shirt with a deal like that.” She then flushes, thinking, “no doubt he was now imagining her with her shirt off.”
  • Carswell Thorne, a current prisoner of New Beijing, recalls convincing a guard to lend him a portscreen (a touchpad of sorts), but concedes that, “this would not have succeeded if the guard wasn’t convinced he was an idiot, incapable of doing anything other than counting the days and searching for naughty pictures of ladies he’d known and imagined.” Thorne then thinks, “he sure did appreciate the suggestively naughty, if heavily filtered, pictures.”
  • Noticing Scarlet holding Wolf’s arm, the announcer in the center of the illegal fighting ring smirks and says, “Looks like the wolf has found himself a tender morsel tonight.” The fighter next to him—the one preparing to fight Wolf, claims, “Think I’ll be taking that one home after I’ve destroyed dog-boy’s pretty face!”
  • Upon reaching Captain Thorne’s stolen ship, Cinder notices that the “seal of the American Republic had been hastily painted over with the silhouette of a lounging naked lady.”
  • After hopping on board a train, Scarlet kisses Wolf. After she pulled away, “Wolf buried one hand into her mess of curls and kissed her back.”
  • When Ran catches Scarlet trying to escape from the Queen’s Special Forces, he says, “If it wasn’t such a repulsive thought, I might take advantage of you here, now that we’re all alone . . . just to see the look on my brother’s face when I told him about it.”

Violence

  • When discussing her grandmother’s disappearance, Scarlet describes how she found her grandmother’s ID (a person’s identification embedded typically inside the arm), “wrapped in cheesecloth spotted red from her blood and left like a tiny package on the kitchen counter.” While detectives attribute this to Scarlet’s grandmother cutting the ID from her arm herself, Scarlet accuses a kidnapper of doing so.
  • Speaking on the news of Cinder at the royal ball in the Eastern Commonwealth, a tavern regular named Roland says, “They [the royal guards] should have put her out of her misery when she fell on those stairs… I’d have put a bullet right through her head. And good riddance.”
  • Many of the customers at The Rieux Tavern argue with Scarlet about the fact that Cinder, “should be executed,” for trying to kill a Union leader.
  • The tavern crowd’s jeers towards TV footage of Cinder at the royal palace, Roland says, “We all know crazy runs in [Scarlet’s] family. First, that old goose [Scarlet’s grandmother] runs off, and now Scar’s defending Lunar rights!” In response, Scarlet “was suddenly halfway over the bar, bottles and glasses scattering, her fist connecting with Roland’s ear.” Scarlet then grabs the front of Roland’s shirt. Scarlet “shoved Roland hard with both hands,” causing him to stumble. When Roland threatens Scarlet, a fighter from the back of the tavern grabs him by the neck, “lifting him clear off the floor.” The fighter chokes Roland until other tavern guests convince him to let go. This scene is described four pages.
  • It is noted that Scarlet keeps a small pistol strapped to her lower back, just in case, “a stranger will want to take you somewhere you don’t mean to go.”
  • Scarlet’s father breaks into her grandmother’s house, in order to rifle through her grandmother’s things. Trying to stop him, Scarlet grabs her father’s arm, and then notices, “The skin was covered in burn marks. Each one a perfect circle and placed in a neat, perfect row. Row upon row upon row, circling his forearm from wrist to elbow, some shining with wrinkled scar tissue, others blackened and blistering. And on his wrist, a scab where his ID chip had once been implanted.” When he is questioned about the marks, Scarlet’s father says, “They made me.” Scarlet’s father said that Scarlet’s grandmother watched him. “They gave me the poker . . . and they brought me to her. And I realized, she was the one with the answers. She was the one with the information. They wanted something from her. But she just watched . . . she just watched me do it, and she cried . . . She let them do this to me.”
  • Scarlet visits a nearby farm, where there is an illegal fighting ring taking place. Scarlet attends in order to find the fighter she met at The Rieux Tavern. The initial scene of this fighting ring is described as follows: “A writhing crowd shouted up at a hastily constructed stage, where one man was beating his opponent in the face, fist flying over and over with sickening steadfastness. Blood started to leak from his opponent’s nose.”
  • Finding the fighter, known as Wolf, at the illegal fighting ring, Scarlet “closed the distance between them and thumped her locked fist into his sternum, ignoring how he towered a full head above her. Her hatred made her feel like she could crush his skull with her bare hands.” While questioning Wolf, Scarlet slams her fist harder and harder into his chest, and when he tries to avoid her, “Scarlet simultaneously grabbed his left wrist and yanked out her gun. She pressed the barrel against his tattoo.” This interaction lasts for a total of three pages.
  • At the illegal fight ring, Wolf fights a man called The Hunter. “Hunter threw the first punch . . .  Wolf ducked easily and skirted out from Hunter’s shadow . . . A series of blows were deflected, until Hunter’s fist finally connected with a sickening crunch . . . Wolf aimed a solid kick to Hunter’s chest . . . Hunter attacked with renewed vigor. Wolf took a punch in the stomach and was crumpled over with a grunt. It was followed by a blow that sent him careening to the edge of the stage.” This exchange continues until, “Hunter fell to his knees and Wolf was behind him in a breath, his face violently contorted, his hands on each side of Hunter’s head.” Wolf makes to snap Hunter’s neck, but, seeing Scarlet in the crowd, he leaps back, letting Hunter slump to the stage. This description lasts for six pages.
  • Captain Thorne is forced to dodge the bullets of the Eastern Commonwealth military as they escape from the Commonwealth in Thorne’s stolen spaceship.
  • After Scarlet sees Wolf in the illegal fighting ring, Wolf shows up on Scarlet’s property. Scarlet and pulls a shotgun on Wolf, but eventually Wolf convinces Scarlet to trust him, and she lowers her weapon.
  • When one of Emperor Kai’s android tutors, Nainsi, tries to introduce Queen Levana to speak with him, the Queen slaps the android across her single blue sensor.
  • When speaking to Emperor Kai, Queen Levana threatens, “One more patronizing comment and I will have you slice off and nail your own tongue to the palace gate.”
  • Ran, Wolf’s brother, catches sight of Scarlet and Wolf on a train to Paris. Ran criticizes Wolf for choosing to leave the gang they are a part of, a group known as the Order of the Pack. In response, Wolf accuses Ran of needing the protection of the gangs leader Jael. With this Ran leaps forward to attack Wolf. A tussle between the two brothers begins, until “Ran’s head landed in the water and Scarlet heard a sickening crunch.” Wolf continues to attack his brother, throwing punches, until Scarlet shoots Wolf in the arm to stop him. The conflict lasts about four pages.
  • Angered by Wolf for not telling her the full truth behind his motivations to lead her to Paris, Scarlet thinks, “If she ever saw him again she would scratch his eyes out. She would throttle him until his lips turned blue.”
  • Scarlet thinks she is finally visiting her grandmother, but quickly realizes it is the Lunar’s thaumaturge who disguised himself as her grandmother to get information from her. When speaking of her true grandmother, the thaumaturge states, “I wonder how lubricated the old lady’s tongue would become if she were to watch as you hammered needles into your own flesh.” Scarlet tries to attack the thaumaturge, lunging to scratch at his face, but she is quickly stopped by the thaumaturge through his Lunar mind control abilities.
  • While searching Scarlet and her grandmother’s house, Cinder realizes that Scarlet’s grandmother housed her in secret. When viewing the room she was healed in, Cinder sees herself as a child, which may be disturbing to some readers. The description is as follows: “It was a photo of a child. what was left of a child. She was wrapped in bandages from her neck to the stump of her left thigh. Her right arm and shoulder were uncovered, showing the skin that was gouged bloody red in spots, bright pink and glossy in others. She had no hair and the burn marks continued up her neck and across her cheek. The left side of her face was swollen and disfigured, only the slit of her eye could be seen, and a line of stitches ran along her earlobe before cutting across to her lips.”
  • When Wolf approaches Scarlet in her cell, she screams and strikes him with her fists five times before he restrains her by holding her arms to her stomach.
  • When Cinder and Captain Thorne are found in a bar in Rieux by Eastern Commonwealth authorities, Thorne punches one of the officers, and gets punched in the gut in return. As Cinder tries to escape the authorities in turn, a man from the corner of the tavern crouches down on all fours, more canine than human, and proceeds to immediately snap the neck of one of the officers. He then bites down on the neck of another officer while the remaining officer shoots in his direction. The man reaches out to fight the remaining officer by clawing at this officer’s face. When the man goes for Cinder, Thorne heaves a chair over his back, and the man then turns to bite into his arm. Cinder is eventually able to tranquilize the man. This fight lasts around twelve pages. There is another description that lasts a page detailing another member of Queen Levana’s forces taking a bite out of the neck of an officer inspecting Cinder’s spaceship before Cinder is able to quiet the canine-like human with another tranquilizer dart.
  • When Scarlet manages to escape her imprisonment, she tries to save her grandmother—who she finds in one of the other cells of the building, bloodied through endless torture. Scarlet is found by Wolf’s brother Ran. Scarlet’s grandmother goads Ran until he rushes at her, grabbing her throat. In an effort to fight back, Scarlet jumps onto Ran’s back, clawing at his eye sockets. Ran drops Scarlet’s grandmother, and her form collapses. Ran then proceeds to clamp his jaws over the grandmother’s neck, killing her, while Scarlet escapes.
  • Trying to escape, Scarlet hides in the shadows. When Ran passes, she swings a wrought-iron candelabra at Ran’s head. When he tries to grab her hood, Scarlet then aims her knee towards Ran’s groin, thus managing to escape him. When Ran next catches up to Scarlet, he “gripped her shirt and lifted her from the ground.” Ran then throws her at a statue in the room. But before he can attack her a second time, Wolf attacks him from a corner of the room, stopping Ran from continuing to hurt Scarlet. With this begins a fight between Ran and Wolf as one tries to tackle and kill the other. Eventually, Wolf kills his brother with a bite to the neck. Controlled by his orders to kill her, Wolf nearly attacks Scarlet as well, before she convinces him to stop. Scarlet’s escape and battle with Ran and Wolf lasts about thirty pages and a total of two chapters.
  • As Cinder, Scarlet, Thorne, and Wolf try to escape, they are caught by Queen Levana’s thaumaturge and the special forces. Scarlet scrambles to Cinder’s Spaceship and manages to mow down a few members of the forces with the ship, including the thaumaturge, granting enough time for Cinder to shoot the thaumaturge in the thigh with her pistol. Scarlet then shoots the thaumaturge with her shotgun.
  • The global attack of the Lunar Queen Levana and her special forces is described by Kai as this: “Bodies littered the square, their spilled blood black beneath the flickering billboards. Most of the corpses were concentrated near the opening of a late-night restaurant, one of the few businesses that had been open and crowded at midnight, when the attack had started.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • A location Scarlet delivers goods to, The Rieux Tavern, was popular in her town because “drinking and gossiping were the favorite pastimes.”
  • Scarlet catches her father going through her grandmother’s things. As she talks to him, she notes, “The smell of cognac swirled through the air.”
  • Roland, The Rieux Tavern regular, is known to be a heavy drinker with whiskey heavy on his breath.
  • Scarlet gets a message from a hospital, reporting that her father died from alcohol poisoning. A few pages later, it is revealed that an operative killed Scarlet’s father in a way that would not seem suspicious.

