Topic: Love

Eclipse

Now that Edward is back, Bella wants things to go back to the way they were…but too much has changed. Her best friend Jacob happens to be a werewolf, the mortal enemy of vampires. She is desperate to keep her friendship with Jacob, but she isn’t sure how that will be possible. Edward actively stops her from seeing Jacob, and Bella is constantly hurting her best friend by not loving him the way he wants her too.

Even worse, old enemies are on the prowl. The Vulturi will be a threat until Bella is changed into a vampire. She wants to change immediately, but Edward’s family insists on waiting until after her high school graduation. To Bella, it seems a terrible time to remain human, especially as Victoria is back, and more elusive than ever on her quest for revenge.

Eclipse spins out a heartbreaking love triangle among constant danger and suspense, which forces Bella to decide how much sacrifice love is worth. This installment in the Twilight Series will captivate readers of both Team Edward and Team Jacob, and it will leave them in breathless suspense until the end. As the series hurtles towards its final book, Bella will make a heartbreaking decision that will decide the trajectory of her life.

Eclipse combines Edward’s family and their enemies from Twilight with the werewolves introduced in New Moon. The interactions between these two sets of immortals will excite readers and keep them turning the pages long into the night. Parents may not like that Bella pushes to sleep with Edward, but they will appreciate that Edward says no – he will not sleep with her until they are married. Overall, Eclipse continues to uphold the quality of this engaging series.

Sexual Content

  • Bella and Edward kiss several times. Some are described in detail, such as “My arms locked behind his neck . . . One hand slid down my back, pressing me tighter against his stone chest . . . Making the most of my last seconds, I crushed myself closer, molding myself to the shape of him. The tip of my tongue traced the curve of his lower lip.” Other kisses are briefly described, such as, “He interrupted me with a quick kiss,” or “then he pulled the helmet off so that he could kiss me.”
  • When Bella’s dad tries to talk to her about being safe “when you’re physically involved,” Bella exclaims, “Please tell me you are not trying to have a sex talk with me.” When her father refuses to drop the subject, she says, “I really wish you were not forcing me to say this out loud, Dad. Really. But . . . I am a . . . virgin, and I have no immediate plans to change that status.”
  • Angela and Ben, two friends from Bella’s school, are dating. Ben “threw his arm around Angela’s neck and pulled her face down to his height so that he could kiss her enthusiastically.”
  • Edward kisses Bella to make Jacob jealous. “I turned my face up for a goodbye peck, but Edward took me by surprise, fastening his arms tightly around me and kissing me with as much enthusiasm as he had in the garage—before long, I was gasping for air.”
  • Jacob thinks Bella is in love with him, and to prove it he kisses her. Jacob’s “lips crushed mine, stopping my protest. He kissed me angrily, roughly, his other hand gripping tight around the back of my neck making escape impossible . . . Acting on instinct, I let my hands drop to my side, and shut down. I opened my eyes and didn’t fight, didn’t feel . . . It worked. The anger seemed to evaporate, and he pulled back to look at me. He pressed his lips softly to mine again, once, twice . . . a third time. I pretended I was a statue and waited.”
  • Edward and Bella make out in bed. “His hand curved around my elbow, moving slowly down my arm, across my ribs, and over my waist, tracing along my hip and down my leg, around my knee. He paused there, his hand curling around my calf. He pulled my leg up suddenly, hitching it around his hip . . . he rolled to the side, pulling me on top of him.”
  • Bella wants to sleep with Edward, but he insists they be married first.
  • Bella kisses Jacob twice. The first time, “my lips were moving with his in strange, confusing ways they’d never moved before – because I didn’t have to be careful with Jacob, and he certainly wasn’t being careful with me.” Then, Jacob’s “hands were soft on my face and his warm lips were gentle, unexpectedly hesitant. It was brief, and very, very sweet.”

Violence

  • Two vampires, Victoria and Riley, attack Bella. Edward and Seth, a werewolf, defend her. “Riley was on his feet again, looking misshapen and haggard, but he was able to fling a vicious kick into Seth’s shoulder. I heard the bone crunch . . . Riley took a swipe at him with one mangled hand . . . Riley bellowed and launched a massive backhanded blow that caught Seth full in his broad chest. Seth’s huge body soared ten feet and crashed into the rocky wall over my head with a force that seemed to shake the whole peak.” The fight takes place over eight pages.
  • Edward and Seth dismember and burn the bodies of the two vampires that attacked them. “Swift and coolly businesslike, [Edward] dismembered the headless corpse . . . I didn’t have time to recover before both he and Seth were back . . . Seth was carrying a large chunk – the torso – in his mouth.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Rosalie tells a story about her former fiancé. “I’d never seen him drink before. A toast, now and then, at a party. He’d told me he didn’t like champagne. I hadn’t realized that he preferred something much stronger.”

Language

  • Damn is used several times. When Bella discovers her friend Jacob isn’t aging, she says “Damn it! What kind of world is this?” Another time, when Jacob hurts himself he says, “Damn it! Ouch!”
  • Crap is used several times. Bella tells Edward, “Screw the protecting me crap, please.”
  • Hell is used a few times. Once, Bella demands, “What the hell is all this?” Later when Jasper is telling a story, he says, “All hell broke loose.”
  • Pissed is used once. Jacob thinks, “Pissed as I was, I still felt guilty when I watched the spasm of pain shoot across her face.”

Supernatural

  • Edward and his family are vampires, and Bella meets other vampires that pass through Forks. Unlike most vampires, Edward and his family survive off the blood of animals, so they do not have to murder people.
  • Some vampires have special abilities. Edward can read minds; his brother Jasper can control the emotions of those around him; his sister Alice can see bits and pieces of the future.
  • Jacob and his tribe can transform into giant wolves. “With another sharp tearing sound, Jacob exploded, too. He burst out of his skin—one second it was Jacob diving into the air, and then it was the gigantic, russet brown wolf—so enormous that I couldn’t make sense of its mass somehow fitting inside Jacob.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Morgan Lynn

Like a Love Story

Like a Love Story takes place in New York City in the late 1980s. The AIDS crisis is devastating gay communities, and activists are protesting the government’s reluctance to extend research or support to those affected. The narration rotates between three teenagers: Reza, Art, and Judy.