Language

  • While fighting with Wolf, Scarlet calls him a “traitor and a bastard.”

Supernatural

  • Cinder is known to be a Lunar, which means that she holds the power “to control and manipulate the bioelectricity of other living creatures. [Lunars] could trick people into seeing things that weren’t real or experiencing made-up emotions. They could brainwash people into doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do.” Cinder uses these powers throughout the book, mainly to escape Queen Levana and the Eastern Commonwealth authorities trying to imprison, and execute, her.
  • In an effort to control Earth, the Lunar Queen Levana created an army known as the Lunar Special forces. These forces are later more clearly described as this: “They appear to be Lunar males whose physical makeup has been combined with the neural circuitry of some sort of wolf hybrid.” The effect is that closest to a werewolf of sorts. Wolf, a member of this army, later describes the phenomenon as this: “Each pack is ruled by a thaumaturge who controls when our animal instincts take over, when all we can think about is killing. They’ve manipulated our Lunar gift and used it to turn us into these monsters instead—with some physical modifications.

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Hannah Olsson

The Oracle Code

After an accident renders her disabled, teenager Barbara Gordon is sent to the Arkham Center for Independence (A.C.I). She learns to cope with her newfound disability, makes new friends, and processes her trauma. However, there seems to be something more sinister occurring within the rehabilitation center; kids are disappearing, and the doctors are hiding something. Can Barbara solve the mystery behind the facility before she too falls victim to it?  

The graphic novel, The Oracle Code is told from Barbara’s point of view, which helps the reader see her character growth and understand the overarching themes of resilience, the importance of friendship, and embracing who you are. The story shows the difficulties of living with a disability, while still emphasizing that having a disability does not make your life less valuable. Barbara’s friend Issy reinforces this theme when she says, “The truth is, no matter what anyone led you to believe, life on wheels isn’t any worse or better than life on both feet, or one foot, or crutches. It’s what you make of it.”  

Barbara also learns the importance of letting others help during hard times. While she tries to be as independent as possible, eventually Barbara accepts that it is okay to rely on others and ask for assistance when needed. As she tries to solve the mysteries behind the A.C.I, Barbara calls upon her friends and family, and it is through their teamwork that the puzzle is eventually cracked.  

The secret behind the facility is incredibly dark and may be difficult and upsetting to read. The head physical therapist and head psychiatric therapist experiment on the A.C.I patients in order to find more effective treatments and cures. This is done by kidnapping the children whose parents have seemingly abandoned them and erasing any trace of their existence. The therapists then perform torturous experiments in order to “fix” them. The physical therapist even refers to the children he experiments on as “collateral damage.” In the end, Barbara and the rest of the patients within the A.C.I. prove that they don’t need to be “fixed.”  

Preitano’s illustrations highlight the emotionally powerful moments with dynamic page compositions and incredible character expressions. The color schemes also help differentiate between flashbacks and the present day. Flashback sequences are illustrated in stark reds, oranges, and yellows. This contrasts the muted colors used in the rest of the graphic novel. Preitano’s use of intense shading also helps intensify the looming dreadful atmosphere of the A.C.I. Despite the excellent illustrations, the dialogue between the characters and Barbara’s internal monologue is still central to the story and ensures each idea is conveyed clearly. In addition, the text is easy to read because it uses simple vocabulary. 

The Oracle Code is highly recommended for anyone struggling to come to terms with a disability. Barbara and her friends are excellent role models because they persevere through difficult circumstances and display selflessness by helping each other despite the dangers. In addition, their incredible vulnerability will encourage teens to be more open with their emotions. Plus, the well-written mystery and relatable characters make for an incredibly engaging read.   Overall, The Oracle Code is an excellent graphic novel and a must-read for anyone who loves DC comics or a good mystery.  Fans of DC comics should also read Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed by Laurie Halse Anderson.  

Sexual Content  

  • None

Violence  

  • Barbara gets shot “trying to help someone.” During flashback scenes, guns and bullets are consistently present in the illustrations.  
  • The hospitalized kids retaliate against the doctor who experimented on them. The doctor is hit several times with mobility aids and then tied up with a jump rope. Onomatopoeias like “crunch” and “smack” are used during this segment. 
  • The A.C.I. experiment on a patient, who later said they were “test subjects.” 
  • One of the doctors conducting genetic experiments also threatens Barbara and her friends with a gun.  

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

 Language   

  • None 

Supernatural  

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • None

When the World Was Ours

Leo Grunberg spends his ninth birthday riding Vienna’s Ferris wheel with his two very best friends, Elsa and Max. While at the top, they swear they can see the whole world. They promise each other that they “will never forget the day [that they] were kings and queen of all Vienna.” To ensure that that promise will be kept, Leo’s father takes a picture and makes a copy for each of them.   

But Europe is descending into war, and Max’s father is rapidly growing intolerant of his son’s two Jewish friends. As danger descends around Leo and Elsa’s families, their world falls apart. Soon, the lives of all three children take fateful turns when they move to separate countries.  With their lives taking them across Europe—to Germany, England, Prague, and Poland—will they ever find their way back to one another?   

The war dramatically changes the three friends’ lives. After Leo’s father is arrested for being Jewish, Leo and his mother escape to England. On the other hand, Elsa finds a short-lived sanctuary in Prague before being forced into a ghetto and eventually to a concentration camp. All the while, her hope that better days will return gradually dissipates. Meanwhile, starved for a sense of belonging he has only ever felt with Leo and Elsa, Max throws himself into the Hitler Youth. He convinces himself that his old friends could not have been Jewish, and when his father insists that they were, he convinces himself that they were never really his friends. All the while, one vivid childhood memory continues to link the three together. 

When the World Was Ours alternates among the narratives of the three children. Interestingly, each perspective takes on a different style. Max’s is presented in the third person while Elsa’s and Leo’s are in the first person. Additionally, Elsa’s is in the present tense while both boys’ are in the past tense. Though a little jarring at first, this technique ultimately allows the narratives to stand apart from one another in such a way that the reader will never lose track of which perspective they are currently reading. The characters’ heartbreaking journeys are extremely well told and will leave a lasting impact on readers. 

The book’s powerful climax occurs when Max’s father secures him a position as a guard at Auschwitz, and he is tasked to kill his first Jew, assuring himself that this is “the defining moment. Everything came to this.” He is ready to prove himself as a true Nazi but is taken aback when the emaciated girl beyond his pistol utters his name in an all too familiar voice. When she smiles at him, he knows for sure she is Elsa. In these pages, it becomes terrifyingly clear how easy it can be for ordinary people to be swept up in such a horrific regime. 

When The World Was Ours is a powerful must-read but it is not for the faint of heart. The story, which is based on a true story, is an unflinching look at one of the most horrific events in recent history. Readers will find it difficult to forget the characters’ trauma and will walk away with a determination to never let the atrocities of World War II happen again. Readers who would like to learn more about the Holocaust should also read Elie Wiesel’s autobiography Night.  To learn more about what happened to the Nazi’s after the war ended, grab a copy of The Nazi Hunters by Neal Bascomb. 

Sexual Content 

  • In the months before Elsa moves away, Elsa and Max have grown particularly fond of each other. When she informs her friends she is leaving, Max kisses her. “At first, her mouth was pursed up in shock. Then it softened and for two blissful seconds, their lips stayed together in a promise.” 
  • As a teenager, Leo gets close to a girl. One day, he says, “[during] a sudden attack of bravery on my part. . .I kissed her.” She reciprocates and they begin dating. 

Violence 

  • A group of men forces Leo’s father and two other Jewish men to scrub the pavement. One of the men, who he recognizes as Max’s father, kicks his father in the stomach “so hard that Papa fell forward, his face landing in the puddle.” 
  • Leo’s father was attacked at his local synagogue. “His face was cut and bleeding and he was limping.” 
  • While visiting a concentration camp for the first time, Max witnesses a prisoner “get punched in the stomach so hard he [falls] to the ground.” 
  • Elsa sees a man being pulled into a shed by an SS officer during a line-up. When they return, the man’s “left eye is closed and already swelling. He’s limping. He has blood dripping from his forehead.” 
  • While at a concentration camp, Elsa learns that two men are being punished for sending letters to their wives. The inmates are forced to watch both men being whipped. When one man begs for mercy, the officer “kicks him in the stomach so hard that [he] almost flies through the air and lands on his side.” 
  • Multiple people suffocate while being transported to Auschwitz in a cramped train car. The guards stop three times to “throw out the dead.” 
  • Upon their arrival at Auschwitz, Elsa’s family is sent to the gas chambers. When Elsa asks to go with them, a guard laughs and says, “‘Believe me, you don’t want to go that way.’” 
  • Elsa’s friend Greta plans to escape from the camp, but her plan is discovered by the guards. She is beaten to death. Elsa describes, “I watch one guard take hold of her while another kicks her in the stomach. And then I cannot watch anymore.” 
  • Elsa is sent to be executed and Max is tasked with shooting her. Elsa recognizes him and experiences a surge of hope, telling him he doesn’t need to do this. Overwhelmed, Max nearly walks to her before being coerced back into the act by his two fellow guards. He decides this moment is no different from the other tests of “his true commitment to the regime.” He hesitantly raises his pistol, but one of the other guards fires his weapon, apparently intending to kill Elsa himself. The bullet instead hits Max “in the head.”  
  • After shooting Max, the two guards panic and decide to stage the death to look like a suicide. In despair, Elsa demands they kill her too, saying she is done with her life. She closes her eyes, not letting them “into her soul while they [empty] out their own,” and is shot, but the death is not described in detail. This entire sequence spans 15 pages, alternating between Max’s and Elsa’s perspectives. 

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • Leo and Max’s parents had “drunk wine and sat talking together.” 

Language 

  • None 

Spiritual Content 

  • Leo’s family believes in Judaism. Leo and his family “say Shabbat prayers every Friday night.” 
  • When Leo’s father returns home from synagogue, he states that he and several friends were “praying for an end” to their persecution.  
  • While not as religious as Leo’s family, Elsa says that her family has begun “going to shul (Jewish services) on Saturday mornings when [they] can, and every Friday night [they] light candles . . . and say a brachah – a blessing – over them.” 
  • Elsa hears several fellow passengers on the cart to Auschwitz reciting Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning.  
  • When Leo’s father returns to his family at the end of the war, he informs his son that both Elsa and Max died at Auschwitz. The family lights a candle and recites Kaddish for Leo’s friends.

Legend

Set in the Republic, what was once the western United States, the world of Legend dives into the lives of two intelligent fifteen-year-olds, Day and June, who come from completely different backgrounds. Amid a war splitting the nation apart and a plague spreading throughout the Republic, Day and June must try to navigate the twists and turns of their own lives. 

Day is a wanted criminal from the slum sector who failed his Trials – a test every ten-year-old must take that determines how useful they will be to the government. Despite hiding from the Republic’s military, Day is trying to provide for his brothers and mother. When Day finds out his younger brother Eden has been infected with the plague, he tries to steal medicine and starts to uncover things the Republic wants hidden.  

June is the Republic’s star student, who comes from an upper-class military family and had a perfect score during her Trials. She attends the top university and lives with her brother, Metias, a respected military officer and June’s guardian. However, when Metias is killed, the Republic tasks a grieving June to avenge her brother’s death and find the prime suspect: Day.  

Their missions lead Day and June to meet each other and they unexpectedly discover an inexplicable attraction to each other. The two uncover a truth that the Republic wants to keep hidden. Soon, Day and June realize they must work together to understand the extent the Republic will go to keep its dark secrets. 