Reza is new in town, having recently immigrated to New York from Iran, where his family escaped a violent revolution. In the closet with a nearly hypochondriac fear of AIDS, Reza starts at a new school and soon meets Judy and Art, who have been best friends since childhood. Both Judy and Art are committed to gay culture and gay activism under the tutelage of Judy’s uncle Stephen, an AIDS patient and well-known member of the gay community. Art is an out-and-proud gay teenager, who is assertive and upfront about his identity. Brash and unafraid, Art is full of anger at the injustice of the AIDS crisis. Judy, a straight girl who shares Art’s love of Madonna and fashion, supports him in everything and shares his love of fashion and film.

A romance develops between Reza and Judy. But Reza, a closeted gay, knows he can only hold out for so long before his secret comes out. The first two acts of the novel largely concern their false relationship, eventual falling-out, and then the ensuing romance between Reza and Art. Each of the three narrators has a fairly equal stake in the plot, and each brings their own narration, perspective, and personality to the story. Like a Love Story is largely a coming-of-age story, but it is really three coming-of-age stories as each character grapples with their sexuality, their future, and their imminent emergence into the adult world.

Like a Love Story is essential reading for anyone who wants to learn about the AIDS crisis or the origins of the modern gay rights movement. Without preaching or lecturing, the narrative paints a rich and engaging portrait of the political climate through its three narrators. Each character in Like a Love Story has a completely unique voice; readers can open the book to any page and immediately know who is speaking.

Regardless of their own identities, readers will see themselves in the characters because of how authentically they are portrayed. Each character has uncertainty about their place in the world, an imperfect relationship with their parents, a faulty understanding of how the world works, and a yearning to belong—and readers get to see them grow as the story progresses.

 Like a Love Story has some of the most compelling adult figures in a genre where adults are often one-dimensional and cast to the side. The relationship that each teen has with their parents is complicated and imperfect, but masterfully written. It is genuinely heart-wrenching to see Art’s interactions with his homophobic parents, and it is genuinely moving to see Judy’s conversations with her mother evolve throughout the story.

Like a Love Story does not shy away from sexual content and depictions of sex acts, but it’s one of the few books that feels justified in its usage. Characters frequently talk of condoms and bodily fluids. The mechanics of AIDS transmission and the effects of the disease are explained as Uncle Stephen succumbs to infections. Readers who pick up this book in 2020 will already know the ending to some extent. Thanks to modern medicine, many people today can live full lives with HIV and new pharmaceuticals can help prevent transmission. However, the characters don’t know this, and they can only grieve the dead and dying members of their community while fighting for rights and recognition. The story highlights the importance of community, activism, and love.

Sexual Content

  • When asked how he knew he was gay, Art says, “I had a wet dream about Morrisey.”
  • During a make-out session, Judy tries to find out if Reza is aroused. “As nonchalant as I can, I move my hand down, feeling his crotch. I feel something hard. Is it him, or is it his zipper? I can’t even tell. I’ve never felt a hard-on before.”
  • Judy thinks, “Art told me once that the subway was the hottest place in the city, as in sexual heat, not physical temperature. He said that all those bodies rubbing against each other basically made it a clothed, co-ed bathhouse.”
  • Reza sees a naked male mannequin in a store window and thinks, “I look at the mannequin’s body and find myself getting a little hard. I cover my crotch with my hands. I imagine that Art is the mannequin, standing in the store window naked. How sick do you have to be to be turned on by a piece of plastic?”
  • After Reza sees a photo of Art, Reza thinks, “I need to stop thinking about him, and I know there’s only one way to do that. I lie back on my bed, close my eyes, and unzip my pants. I see Bartholomew Emerson Grant VI come to life, enter my room, climb into bed with me. He kisses me, undresses me, tells me not to be scared. But then he’s gone, and all I see are images of dying men with lesions.”
  • A big part of the second half of the plot is Reza’s shame and paranoia surrounding his sexual desires. Stephen teaches Art and Reza about safe sex and about how to use condoms safely. Stephen tells them, “If you want a tutorial, we can go home and practice with bananas. . . Lube is lubricant. Men need it, because we don’t naturally get wet down there . . . the jury is out on whether oral sex is safe or not, but my advice is to use a condom for that too.”
  • Stephen says, “The straight world has defined losing your virginity as intercourse. That’s their thing. But we get to define it for ourselves. And you never, ever have to do anything you don’t want to.”
  • Reza thinks, “I hate those words. Oral. Anal. I hate how graphic they are, how hostile they feel.”
  • In a photography darkroom, Art takes off his clothes for Reza. “There’s only one thing to take off. My boxer briefs. I remove them. I stand in front of him, exposed.” They kiss, but don’t do anything else.
  • Judy has an intimate moment with Reza’s brother, Saadi. As Judy makes out him, “It’s furious. Our tongues explore each other. Then his hands are all over me… his breath is heavy, and his hips are thrusting urgently. I feel what I never felt when Reza and I kissed, an erection. Saadi is so hard. He sits up and takes his polo off.” They don’t go all the way. “He wants to have sex, but I tell him I’m not ready.”
  • Art says, “The first time I read porn, I was twelve. I found my dad’s stash of Penthouse and Playboy magazines in the back of his closet. But Penthouse has these sex stories in them, and they were very hot because there were men in them.”
  • The characters all go to a Madonna performance wherein she masturbates onstage. The act is not described in detail.
  • When Art and Reza finally consummate their relationship, they use condoms and lube. Reza wraps “my legs around him, pulling him closer to me, or deeper into me, because he’s in me now. We thrust and grunt and sweat until we almost fall off the bed.” The scene takes up about three pages, but it is mostly dialogue and doesn’t go into more physical detail.