Legend is a page-turning dystopian story that stars two quick-witted and strong characters that are trying to figure out who they are in a world of conflict and deceit. Both Day’s and June’s perspectives are told from first-person point of view. To help readers avoid confusion, the text’s fonts and colors change to distinguish the chapter’s speaker. By allowing the reader to experience both sides, they can learn new information alongside the characters. Readers will become more connected with the characters and understand how they feel, making both June and Day relatable and likable. 

The story includes an array of issues such as classism, morality, trust, the effects of standardized testing, and the value of family. The subjects are well-integrated into the plot without being shoved in the reader’s faces. The book clearly lays out and compares the differences between Day’s poor background and June’s wealthy upbringing, exposing the vast inequalities. The Trials are a method of standardized testing split into three parts: the physical exam, the interview, and the written exam. Children take the tests to determine if they will be helpful to the military. While both Day and June are smart in their own ways, Day is not supportive of the Republic so he is ostracized and punished.  

Legend is perfect for dystopian fans who like action, mystery, and a little bit of romance. The story is dramatic, intense, and has good pacing. The plot is understandable and thought-provoking, although some of the twists are a little predictable. The theme that nothing is as it seems shines as the deception of the government and the innocence of Day is revealed. Overall, Legend is a strong start to a trilogy that uses a believable situation to encourage readers to stick to their morals, even when it makes life difficult. Readers looking for more fast-paced dystopian novels will also enjoy the Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie. 

Sexual Content  

  • While roaming the streets, Day wanders into a bar and chats with a bartender. Day thinks, “If I weren’t busy hunting for information, I’d take my time with this girl, chat her up and maybe get a kiss or three out of her.” 
  • After helping June recover from her injuries from a fight, Day studies June. Day thinks, “At this moment all I’m thinking about is what I’d give up for the chance to kiss her or to run my fingers through her dark hair.” 
  • There are several instances that both Day and June are imagining kissing and touching each other. Day says that “nothing good can come out of falling for someone on the streets.” But he admits, “a part of [him] still wants to kiss her, no matter how cracked a move it might be.”  
  • Day and June are talking and drinking nectar wine when they kiss. Day “kisses [her] gently at first and then, as if he’s reaching for something more, he pushes [her] against the wall and kisses [her] harder.” 
  • The following day, Day thinks about kissing June. Day can “still feel her lips against mine, the smooth, soft skin of her face and arms, the slight trembling of her hands.” June says he has kissed lots of girls before her, but that June is different and he “[wants] more.” 
  • A jealous Thomas, a Republic soldier, brings June back to her apartment, asking if Day had kissed her. She says it was for the mission. “Then, before I can protest, one of Thomas’s gloved hands brushes my chin as he leans in to kiss me on the lips.” June is repulsed and pulls away but his hand stays on the back of her neck. 
  • June has a dream. “Day has his arms wrapped around me and is kissing me again and again, his hands running up my arms and through my hair and around my waist, his chest pressed against mine, his breath against my cheeks and neck and ears.” 
  • In the aftermath of their escape, June and Day talk about what happened. They hug and, “she wipes a tear from [his] cheek and kisses [him].” 
  • Day and June discuss a plan to go to The Colonies. Day is appreciative that June wants to stay with him and kisses her while June “wraps [her] arm around his neck and kiss[es] him back.” 

Violence  

  • While soldiers are inspecting the Lake sector for plague-infected people, a woman wanders into the street. A soldier “lifts his gun and aims. A volley of sparks engulfs the infected woman.” 
  • To find a cure for his plague-ridden brother, Day infiltrates the hospital. To make the doctor show him where the cures are stashed, Day “whip[s] out one of [his] knives and hold[s] it close to the man’s throat.”  
  • While Day is escaping from the hospital, soldiers fire at him. “One of the stray bullets scrapes [Day] and searing pain shoots up [his] arm.”  
  • After Day escapes from the hospital, Metias confronts him. Metias tries to take him into custody, but “before he can fire, my knife hits him hard in the shoulder and he falls backward with a thud.”  
  • The Republic soldiers have captured a spy from the Colonies and are torturing him in an interrogation room. “Whenever he thrashes, Commander Jameson stomps on the chain around his neck and chokes him until he stops.”  
  • Day is watching and betting on a Skiz fight between Kaede, the bartender, and another girl. “Kaede strikes early and hard, lunging out and striking the other girl viciously across the face.” After another punch, the girl “crashes to the ground, hitting her head on the cement floor.” This fight scene lasts two pages. 
  • June stumbles into a Skiz fight where viewers bet on two fighters. When someone loses, they are kicked out of the tournament while the winner picks the next contestant. June is fighting Kaede, a fan-favorite fighter. During the fight, “Kaede’s fist punches hard into [her] side, and [she] feel[s] a terrible, sharp pain.” June is stabbed, thinking that, “Only a serrated knife could have torn [her] skin that way.” June ends the fight by ‘twist[ing Kaede’s] arm in a tight hold. In one move, [she] shatter[s] it.” By the end of the fight, June’s side is bleeding. The fight lasts three pages. 
  • While June is trying to escape the crowd who wants her to continue fighting, “Someone grabs [her] leg and yanks hard. [She] hit[s] [her] head hard enough to send the world spinning.” 
  • The Republic military goes to Day’s house to take his family into custody. Thomas, a Republic soldier, kills Day’s mother when he “shoots her in the head.” From June’s perspective, she thinks she’s supposed to “feel the joy of avenging [her] brother’s death.” But she can’t. “The pool of blood underneath the woman is starting to make [her] feel sick.” 
  • The soldiers capture Day and are trying to bring him into headquarters. When he fights back, “one soldier kicks him hard enough to knock him out.” 
  • While Day is in custody, soldiers beat him, and he sustains many injuries. “The girl looks down, then takes a gun from her belt and strikes me hard across the face.” 
  • The Republic is showing the civilians that they caught the infamous criminal Day, but some protesters in the crowd cause a ruckus, irritating soldiers. “One of the soldiers restraining me strikes me in the back with his rifle.” 
  • After Day is taken into custody, June goes to talk to him and observes his injuries. “His lips are so cracked that a little blood has trickled down to his chin.” His leg “is swollen to twice its normal size,” and, “Blood oozes from the edges of the bandage.” 
  • Hundreds of protestors gather outside of Batalla Hall and soldiers are sent to deal with them as they become unruly. Soon enough, “Bullets rain down on the square. People in the crowd collapse like levees in a flood.” Afterward, June scans “the scene of blood and bodies and prisoners. There are 97, 98 dead. No, at least 120. Hundreds more are in custody.” 
  • There is mention of death by execution in several scenes. When a judge announces the verdict for Day’s crimes, he says, “Day is hereby sentenced to death…by firing squad, to be carried out four days from today, on December twenty-seventh at six p.m. . . ” 
  • A soldier, Thomas, goes into Day’s cell to interrogate him. “His left fist hits me hard across the jaw, and my head snaps to the side.” By the end of the fight, Day’s face is bleeding, and it can be assumed that he is badly bruised because, “He hits me again, then one of his knees slams into my stomach.” Thomas also threatens Day’s brothers, saying that Day should, “Watch [his] tongue, unless [he] want[s] to see their bodies lined up next to [his] mother’s.” The confrontation lasts for three pages. 
  • Day attempts to break out of prison. “I swing back down, kicking one soldier in the head with my good leg.” The escape is described over two pages. 
  • After Commander Jameson prevents Day from escaping, she has a violent confrontation with Day. “Before she can stop me, I dart out of her grasp and sink my teeth deep into her hand.”  
  • Day has a flashback to his childhood when he accidentally hit a policeman with a ball while playing with his brother John in the street. The police officer punishes him for it when “he lifts the knife and gets ready to hit [Day] across the face with its handle.” John tries to plead with the police to stop him but, “The knife handle whips [him] across the face. The policeman walks over and kicks [him] in [his] side.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • One night, Day and June talk to one another, and “a bottle of nectar wine sits between us.” 