Violence

  • While attending a protest, Art hears bystanders say, “Hose those faggots down. They like that.”
  • During a protest, police officers “yank Art away and handcuff him.” The other police officer “pushes Reza to the ground.”
  • Some bullies begin to taunt Art, and he reacts violently. “My fingers tense into a fist. Before I know it, I leap out of my seat and tackle Darryl to the ground, taking him down like I’m one of the gorgeous ladies of wrestling. ‘Go to hell, you fucking ASSHOLE!’ I scream as he writhes below me, his scared, beefy body stronger than mine but unable to overpower the force of my rage. ‘Get off me, fag!’ he yells. ‘Not until I give you AIDS,’ I say, and I spit on his face.” Art describes later, “I pull Darryl’s foot toward my face. He pushes his leg up, kicking my chin hard in the process. My teeth hit my lips. My head doubles back, hits the wall with a thud… My eyes flicker with the shock of pain. When I open them, I see blood on my hand and on my shirt.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a party with some kids from school, Judy gets “drunk on fruit punch.” Her friend tells her, “You don’t want your parents to see you like this.”
  • When Uncle Stephen is on his deathbed, he asks for a glass of wine. Judy’s mom pours wine for him and a small glass for Judy.
  • Uncle Stephen has been taking morphine for his pain; by the time he dies, his bottle of morphine is empty.

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes: fuck, shit, hell, ass, and damn.
  • “Oh my God” is often used as an exclamation.
  • Art is determined to reclaim the words “faggot” and “fag,” which is a recurring point throughout the story. Judy’s mom asks Art not to use the word because “I heard that word hissed at my brother like a dagger throughout his childhood, and I don’t want to hear it ever again.” They eventually agree to disagree.
  • After coming out, Reza has “heard every possible word a homosexual could be called . . . Faggot. Pansy. Mary. Butt pirate. Fruit. Turd burglar. Flamer. Nancy. Queen.”

Supernatural

  • Art can see “auras.” Readers might recognize them as a condition called synesthesia, but to Art they take on a spiritual and artistic significance. Art doesn’t “snap a photo unless I see its energy. I know they’re all black-and-white, but they have colors to me. Auras.”

Spiritual Content

  • Art says, “I think that if it weren’t for all the bullshit rules of Catholicism, then there would be no Madonna, because what is she if not a rebellion against all of this?”
  • In a church, Art thinks, “I don’t want to burn this place to the ground. What I want is to make them see that I AM HOLY. These thoughts of me and Reza, they are holy.”
  • A priest’s homily “makes multiple references to protecting ‘the unborn.’” Art thinks, “It’s amazing how gung-ho he is about saving the lives of fetuses, but then he turns a blind eye to all the actual humans DYING right in front of him.”
  • Art lights prayer candles in a church and thinks, “I know that I don’t believe in a God who can grant wishes, but if there’s even a chance that such a God exists, then I have some wishes I’d like granted.” He wishes for AIDS to be cured.

by Caroline Galdi

 

New Moon

Bella always knew Edward was too good to be true, and her worst fears come to fruition when he tells her that he is leaving Forks—and he doesn’t want her to come with him. He promises it will be “like he never existed.” But the hold he has on her heart isn’t something that fades with time. As the months stretch out without Edward, Bella succumbs to a mind-numbing depression where time passes, but she doesn’t really live.

Bella doesn’t expect things will ever change until she runs into Jacob, an old friend from the nearby reservation. Jacob becomes her best friend. He is so warm and kind that she begins to think of Jacob as her own personal sun, burning away the dark clouds that have surrounded Bella for so long. Bella knows that Jacob longs for their relationship to move forward, but is her damaged heart even capable of that kind of healing? To make matters worse, there’s a cult on the reservation that’s sucking in many of the teenage boys. When Jacob suddenly vanished from her life and starts hanging around with the very people he had been scared of before, Bella decides she has to help her friend break free. But the bonds that tie Jacob may be deeper and more permanent than Bella could possibly imagine.

In New Moon, Bella struggles to move on after losing her one true love. At first, she wallows in depression, trying to put on a brave face for the world outside, but eventually she learns that she isn’t fooling anyone. Once Jacob enters her life, she begins to heal, but she also clings to the memory of Edward. Her inability to let go of the past prevents her from moving forward as she grapples with questions such as, is it possible to have more than one love in one lifetime? And is it right to give herself to Jacob, when a part of her still mourns for Edward?

The second installment of the Twilight series takes a shocking turn, but it will not disappoint. Readers need not worry that Edward’s absence for most of the novel will detract from its entertainment factor. Bella’s trauma over the loss of Edward, his family, and her life as a vampire keeps that storyline very much alive, as does the reappearance of an old enemy. Jacob, his father Billy, and Jacob’s friends on the reservation breathe life into the story, bringing new, lovable characters into the mix. These characters are well-developed, and Jacob will steal the heart of all but the strongest Edward supporters. The end of New Moon comes in an exhilarating rush that will either leave readers rejoicing or will break their hearts. Either way, make sure to have the next book, Eclipse, nearby!

Sexual Content

  • Bella and Edward kiss several times. “He leaned closer and pressed his icy lips against mine . . . His mouth lingered on mine, cold and smooth and gentle, until I wrapped my arms around his neck and threw myself into the kiss with a little too much enthusiasm.” Another time, “he sighed, and leaned down to touch his lips to mine. I reached up on my toes to make the kiss last longer when he pulled away.”
  • While in bed, Edward and Bella make out. “The kiss began much the same as usual . . . And then something seemed to change. Suddenly his lips became much more urgent, his free hand twisted into my hair and held my face securely to his . . . His body was cold through the thin quilt, but I crushed myself against him eagerly.”