Language    

  • Hell and damn are both used once. 

Supernatural 

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • None 

Girl in the Blue Coat

Hanneke Bakker is struggling to find her place during World War II. Without her parent’s knowledge, Hanneke has been obtaining and selling black market goods. However, her life gets turned upside down when Mrs. Janssen, one of her usual customers, asks her to find Mirjam Roodveldt, a young Jewish girl that Janssen had been hiding in Mrs. Jansesen’s home.  

At first, Hanneke refuses to help find Mirjam. However, when she agrees to search for her, Hanneke quickly becomes exposed to the brutal realities of war. When Hanneke meets a group dedicated to hiding and rescuing Jewish citizens who are under threat from the Nazis, it causes Hanneke to question how beneficial her efforts have been. With blonde hair and light eyes, Hanneke identifies herself as the “Nazi’s poster child,” making her feel guilty about her negligence to the war.  Hanneke is eventually drawn further into the mystery of the missing girl and her search leads her to stunning revelations about the war and the people involved. 

Teens will relate to Hanneke because she falls deals with many of the same struggles that normal teens experience, such as young love and conflicts with parents. The story is told from Hanneke’s point of view in a very raw and honest way. Throughout the book, Hanneke must cope with the death of her boyfriend, Bas, as well as the loss of her normal life during wartime. She also deals with losing her best friend, Elsbeth, whose morals become questionable after marrying a Nazi soldier. The story teaches readers that grief is not a one-way street and that there are multiple coping mechanisms that help someone deal with loss.  

Since the story is written from Hanneke’s point of view, other characters are not well developed. While everyone is dealing with their own form of grief, describing the lives of other characters more in-depth would have made the novel more impactful. For example, Ollie copes with the loss of his brother who died in battle. When talking to Hanneke, Ollie reminisces on his brother’s life saying, “. . . I talk about him all the time. Him and his obnoxious jokes, his laugh, what he would have become.” Unfortunately, readers are given limited knowledge on Ollie’s personality and perspective. This leads readers to have a one-sided view of the conflicts in the story. 

Even though Hanneke is the protagonist, she is not always likable. However, she has several positive attributes including courage and determination. Her naivety comes out frequently, which makes her seem self-centered. For example, when Mrs. Janssen asks Hanneke to find Mirjam, Hanneke focuses on whether or not it would benefit herself. At times, she lacks conviction and she frequently questions her actions, which may frustrate readers. She asks people involved in the war resistance dumb questions too, then becomes angry with herself because she had previously shielded herself from the horrors of the war. 

Despite taking place in 1942, teens will be inspired by Hanneke and the positive messages she carries. Hanneke’s life would have been simpler had she not agreed to search for Mirjam; however, she knows it is what must be done for the sake of Mrs. Janssen, who is worrying herself sick over Mirjam’s disappearance. Despite making mistakes, Hanneke continues her journey. Ultimately, Hanneke’s compassion for Mrs. Janssen and for everyone who has lost people to the horrors of war is comes to drive her.  

While the characters are fictional, many of the events are historically accurate and the war within the Netherlands was extremely well-researched by the author. However, at times the plot felt like it went too slow, while other times it went too fast. Plus, the conclusion was rushed and confusing. Nonetheless, those who are interested in the history of WWII would find this an interesting read, especially those who wish to learn more about the German occupation of the Netherlands. For readers interested in learning more about the World War II resistance, Resistance by Jennifer A. Nielsen is a must-read. 

Sexual Content  

  • Hanneke and Ollie, the brother of Hanneke’s dead boyfriend, briefly kiss whilst pretending to be a couple in front of German soldiers. “Ollie cups my face in his hands and kisses me. His mouth is soft and full, his eyelashes brush against my cheek, and only he and I know that our lips are shivering in fear.” 
  • Hanneke occasionally flirts with German soldiers to avoid suspicion. “With the way I’m standing, my dress has risen above my knee, and the soldier notices . . . I shift my weight a little so the hemline rides even higher, now halfway up my goose-bumped thigh.” 
  • Hanneke frequently recalls previous romantic encounters she had with her boyfriend. In one instance, she recalls her first kiss with him. “When he kissed me, he dropped his bicycle and it clattered to the ground, and we both laughed.” 
  • Ollie confesses his love for Willem, saying, “Jews aren’t the only ones who suffer because of the Nazis. I don’t love Judith. I love Willem.” 

Violence  

  • At the beginning of the war in the Netherlands, “two thousand Dutch servicemen were killed when they tried but failed to protect our borders as the country fell” and “German planes bombed Rotterdam, killing nine hundred civilians.” 
  • Hanneke is shocked when Mrs. Janssen says, “I’ve heard of people imprisoned, taken away and never returned. But four people, including a woman and a child, shot dead in cold blood?” 
  • Mrs. Janssen recalls the death of her family at the hands of the Nazis. This took place at the Janssen family shop, where the Janssens were hiding their Jewish neighbors. Someone had tipped off the Nazis that these individuals were being hidden, leading to a massacre. “When the shooting was done, Hendrik was dead, and David, and Rose, and Lea. Only Mirjam managed to escape.” 
  • The Nazis capture and beat a man, causing “bleeding from the nose, his right eye split and swollen.” 
  • Hanneke talks about protests that have “left dead bodies in the streets.” 
  • A fight breaks out between two shop customers. Nazi soldiers come to disperse the fight. “A fight broke out in the shop, which led to the earliest major roundup and hundreds dead.” 
  • Hanneke talks about how resistance workers “could be shot” for their work. 
  • During a round up, a girl tries to escape, but she is shot and killed by a Nazi soldier. “They shoot her. In the middle of the bridge, in the back of the neck so that blood bursts from her throat, slick and shining in the moonlight.”  

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • Hanneke smuggles items through the black market, including “cigarettes and alcohol.” 

Language                                                                                                                                               

  • Profanity is used rarely. Profanity includes damn in both English and italicized Dutch. 
  • Mrs. Janssen goes to show Hanneke the cupboard where she hid Mirjam. When she sees it, Hanneke thinks, “Verdorie. Damn it, she’s crazier than I thought.” 

Supernatural  

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • Several of the characters are of Jewish faith, which is a big source of conflict within the story as it takes place during World War II.  
  • The Nazi soldiers sympathize with the Christian characters. A soldier says, “I feel bad punishing a good Christian woman who is too stupid to know where her husband was.” 

Afterward

Ethan was kidnapped four years ago. But when his captor, Marty, brings home a new eleven-year-old boy named Dylan, the police break down Marty’s apartment door shortly after. Now, Marty is dead, and both boys are able to reunite with their families. Ethan’s parents are overwhelmed with relief at having found their only child alive after all this time. While very glad to be home, Ethan himself struggles to readjust after having lost four years of his life to captivity and trauma.

Afterwards switches back and forth between the perspective of Ethan and Dylan’s older sister, Caroline, who feels like she is the only one in her family willing to acknowledge what happened to her brother. Caroline observes, “It’s like my mom wants to act like everything is going to be okay if she just says it over and over enough.” To complicate matters, Dylan is nonverbal autistic, and since the family can’t afford therapy, they can’t understand his trauma. While her parents are attempting to sweep the whole incident under the rug, Caroline knows her brother is suffering and still needs to heal.

After several months, when the media’s cameras have faded away and the rest of the world has moved on, Caroline decides that there is only one person who can give her the information she needs to help Dylan—and herself—deal with the kidnapping. Slowly, a powerful friendship begins to form between the two teenagers who are suffering because of the pain inflicted by the same man.