Violence

  • Bella gets pushed into a table and falls into a pile of broken crystal. “Only now did I feel the searing, stinging pain…Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm.”
  • When Jacob tells Bella that he helped kill “the bloodsucker who was going to kill you,” he says, “I don’t count that towards the whole murder thing . . . Vampires don’t count as people.”
  • Bella gets injured several times while learning to ride a motorcycle.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Hell is used several times. Once, Bell says, “How the hell did Mike Newton end up in this conversation?”
  • Crap is used several times. Bella says, “I did drown. Crap, crap, crap! This is gonna kill Charlie.”
  • Pissed off and damn are used a few times. While drowning, Bella hears Edward’s voice yell, “Damn it, Bella, keep fighting.”

Supernatural

  • Edward and his family are vampires, though they choose to survive on animal blood rather than human blood. They are super strong, fast, and several of them have special abilities like Edward’s ability to hear peoples’ thoughts.
  • Jacob and his friends can transform into giant wolves. “With another sharp tearing sound, Jacob exploded, too. He burst out of his skin—one second it was Jacob diving into the air, and then it was the gigantic, russet brown wolf—so enormous that I couldn’t make sense of its mass somehow fitting inside Jacob.”

Spiritual Content

  • Carlisle says, “Never, in the nearly four hundred years now since I was born, have I ever seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or the other.” Meanwhile, Edward thinks “God and heaven exist . . . and so does hell. But he doesn’t believe there is an afterlife” for vampires. “You see, he thinks we’ve lost our souls.”
  • When Jacob agrees to help Bella, she thinks, “Jacob was a gift from the gods.”
  • When Edward sees Bella, who he thinks has died, he thinks he is dead also. “Maybe this is hell. I don’t care.”

by Morgan Lynn

Pugs and Kisses

Ana Ramos has always wanted a dog of her own, but her mother has a no pet rule. That’s one of the reasons Ana is happy to walk her neighbor’s adorable pug, Osito. When Ana takes Osito to the park, Osito befriends another pug, whose owner is a cute boy named Calvin. When Calvin assumes that Osito belongs to Ana, she doesn’t correct him. After all, Ana probably won’t see Calvin again.

Then Calvin enrolls in Ana’s school and they have several classes together. When Calvin suggests setting up playdates for the two pugs, Ana pretends that Osito is her dog. Soon, Ana discovers that she’s telling lies to cover up the fact that she lied about Osito. As time goes by, Ana’s lies increase, and she’s using both her best friend and her sister to help keep her secret. Ana wants to fess up about her lies, but she’s afraid of Calvin’s reaction. How is Ana ever going to get out of this mess?

Ana and Calvin meet at the dog park and bond over their love of pugs. Even though Pugs and Kisses uses the traditional romantic movie formula, younger readers will enjoy the sweet story of Ana’s first crush. Middle graders will understand Ana’s confusion when it comes to her feelings for Calvin. When Calvin invites her over to his house for dinner, Ana isn’t sure if going to his house is a “date” or just two friends hanging out. One positive aspect of Ana’s crush on Calvin is that both Ana and Calvin are smart and do not try to hide their love of academics.

The story hits on topics that are important to middle graders: friendship, families, and crushes. Ana is an imperfect character that readers will be able to relate to. Ana is often frustrated with her family, worries about school, and wonders about her emerging feelings for Calvin. However, the story doesn’t just focus on Ana’s family and Calvin. Another positive aspect of Pugs and Kisses is that Ana’s Puerto Rican heritage is naturally integrated into the story. Readers will learn facts about Ana’s sister’s quinceañera and her neighborhood.

Despite the predictable plot, the pugs and cute awkward moments will appeal to younger readers. Pugs and Kisses will entertain readers who aren’t ready to read longer books such as The Selection series by Kiera Cass. Readers who want a light romance with more action should read the Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter.

Sexual Content

  • At her sister’s quinceañera, Ana is so excited that Calvin forgave her that “without stopping to think, I stood up on my tiptoes and give him a kiss. My first kiss. He looked a little surprised when I pulled away, but he was smiling.”
  • After kissing Calvin, Ana says, “I can’t believe I kissed you.” Calvin replies, “I’m glad you did.” Then he put a hand on Ana’s waist and “pulled me even closer to him, and then he kissed me again.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Dang is used twice. When Ana asks a boy to her sister’s quinceañera, Ana’s friend says, “Dang girl, I’m impressed.”
  • Darn is used three times. Ana says, “Darn right, I didn’t choose the pug life. The pug life chose me.”
  • Crappy is used once. When her friend’s dog runs off, Ana thinks, “How dare they keep going after their crappy fencing-in job had led to Pancake getting out?”
  • When Ana says something insensitive and upsets her sister, Ana thinks, “I felt like a jerk.”
  • Ana realizes that she’s been preoccupied and didn’t help her neighbor enough, so she says, “I’ve been an idiot.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Twilight

When Bella’s mother gets remarried, Bella leaves her home in sunny Phoenix and goes to live with her father in the perpetually rainy town of Forks, Washington. Forks is a tiny, gloomy town and Bella is fully prepared to be miserable for her final two years of high school. She doesn’t expect anything interesting to happen in Forks; that is, until she meets Edward Cullen.

Something is different about Edward. Breathtakingly beautiful and from a wealthy family, he baffles Bella with wild mood swings. When they first meet, he instantly despises her to the point of frightening her. Then—after disappearing for a week—he appears perfectly cordial. But it’s not until Edward saves her life in a feat of superhuman strength that Bella realizes the Cullen family is guarding a dangerous secret. It would be smarter to walk away, but by the time she realizes that, it’s too late. Live or die, Bella has fallen in love with Edward and she can’t walk away no matter the consequences.

Twilight is an epic story of love overcoming all challenges. The unique storyline has spawned an entire subsection of supernatural YA novels. The well-developed cast of characters will make the story come alive and hook readers immediately. Bella is not an overpowered heroine; she is quiet and clumsy to a fault, but she is fiercely loyal and brave. Bella risks everything for love, a choice that not all adults will agree with, but that most readers will understand and respect as they follow Bella’s journey with eagerness and excitement.