Since each chapter of Afterward alternates between both Ethan’s and Caroline’s perspectives the reader is able to better understand their interactions with each other.  Readers will sympathize with Ethan as he describes the difficulty of returning to a normal life. He thinks, “I think I probably can’t be fixed at all.” The reader feels the heartache of his struggle and can easily root for him to overcome his trauma. Caroline is a bit more difficult to like. She is rather reckless, and at one point reignites Ethan’s trauma in an act of selfishness. However, Caroline’s more nurturing and considerate side is showcased in her relationship with her brother.

Ethan’s therapist, Dr. Greenberg is a lovely addition to the story as he is professional but personable and he’s the light that guides Ethan along the road to recovery. However, Dylan gets a bit lost in the narrative. Because he disconnects from the world, readers will find it difficult to connect with him. The story becomes more about Ethan and Caroline’s friendship than helping Dylan through the trauma he suffered. The closest the story gets to suggesting Dylan gets the help he needs is Caroline telling her mother that he needs therapy, and the reader can only hope they will find a way to afford it.

Afterward ends with some uncertainty about where the characters will go next. Nonetheless, Afterward is a difficult but heartfelt read that shows that recovering from trauma is possible. The story doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, but it does handle them in a way that is respectful and manageable for a teen reader. Afterward would be a good read for older teens who are looking for a serious and mature story. Readers who want to explore another book that revolves around a kidnapping should read Pretend She’s Here by Luanne Rice.

Sexual Content

  • Caroline and Jason work together. Caroline describes kissing and “messing around” with Jason during breaks and after work. During one of their encounters, she describes him as delivering “these tiny, goosebump-inducing kisses and nibbles all over [my neck] that make my hair follicles go electric.” Then he pulls her to the ground and it is strongly implied that they have sex.
  • During work, Jason texts Caroline suggesting they hide behind one of the hay bales and “get nekkid.”
  • While musing over her blossoming friendship with Ethan, Caroline reveals that she has never been able to be just friends with a guy. Before Jason, Caroline “messed around” with three other boys.
  • Before he was kidnapped, Ethan was heading to his friend’s house. He was wondering if he could stay overnight and he became excited at the prospect of using Jesse’s binoculars to spy on his babysitter. He hopes that she’ll “take off her shirt and everything.”
  • While at a party, Caroline describes seeing two people “groping each other like two eighth graders under the bleachers.”
  • While intoxicated, Caroline takes off her shirt and tells Ethan to kiss her. He does; Ethan describes “getting hard” as they grope each other. He says, “her tongue is in my mouth, and she’s putting her hands on my shoulders and back.”
  • Kissing Caroline triggers memories of Ethan’s sexual trauma from his captivity. He remembers, “Hands on me. Rough hands. Big hands. Not stopping. Not when I pleaded for them to stop and then gave up when the pleading only made it worse.”
  • Dylan was likely sexually abused during his captivity, but it is not described. Caroline is disturbed when imagining “Dylan being touched or hurt.”
  • Ethan talks to his therapist about his abduction. Ethan says, “‘When I was with him, sometimes my body responded then, too. Even though I hated what was happening.’” He questions whether this means some part of him wanted the sexual acts.
  • When Caroline’s mother tells her that her father is having an affair, she says, “Your father is having sex with someone else.”

Violence

  • In an article detailing the boys’ reappearance, Ethan and Dylan’s captor, Marty, is described as dying of “a self-inflicted gunshot when authorities attempted to arrest him at his workplace.”
  • Ethan and Dr. Greenberg talk about the protesting of nukes in the eighties. Ethan thinks to himself, “People don’t talk about countries firing nuclear weapons much anymore. It’s just terrorists blowing shit up or people shooting up schools that freaks everybody out.”
  • Both Ethan’s and Dylan’s roadside kidnappings get described in detail and each description is about two pages in length. Both boys are held at gunpoint. Ethan recalls his captor telling “me to get down. Get on the floor, this is a gun on your neck.” Ethan describes, “The [gun’s] metal feels heavy on me. Heavier than the guy’s hand.” The weapon is never fired, and no physical injuries are noted.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Ethan takes prescribed medications to ease his anxiety and help him sleep. At one point, he reveals he is taking four different prescriptions.
  • When they are together, Caroline and Jason often smoke weed and drink heavily spiked sodas. Caroline muses that Jason “only gets sweet and gentle when he’s high.”
  • Ethan recalls smoking weed at fifteen and possibly even younger.
  • While at a friend’s house, Caroline drinks Shiners from the fridge.
  • While her father is in the kitchen, Caroline takes a beer from the refrigerator “just to see if he’ll notice,” which he does not. She drinks half of it in her room and pours the rest out.
  • Caroline offer’s Ethan a swig of heavily spiked Diet Coke. This leads to the sexual encounter mentioned above.
  • Occasionally, adults are described as drinking beer.

Language

  • Dylan often repeats the phrase, “Damn, piece of cake.”
  • Occasionally, Ethan or Caroline will use the words hell, ass and fuck.
  • Shit and bullshit are said multiple times.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual

  • After Dylan’s return, Caroline prays to God, though she is uncertain if she believes in him. She thanks God for bringing her brother home.
  • Near the end of the story, she again thanks God, even though she is pretty sure she doesn’t believe in him.
  • Ethan and Dr. Greenberg discuss why people do and don’t believe in God. Dr. Greenberg mentions that he is Jewish, but doesn’t elaborate on his beliefs. They briefly discuss atheism and Unitarian Universalism, a religion that lacks a set of beliefs and “supports the idea of everyone being on their own faith journey.”
  • Ethan thinks back to the idea he had of God before his abduction and how he began to resent God for not answering his prayers for help in captivity.
  • During one of his sessions with Ethan, Dr. Greenberg refers to the novel, Cat’s Cradle. He explains the story’s fictitious religion that involves a belief that people are cosmetically linked in ‘karasses,’ or teams, to do a section of God’s will. Ethan thinks of being connected to Caroline and Dylan in this sense and wonders why fate would link them in such a terrible way.

by Erin Cosgrove

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Everyone in Fairview thinks they know what happened: Andie Bell, the pretty and popular high school senior was murdered by her then-boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. Five years later, Pip is not convinced that Sal is guilty. There are too many unanswered questions: Why was Andie’s body never found? Why would Sal kill Andie? Why would Sal kill himself?

While the case has officially been closed, all Pip sees are loose ends. With the help of Sal’s brother, Ravi, Pip tries to unravel the secrets of what happened in Fairview five years ago. Pip insists that Sal is innocent. Pip’s investigation becomes more than just a school project, putting not only herself but those who she loves in danger.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is a suspenseful, thrilling read that has short digestible chapters and tons of twists and turns. Jackson uses an interesting style of storytelling that combines a traditional third-person narration with journal entries from Pip’s point of view, interviews, police transcripts, maps, text messages, and much more. Oscillating between each point of view gives interesting insights into Pip’s character. Pip is a headstrong and determined young girl, who seems like she has her life fully put together, but she is far from that. Readers will relate to Pip who, as a teenager entering into adulthood, does not fully know who she is as a person or what she wants to do with her life.

Pip recognizes the racial bias that may have played a role in the suspected murder Sal faced. For example, when interviewing the reporter, Stanley Forbes, who heavily covered the original story, he explains to Pip “it’s always the boyfriend or the ex-boyfriend. Not only that Sal was Indian . . .  [T]hey have different ways of life from us . . . They don’t treat women quite like we do.” Bullying and its effects are also discussed heavily, as the murder victim, Andie, was a notorious bully who caused real harm to her victims.

The book also explores sexual relationships in various forms, including consensual and non-consensual sex, as well as relationships between older men and underaged girls. Sexual assault and rape, along with common misconceptions surrounding these topics, are also discussed. For example, at parties, girls’ drinks are being spiked. When Pip confronts the person who has been doing this (after she found out he drugged and raped a girl) he attempts to justify it by saying “but, like . . . she didn’t say no.” There are also heavy themes of teenage drinking which in many ways is normalized throughout the book.