Twilight is a delightful start to a wonderful quartet. Parents may not want younger readers to pick up this book as Bella lies to her father about her relationship with Edward, and Edward frequently climbs in Bella’s window and stays the night (though they don’t go further than kissing). Aside from that caveat, Twilight is a wonderful story that swept through a generation of young readers like wildfire and will continue to be picked up by swarms of readers in years to come.

Sexual Content

  • When Bella and Edward kiss for the first time, “Blood boiled under my skin, burned in my lips. My breath came in a wild gasp. My fingers knotted in his hair, clutching him to me. My lips parted as I breathed in his heady scent.”
  • The second time Bella and Edward kiss, “His fingers traced slowly down my spine, his breath coming more quickly against my skin. My hands were limp on his chest, and I felt lightheaded again. He tilted his head slowly and touched his cool lips to mine for the second time, very carefully, parting them slightly.”
  • Edward and Bella kiss a few more times. These kisses are described briefly, such as “for the shortest second, his lips were icy and hard against mine” or “his lips touched mine gently.”
  • When saying goodbye, Edward “leaned in to swiftly kiss me just under the edge of my jaw.”
  • Bella gets lost in a bad part of town and is followed by several men. She considers dropping her purse, “But a small, frightened voice in the back of my mind warned me that they might be something worse than thieves.” Edward rescues her.
  • Bella asks Edward if marriage for vampires is “the same as it is for humans.” She then says, “Well, I did wonder…about you and me…someday…” Edward says he doesn’t think that would be possible, as humans are so breakable.

Violence

  • Esme tells Bella that after her baby died, “It broke my heart – that’s why I jumped off the cliff, you know.”
  • After Carlisle became a vampire, he “tried to destroy himself…He jumped from great heights…He tried to drown himself in the ocean.”
  • Bella is tortured and almost killed by a vampire. “A crushing blow struck my chest…He was over me at once, his foot stepping down hard on my leg. I heard the sickening snap before I felt it. But then I did feel it, and I couldn’t hold back my scream of agony.” This scene takes place over three pages.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Once, Bella “did something I’d never done before. I deliberately took unnecessary cold medicine – the kind that knocked me out for a good eight hours…tomorrow would be complicated enough without me being loopy from sleep deprivation.”

Language

  • Bella thinks, “Forks was literally my personal hell on earth.”
  • Bella says, “Holy crow!” a few times.
  • Bella says, “Darn it,” once.
  • Damn is used three times. Once, Edward says “Damn it, Bella! You’ll be the death of me.” Another time, Bella says “Dammit, Edward! Where are you taking me?”
  • When Jacob’s father sends him to warn Bella, Jacob asks, “Should I tell him you said to butt the hell out?”

Supernatural

  • A legend of the indigenous Quileute people “claims that [they] descended from wolves – and that the wolves are our brothers still.”
  • Edward and his family are vampires, and Bella meets another coven of vampires that pass through Forks. Unlike most vampires, Edward and his family survive off the blood of animals, so they do not have to murder people.
  • Some vampires have special abilities. Edward can read minds; his brother Jasper can control the emotions of those around him; his sister Alice can see bits and pieces of the future.
  • Edward tells Bella about a time in his life when he was a true vampire who fed on humans. He says that he “had a typical bout of rebellious adolescence…I wasn’t sold on [Carlisle’s] life of abstinence, and I resented him for curbing my appetite.”

Spiritual Content

  • Before the prologue, there is a Bible verse. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest therof thou shalt surely die. Genesis 2:17”
  • At first, Edward tries to stay away from Bella because he thinks it would be safer for her. Then he decides “as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”
  • When Bella asks to be turned into a vampire, Edward says, “I refuse to damn you to an eternity of night.”
  • Carlisle’s father was a pastor who was “enthusiastic in his persecution of Roman Catholics and other religions. He also believed very strongly in the reality of evil. He led hunts for witches, werewolves…and vampires.”
  • In passing, Bella hears a legend that the indigenous Quileute people “tied their canoes to the tops of the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the ark.”

by Morgan Lynn

Maybe This Time

One year. Nine events. Nine chances to . . . fall in love?

Weddings. Funerals. Barbecues. New Year’s Eve parties. Name the occasion, and Sophie Evans will be there. Well, she has to be there. Sophie works for the local florist, so she can be found at every big event in her small hometown, arranging bouquets and managing family drama.

Enter Andrew Hart. The son of the fancy new chef in town, Andrew is suddenly required to attend all the same events as Sophie. Andrew is entitled, arrogant, and preppy. Sophie just wants to get her job done and finish up her sketches so she can apply to design school. But every time she turns around, there’s Andrew, getting in her way and making her life more complicated. Until one day she wonders if maybe complicated isn’t so bad after all . . .

Told from Sofie’s point of view, the reader comes to understand why Sofie is focused on getting out of her small town. However, Sofie’s obsession with moving to New York has made her judgmental, snobbish, and self-centered. When Sofie meets Andrew, she automatically dislikes him and often says things just to irritate him. Sofie ends up falling in love with Andrew, which comes as no surprise. The change from dislike, to friendship, to love is very natural. Instead of instantly falling in love, the two slowly learn about each other, which allows their feelings to change.

Maybe This Time doesn’t just focus on the romance. The story also hits on difficulties with parents, misunderstandings with friends, and the dynamics of a small town. Even though Sofie often is snarky, her sweet side also comes out in unexpected places. Sofie’s little brother is one of the highlights of the story, and Sofie’s love for him is apparent.

Maybe This Time will give readers insight into small-town life. The story progresses at a steady pace and has many interesting characters. In the end, Sofie realizes that she actually loves her small town and even though she does plan to leave, she will always come back. The sweet romance touches on friendship, ambition, trust, and dreams without getting bogged down with a message. Readers looking for an easy-to-read romance will enjoy Maybe This Time.