Overall, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is an entertaining, suspenseful story with interesting twists and turns that readers will not see coming. The story examines the actions of a group of teenagers, who are not always the good kids they are perceived to be. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder also tackles the difficult topics of death, grief, teenage drug use and other mature topics. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is perfect for mystery lovers who are ready to explore mature topics.

Sexual Content

  • Pip jokes that her friend is “the daughter of a porn star.” Her friend responds by saying her father “only did one nude photoshoot in the eighties.”
  • Two of Pip’s friends are described as having “a failed fling last year that amounted to just four kisses and some drunken fumbling.” Later, it is revealed that they have recently kissed again.
  • A photo is found showing a boy “wearing nothing but a pair of black underwear.”
  • Andie claims that she has a sexual relationship with an older man, a janitor who works at the school and is about twenty.  Andie blackmails the man’s sister with this information.
  • When Pip goes to a party she observes the “dancers and the overenthusiastic kissers.”
  • When carving pumpkins, a friend notes Pip’s pumpkin looks like “a vagina on fire.”
  • Pip interrogates a suspect, Max, asking if he “drug[ged] and rape[d]” a girl at a party. He responds that he did put something in her drink “but, like… it wasn’t rape. She didn’t say no.”
  • Pip finds out Andie has been having a sexual relationship with one of her teachers, Mr. Ward. He explains “it only happened twice.”
  • Right before Pip’s press conference, Ravi, Sal’s brother who has been helping Pip with her investigation, “[leans] in to press his forehead against” Pip’s. The two then share a kiss.

Violence

  • The basis of this book is Pip’s investigation of a murder and an apparent suicide. Sal, the suspected murderer, is believed to have killed himself by “taking a huge dose of sleeping pills, and plac[ing] a plastic bag over his head, securing it with an elastic band around his neck. He suffocated while unconscious.”
  • The murder victim, Andie’s younger sister, Becca, is mentioned to have “been hospitalized for self-harming.”
  • Pip is interviewing someone who knows about the drug dealer in the town. When Pip tries to leave, he “[grabs] her wrist to pull her back.” Then, she “grab[s] his wrist with her other hand and squeezed, digging her nails into his skin.” She is able to get away.
  • Andie bullies another girl, Natalie, in her class, tricking her into recording and sending a topless video of herself. Andie posts this video online and “loads of other people were sharing it. The comments were horrible.”
  • After a night of drinking, Max and a few of his friends went to a party. When it was over, Max “who was just as drunk as [the rest of the group], was driving too fast up the highway. It was like four a.m. and there were no other cars on the road. And then… this man comes out of nowhere . . . he was standing well back on the shoulder . . . [and Max] lost control of the car.” Though the man did not die, “there was so much blood . . . and his legs were bent all wrong.” The group covered up the accident.
  • Pip’s dog is kidnapped and she is blackmailed for all the information in the case. The dog is found “in the river . . .drowned.”
  • When Pip confronts Mr. Ward, the teacher Andie was sleeping with, he reveals that he and Andie fought. Mr. Ward “just pushed her to get her to stop. . . she fell back and hit her head on [his] desk. Hard. And . . .she was on the floor and her head was bleeding.” Andie was conscious and when he went to go get a first aid kit she disappeared. Thinking she had died, the teacher attempted to cover his tracks by killing Sal.
  • In order to cover his crime, the teacher stole pills from Sal’s house, and forced Sal to swallow them. The teacher “held [a penknife] up to his neck.” When Sal “started to struggle . . . [the teacher] pinned him down and forced him to take more” pills.  As Sal “lost consciousness, [the murderer] put the bag around his head.” After Sal died, the killer framed him for Andie’s murder, placing blood under his fingernails and Andie’s phone in his car.
  • Months later, Sal’s killer thinks he saw Andie on the side of the road, “messed up on drugs . . . skinny and disheveled.” He kidnaps her and locks the girl in his attic. Unfortunately, this is not Andie but a troubled girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  • After Andie escapes her teacher’s house, she walks home and is confronted by her sister, Becca. The two fight and Andie is cruel to her sister causing her to snap. Becca explains that Andie tried to push her out of the way and Becca “pushed her back . . .and [they] were both shouting and shoving and then . . . it was so fast . . . Andie fell back onto the floor . . . Her eyes were closed. And then she was being sick . . . her mouth was full, and she was coughing and choking on it. And [Becca] just froze.” Andie dies and Becca hides the body in a septic tank on a farm.
  • Becca drugs Pip. Pip runs away dazed and confused. When Becca catches up to Pip, Becca pushes her. Pip “[falls] onto her back in the leaves and mud.” As the two fight “Pip’s head [is] smashed against a tangled set of roots, a snaking trail of wet down her face, the iron-bit of blood in her mouth.” Because of the drugs and her injuries Pip is in and out of consciousness. Becca gets on top of her and begins to strangle Pip, but Becca has a change of mind and retreats. At this moment Pip is rescued. Just as she is saved Pip falls into unconsciousness, but she is safe. This scene lasts over four pages.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Teenage and underage drinking is mentioned heavily throughout the story. It is talked about in passing, but many of the main characters also are described as drunk. Pip’s parents allow her to go to a party and drink. Her dad tells her, “I want you to remember to be, at least, a little irresponsible.”
  • Sal takes his father’s sleeping pills. His father “was taking phenobarbitals for his insomnia.”
  • In order to find out who is selling drugs, Pip talks to someone who has drugs at a party. He rolls them a joint, pulling “out a small baggy of weed and a packet of rolling papers.” Pip pretends to take a few drags.
  • Andie sells drugs, including “weed, sometimes ecstasy, mephedrone, ketamine . . . and Rohypnol.” (Rohypnol is commonly used as roofies).
  • Pip finds out that there are “instances of drink spiking happening at . . . house parties.”
  • When Pip asks to be excused from the dinner table, her father jokes “some people have to worry about their kids rushing off from dinner to inject heroin into their eyeballs. Be thankful it’s homework.”
  • After she was drugged and raped, Becca wakes up and doesn’t know “what happened or with who.” Becca asks her friend to go with her to get “the morning-after pill.”

Language

  • Profanity is used often. Profanity includes shit, asshole, fuck, bitch, and slut.
  • “Scum Family” is spray-painted on the house of the suspected killer.
  • After a friend’s breakup, someone says, “Boys are dicks.”
  • A girl says her dad “married the whore like right after the divorce” (referring to the woman he was cheating with).

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Mikaela Querido

We All Looked Up

Ardor, a newfound asteroid, is barreling towards the earth—coming closer and closer each day. The threat of Ardor becomes clear as it is determined to have the capability to wipe out the entirety of civilization. Suddenly the simple lives of four teens doesn’t seem so cut and dry anymore. Given a few weeks left to live, the four find themselves contemplating life and what they want out of it.

Andy, Anita, Eliza, and Peter—four unsuspecting students at the same high school – find themselves intertwined in the lives of each other when an asteroid threatens to demolish the earth. Peter finds himself questioning if all there is to life is sports and the prospect of growing old. Andy has never cared about anyone or anything other than his best friend Bobo, but suddenly that changes when Anita comes into his life. Since the day she was born, Anita has only ever known the pressure to go to Princeton and fulfill the investment that her family has made in her. And Eliza finds art to be more reliable and kinder than any friend has proven to be. In the past, the four have passed each other in the hallway and only made off-handed comments to one another when no one is around. They have carried on with their lives and kept to their social crowds . . . until an asteroid threatens their planet.