Sexual Content

  • When Sofie hurts her foot, Andrew “squatted down, his hand brushing along my calf until it reached my ankle. Tingles spread up my leg all the way to my stomach. My cheeks went hot, and I leaned my head back against the mirror to try to keep that fact to myself. He wasn’t allowed to have this kind of effect on me.”
  • While walking by a car, Sofie sees a boy and a girl “in the passenger seat, and they were kissing.”
  • When Sofie and Andrew were arguing, Sofie’s “body seemed to be on autopilot. I leaned forward and pressed an angry kiss to his lips. . . Then all at once his free hand moved to the back of my neck. . . He tilted his head, deepening our kiss.” The kiss is described over ½ a page.
  • While serving at a dinner, a drunk man dropped a fork. When Sofie went to pick it up, she “felt a hand brush [her] leg. The man gave me a creepy smile and I stood. I pointed his own fork at him. ‘Please keep your hands to yourself.’”
  • Sofie doesn’t want to think about “a certain hot day by a certain shed kissing a certain boy whose mouth tasted like cherries.”
  • At a New Year’s party, Sofie’s friend says, “In fact, I’m going to find myself a boy to kiss at midnight tonight. I don’t care who.” Later Sofie’s friend says, “He was a midnight kiss. . . Don’t try to tie me down to someone I kissed at midnight.”
  • During a New Year’s party, Andrew kisses Sofie. Sofie thinks, “He tasted like heaven.”
  • Andrew and Sofie kiss several times. Once he tells Sofie, “You’re beautiful.” Then, “his lips brushed mine softly.”

Violence

  • Sofie’s brother is afraid of firecrackers because “Momma had a party in the backyard. . . Some guys started shooting their guns into the sky and my window got broke and a piece of glass hit my arm and I thought I was shot.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • While Sofie was at a wedding, she stepped on the “amber colored glass of a broken beer bottle.”
  • During a eulogy, the pastor talked about how the man “had a problem with alcohol when he was younger.”
  • While serving at a dinner, some of the people drink wine.
  • At Thanksgiving dinner, Sofie’s mom says, “Point me to the wine.”

Language

  • Holy crap is used twice.
  • Crap is used five times.

Supernatural

  • Sofie had a short conversation about her belief in an afterlife. She says, “I believe in an afterlife . . . I’m not sure exactly what it will consist of, but I believe we all have a soul, something that makes us who we are. When my gran died, I remember looking at her body and knowing something was missing, that she was no longer her.”

Worthy

Everyone at Linden’s high school is obsessed with a new app called Worthy. The app posts pictures of couples and asks, “Is the girl worthy of the guy?” Some use the anonymous platform to post cruel comments. As the voting goes viral, not every couple can handle the comments that begin to collect. The comments aren’t only online: the app and the couples it features are the topic of every conversation at school.

At first, Linden is focused on other things like cute Alex Rivera, the Prom Committee, and her writing. But soon, Linden is just as obsessed with Worthy as everyone else. Soon, the app is causing problems between Linden and her best friend, Nikki. What will happen when the spotlight turns on Linden?

Readers will relate to Linden as she struggles with online bullying. Even though Linden knows that posting mean comments online is wrong, she doesn’t have a problem voting. As the story progresses, four different couples are featured on Worthy. Linden overhears many conversations about the couples that allow the reader to understand how superficial the voters are. As more and more teens get caught up in the voting craze, Linden is forced to evaluate her own motives for voting. When Linden and Alex are featured on the app, Linden finally realizes how devastating people’s comments can be.

In a world where so many teens are connected on social media, the story has a realistic conflict; however, there are so many minor characters that it is often difficult to keep track of them all. Because the minor characters seldom appear, readers may find it difficult to care about how the app affects them. It isn’t until the app focuses on Linden that the conflict becomes more suspenseful. The story is told from Linden’s point of view, which allows the reader to understand her insecurities and her fears as well as see her personal growth.

Worthy is a cute romance that has several positive aspects. Nikki, Alex, and Linden’s parents all make a short appearance in the story. Despite that each family is different, they are all portrayed in a positive light. The story shies away from profanity and sex. Even though the story drags at points, the positive messages in the book make it worth the read. Connor makes it clear that teens need to look past people’s appearances. The story also shows the damage that online bullying can cause in relationships. Worthy isn’t afraid to explore difficult topics and would be an excellent book to use as a conversation starter.

Sexual Content

  • While in the school hallway, Linden sees her best friend Nikki kissing her boyfriend.
  • Linden thinks about her neighbor, Max. “When we were twelve, we shared our first kiss in the treehouse his dad built.”
  • While sitting outside of Linden’s house, Alex “raises his hand, still caught in mine, and traces his thumb gently against my lips. My face explodes with heat, and when his hand slips away, I lean in toward him. The first kiss is soft. Just a touch. . .He leans back on the grass, pulling me against his chest, and we are kissing. And kissing. And kissing.”
  • While in the school hallway, Alex tries to kiss Linden, and she jerks “backward because I’m not expecting it and it ends up a totally awkward kind of face bump.” Linden is embarrassed and thinks, “I’m not so sure public displays of affection are my thing. . . It’s funny we weren’t awkward at all when we were kissing Saturday night. I blush and smile at the memory.”
  • At school, Linden notices two kids kissing and notices that the girl “gives him a kiss right on the mouth, completely oblivious to the rest of the group.”
  • While at Alex’s house, Linden thinks “about kissing him in my front yard.”
  • At a school assembly, Alex sits next to Linden and gives her a “quick kiss. This time our lips touch confidently, like we greet each other like this all the time.”
  • Linden imagines asking Alex to prom and “then we’ll kiss.”
  • While sitting in Alex’s car, he “cups [Linden’s] cheek in his hand . . . He runs a thumb along my bottom lip. Slowly. Then he leans in to kiss me—very softly—following along the line his thumb travels with his lips.”
  • Linden thinks about her best friend and remembers “when Nikki told me Martin Wells had kissed her behind the trees outside the playground.”
  • While at a quinceañera, Linden brushes “[Alex’s] thick black hair back off his forehead, my fingers lingering as they slide down his face. . . Then he turns his head and his lips are on my palm. The heat explodes into my cheeks.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Oh my God and OMG are used eleven times in total.
  • Crap is used once. When Linden accidentally throws the bowling ball the wrong way, she thinks, “crap.”
  • Freaking is used once.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • While bowling, Linden doesn’t want her feet touching the shoes. She thinks, “Thank God for the thick boot socks I put on under my cowboy boots.”

A Match Made in Mehendi

Fifteen-year-old Simran “Simi” Sangha comes from a long line of Indian vichole – matchmakers — with a rich history of helping parents find good matches for their grown children. When Simi accidentally sets up her cousin and a soon-to-be lawyer, her family is thrilled that she has the “gift.”

But Simi is an artist, and she doesn’t want anything to do with relationships, helicopter parents, and family drama. That is until she realizes this might be just the thing to improve her and her best friend Noah’s social status. Armed with her family’s ancient guide to finding love, Simi starts a matchmaking service via an app.

But when she helps connect a wallflower of a girl with the star of the boys’ soccer team, she turns the high school hierarchy topsy-turvy, making herself public enemy number one.

Simi starts her sophomore year with the intent of standing out and being her true self. As she tells her own story, the reader gets an inside scoop on her thought process. Simi’s story bounces between her home life, her love life, and her school life. Simi is surrounded by a large and loving family. She also relies on her best friend, Noah, to help her through the day-to-day struggle of school.

The story’s large cast of characters doesn’t allow the author to give each person a unique personality, and many of the characters are not well-developed. Simi’s best friend Noah is struggling with his sexual identity, but his thoughts and feelings are never expressed, which makes it hard for the reader to connect with him. Readers may also have a difficult time because Simi’s family is from India, and they often use their native language; however, there are few context clues to help the reader understand the word’s meaning.

A Match Made in Mehendi gives the reader a look into Indian culture as well as the matchmaking process. The action slows down when Noah, Simi, and her brother work on the app. The matchmaking app is an interesting twist, but Simi seems more concerned with the app’s functionality than the couples the app matches.

Like many teens, Simi is trying to find her voice and stand up for herself. Simi’s story is unique and follows several couples as they try to navigate romance. However, the character-driven story does not contain a lot of action or conflict. Although the story has several interesting facets, A Match Made in Mehendi will easily be forgotten.

Sexual Content

  • While working on an art project at a boy’s house, the two take a break. “He leans close, picking a blade of grass from my hair, and for a second, I think he might kiss me.” But then the dog jumps between the two and the moment is over.
  • After a date, Simi’s “heart rate kicks up as he ducks his head and moves closer.” She thought he was going to kiss her and thinks, “I want him to. I have for so long.” But then, the boy “veers towards my cheek, laying the softest kiss there. It’s innocent and sweet, but all the same, shivers fan out over my arms.”
  • Simi’s friend Noah has a crush on a boy, but he isn’t sure how to handle it.
  • While at a gathering, Simi is talking to a boy. The boy “gently pulls me in toward him for a kiss. Except I’m so surprised, I knock over my cup of ginger ale before our lips can connect.” Simi tells him to try again, which he does. Simi thinks the kiss is “slow. Delicious. Sweet like ate-ki-pinni.”

Violence

  • A mean girl tricks Simi, then “as I crash onto my hands and knees, my phone careens through the air and smashes face down on the concrete.” The girl stomped on the phone, then “she laughs, does a haughty pageant wave, and keeps moving.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • During a dinner at Simi’s house, her dad “keeps everyone happy with drinks ranging from lassi and lemonade to Patiala pegs of his favorite single malt whiskey.”

Language

  • Profanity is used sparingly. Crap is used three times; holy crap and shit are both used once.
  • When Simi draws a picture of two people with hearts over their head, her sister says, “Good God.”
  • God, OMG, and dear God are all used as an exclamation once or twice.
  • Freaking is used five times.
  • Badass and kickass are both used once.
  • When someone takes credit for Simi’s artwork, she says, “They call it bullshit. Are you gonna tell her [the teacher] or am I?” Later she thinks the person is an “ass.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When Simi’s grandparents got married, they were from different religions, but it wasn’t “a big deal.” Her grandparents “lit a lamp for both Wahe Guru and Mata Rani in our home after we got married and called ourselves doubly blessed.”

Don’t Date Rosa Santos

Everyone in Port Coral knows that the Santos family is cursed by the sea. After all, two generations of Santos women have loved men who were lost to the ocean. Which is why, even though she’s lived in a coastal Florida town for most of her life, eighteen-year-old Rosa Santos has never even stepped foot in the ocean.

Rosa has the next few years of her life all planned out. In a few months, she’ll be graduating from high school with both her diploma and a two-year degree from the local community college. Then it’s off to a four-year university where she’s been accepted in a study abroad program at the University of Havana. She’ll finally be fulfilling her lifelong dream of traveling to Cuba, the island of her ancestors. She just hasn’t quite figured out how to tell her Grandmother. It won’t be an easy feat. After all, Mimi Santos has always refused to talk about Cuba.

But when an offer to buy the Marina threatens to destroy Port Coral, Rosa must set her plan aside and help put together a fundraiser to save her beloved hometown. It might be more difficult than expected, considering she’ll be working side by side with the distressingly cute Alex Aquino. Her growing crush wouldn’t be that bad, except Alex happens to be the one thing that ought to be strictly off limits to a Santos girl like her: a boy with a boat.