Anita runs away from the restrictions of her family and becomes roommates with Andy as they pursue a music career and hope to perform at the end of the world concert. Peter has found the courage to declare his love for Eliza, even though they have an exceptionally bad history. Andy has no idea what he wants, but he knows that his best friend Bobo is acting crueler than usual. And Eliza begins photographing the pre-apocalyptic version of Seattle and posting it on Tumblr which quickly earns her more fame than she would like.

As the asteroid gets closer, the four go from strangers to friends. They confide in each other, plan an end of the world party, and defend Peter’s sister from her boyfriend and a drug dealer. They even break a bunch of teenagers out of a juvenile detention center. Four distinctly different characters come together and showcase that sometimes there is a comfort that comes from being seen by those you never thought were looking in the first place.

We All Looked Up gives the reader a unique glimpse into the thoughts of teenagers who grapple with the threat of the end of the world. Overall, the development of the characters is strong. But the societal labels put on the four main characters can come off a bit cliché, especially with the novel being set in high school. Each chapter alternates between Peter’s, Anita’s, Andy’s, and Eliza’s point of view, which allows the reader to get a glimpse into the inner thoughts of each character. While the actions of some of the characters are not exactly likable, they are entirely relatable. Coming from a teenager’s vantage point, it is easy to understand their reactions and missteps add a sense of realness to the story that elevates it for the reader.

The plot examines adult topics such as toxic relationships, drug and alcohol use, mental illness, self-harm, and gang-related violence. In addition, the scenes pertaining to violence are graphic and may disturb sensitive readers. If you’re looking for a story with a happy ending, potentially forego reading We All Looked Up due to the serious topics and melancholy conclusion. However, We All Looked Up is a good read for those who like to contemplate life’s what-ifs. For each trial the characters face, readers are reminded of the fact that everyone is just trying their best at life. People work constantly to exceed and yet can still fall short, but there is beauty in the fact that you can get up and try again. We All Looked Up reminds us that there is no better time than the present to start making the most of every day we have because no one knows exactly how many more precious days they have left to live.

Sexual Content

  • Eliza’s dad refers to her best friend Madeline as “a stripper dressed up as a prostitute for Halloween.”
  • Bobo (Andy’s best friend and Misery’s boyfriend) makes a bet with Andy. Andy must lose his virginity to Eliza before Ardor hits, or he has to pay Bobo $1,000. Andy says, “Come on, it’s inevitable. You’re the biggest virgin at Hamilton, and she’s the biggest slut. You’re just working the odds.”
  • Eliza recounts making out with Peter in the art room and being caught. “He sat her down on the table, still kissing her, his tongue rough in her mouth, and his hands were making their way up her shirt when the lights flickered on. A skinny blond girl stood between the black curtains in the doorway, her mouth agape, like some cartoon character expressing shock.”
  • Eliza brings a guy home with her from the bar, and it is alluded to that they have sex. “It took her fifteen minutes in front of the bathroom mirror to scrape away the telltale signs of an alcohol fueled one-night stand.”
  • After being caught making out with Peter, Eliza goes to school and sees that the word “S-L-U-T” painted on her locker. “By the time Eliza got to school the next morning, someone had already spray-painted her locker, one huge black word with four capital letters: S-L-U-T.”
  • Eliza mentions losing her virginity. “In reality, she’d never had a serious boyfriend, and she’d lost her virginity practically by accident at a summer camp for blossoming artists, to a pale Goth boy who only painted wilted flowers.”
  • Anita and Andy have sex before they perform at the concert. “‘I don’t want to die a virgin,’ Anita said. She immediately covered her face with her hands. ‘I know it’s crazy to say that right now, with everything that’s happened, but it’s the truth.’ She straightened up, took a deep breath, and looked him straight in the eye. ‘I like you. If you’re into it, then I’m into it.’”
  • Peter and Eliza have sex at the release party at the detention center. “Misery was one. Hopefully, she’d gotten a ride home. He had no idea what he’d say to his parents if he had to show up without her. Sorry, but I got distracted having sex with this girl I cheated on Stacey with last year. You’re going to love her.”
  • Eliza and Andy drunkenly kiss and begin to remove each other’s clothing. They proceed to almost have sex before Anita walks in and Eliza runs out of the room. “But as Eliza felt his hand drop down between her legs, as she unconsciously ground against him with her hips, she felt the wrongness of what she was doing crash like an asteroid against the plant-size need to connect with someone, with anyone, and she pushed him off her with a fury that she knew he wouldn’t understand.”
  • Another inmate asks Eliza if she would sleep with him. “You don’t know me, but I’m a really nice person. And I think you’re absolutely beautiful. If you tell me to go, I’ll go. But, I’d love to hook up with you, and because it’s the end of the world and we’re stuck here, I figured I might as well ask.”

Violence

  • Andy talks about the cop that is standing at the end of the football field of the high school and mentions his gun. He states, “Andy half expected him to whip out his sidearm and mow them all down.”
  • Peter gets brutally beaten by Golden and Bobo. At one point, Golden instructs Peter to put his hands behind his back to allow Bobo to attack him even further. “‘Hands behind your back,’ Golden said. He had the gun trained on Peter’s forehead. ‘Bobo, tie him up. He’ll probably kick your ass by accident otherwise.’”
  • Andy tases Peter with the encouragement of Bobo. “At first, Andy thought Peter was playacting-quaking and quivering like a fish just pulled out of the water, little grunts coming out of his slack mouth. Then his knees buckled and his forehead collided with the pavement. His body went still.”
  • Peter punches Bobo in the face after he makes a foul remark about Eliza. “A black blur of movement, a meaty thunk. Bobo was suddenly bent over, holding his hands to his stomach. And there was Peter, appearing out of nowhere, like some kind of superhero.”
  • Police intervene at a rally being held and begin to use tear gas to disperse the crowds.
  • Eliza tries to talk to a cop and he detains her instead. “The cop wretched Eliza’s arm behind her back, and then he was carrying her away, back beyond the wall of shields.”
  • Eliza, Misery, Bobo, and Kevin get detained and put into a juvenile detention center for being at the rally.
  • Andy references the suicide pact that he had with Bobo and how he was unable to go through with it. “He called Bobo’s cell as soon as he realized he couldn’t go through with it, but there was no answer, so he called the police. Later on, a paramedic told him it had come down to just a few minutes.”
  • Andy and Bobo steal a guitar from the mall and witness others looting.
  • Bobo kidnaps Misery and keeps her held hostage at the hotel he is staying at.
  • Anita shoots Golden. “‘What happened to Golden?’ Peter asked. ‘I shot him,’ Anita said. There was no remorse in her voice.”
  • Eliza stabs Bobo. “He slid off her, onto the floor, and she jumped on top of him, preparing for the next assault. But he didn’t move. She’d aimed for the heart and she’d found it.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Andy says he wants to “smoke a bowl.”
  • Andy mentions that Bobo’s dad was in an alcohol treatment facility.
  • Peter and Andy successfully get the detention center to release the juvenile occupants, the protestors have a large party in the detention center. There is a lot of alcohol provided and everyone is heavily intoxicated.
  • The characters frequently drink out of a bottle of alcohol or finish a bottle of alcohol.

Language

  • Profanity is used regularly and includes words such as shit, fuck, and ass.
  • Bobo is said to be able to “chat up the crackheads and gangbangers.”
  • Eliza is talking about her encounter with Peter with her father and says, “He can fuck off and die for all I care.”
  • When Eliza goes to see her father, he says “Gaga’s a fucking hag next to you.”
  • The term slut is used frequently.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Peter admits that he is a “Christian”, while Eliza confesses that she doesn’t believe in God.
  • As Ardor makes contact with the earth, Eliza finds herself “praying for forgiveness. Praying for grace. Praying for mercy.”

by Cassady McIntyre

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