Rosa struggles with some uniquely heavy issues like inherited grief and the immigrant experience of feeling like she doesn’t quite fit into her own culture. Although these issues might be difficult for some readers to fully comprehend, they are important, especially for Latinx teens looking to find themselves in a story. These tough themes are balanced out by the more “everyday” issues Rosa deals with, including the college application process and harboring a secret crush.

Although there are plenty of adorable and romantic moments, the story itself goes beyond the typical rom com. Moreno makes a beautiful exploration into the many ways that love can manifest itself; from the years of love and loss that bind the Santos women together, to the thrill of a relationship just beginning, to the overarching love that creates a community. The characters are all well developed and both Port Coral and Cuba come alive on the page.

Readers are sure to fall in love with the complex story of the Santos women, which is equal parts heart wrenching and hopeful. Don’t Date Rosa Santos is a wonderfully diverse story about family, identity, and finding your place in the world.

Sexual Content

  • Mimi tells Rosa that if she could go anywhere in the world, she would go to Hawaii because “I like The Rock. He is very handsome.”
  • Jonas kisses his fiancee hand.
  • When Rosa is being teased about boys, she thinks “There had been kisses at parties and group movie things, but nothing to write home about.”
  • Rosa’s mother says, “You haven’t had a crush in forever.” This prompts Rosa to reflect on her recent crushes: “An older guy in my calculus class at Port Coral Community who always held the door open for me, and a girl from the ice cream shop who never wore the same name tag and told me I smelled like strawberries.”
  • Rosa’s friend Mike teases her about “running away with an Argentinian sailor.”
  • Rosa asks Mike if he would date her. She says, “I was just curious if you’d ever think of me like that.”
  • Rosa describes Alex, the love interest, as “a very cute sailor tattooed with the sea.”
  • Rosa runs into Alex at the dock. He asks her to sit, and she decides to stay because “I needed a moment and this little seed of a crush really wanted me to sit with him.”
  • Alex runs a hand over his beard, and Rosa finds herself “wondering how it might feel to run my fingers across his beard and maybe press my face to his neck. I frowned, surprised at myself. Talking by moonlight softened a lot of edges.”
  • Rosa and her friend have a conversation about Alex in which her friend describes him as “super hot.”
  • While stuck on the side of the highway, Alex and Rosa kiss for the first time. “He smiled and ducked his head. He captured my lips in a kiss that already tasted bittersweet.” The kiss is described for about half a page.
  • Rosa’s friend tells the boys that they missed their chance with Rosa because she is “out here getting kissed by cute boys with man beards and baked goods.”
  • When Rosa is getting ready for her first date with Alex, she is advised to “Scoop him up and throw some sprinkles on that. Drizzle the caramel. You get me. Doodle his name in that little journal of yours. Doodle it hard.”
  • At the end of their date Alex tells Rosa, “I like you like you.” The two kiss briefly at the end of the scene.
  • When Rosa agrees to be Alex’s second for the regatta, he kisses her “quickly.”
  • When Alex and Rosa win the regatta, he “pulled me against him and dropped a hard, grateful kiss on my lips.”

Violence

  • During an argument, Rosa’s mother opens up about the death of Rosa’s father. “Tell [Rosa] that my love killed him. . . I loved him too much, so the sea took him. When this whole town cried for the lost boy at sea, you looked at your own daughter and her growing middle and said it was the cures. That it was me.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Rosa says that the vejitos, a group of old Cuban men living in Port Coral, act “like a person could live forever on coffee, rum, and cigars.” She later describes them as smelling like “sharp aftershave and cigars.”
  • Rosa says that Junior, one of the Peña Cousins, “used to sell weed, but now he was focused on getting his mixtape to go viral.”
  • Rosa’s mother returns home drunk after she “bought a bottle of wine and sat at the end of the dock where I drank the whole thing before slipping a note inside and chucking it into the water.”

Language

  • Oh my God, God, Dios mio, Por dios, and Jesus are all used frequently as exclamations. For example, when Mrs. Peña mentions jazz band, Ana replies “God, don’t say that so loud.”
  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes: damn, hell, crap, and asshole.
  • Ana tells her brother that her drums “cost more than your shitty car.”
  • Ana tells Junior not to be “a dick.”
  • Mimi gets angry about the current state of Cuba and exclaims “Carajo qué mierda.”
  • Rosa’s mother says “Come mierda,” a phrase that literally translates to “shit eater” which Cubans often use to mean “dumbass.”

Supernatural

  • The Santos Women believe that they are cursed. The men they love are destined to die at sea. Rosa explains, “The lullaby of my life is that to know the sea is to know love, but to love us is to lose everything. We’re cursed, they still whisper, but whether it’s by an island, the sea, or our own stubborn hearts, I don’t know.”
  • Rosa’s grandmother acts as the neighborhood curandera. According to Rosa “The neighborhood curandera oversaw concerns about struggling gardens, bad dreams, career changes, and terrible luck, and she brewed hope frothier window that smelled like herbs and dryer sheets.”
  • Mimi owns a magical wind chime. “There was a wood and steel wind chime that was steady when the day was nice, a little wilder with the rain, and as agitated as a scared kid when bad luck was coming.”
  • Rosa owns a magical backpack. “Mimi had sewn it before I started high school, enchanting it with powerful words so it would always carry whatever I needed and never get lost.”
  • Rosa’s mother coming home has interesting consequences. “She and the house were like warring siblings, and it always knew when she returned, because it stopped working. Food burned, candles wouldn’t stay lit, and worst of all, my laptop always struggled to find the Wi-Fi signal.”
  • Rosa’s mother practices tarot. “Sometimes there was a knock at the door, late at night when she was home, and a sad eyed soul waiting on the other side. Mom would sit with them, cards spread across the old wood table. My mother was a storyteller fluent in spells and heartache.”
  • Mimi keeps a notebook that has “ingredients listed for different oils and potions,” as well as accounts of miracle helpings back in Cuba.
  • Rosa says that she puts acorns on windowsills “so lighting won’t strike my house.”
  • When Ana loses her drum sticks, she asks Rosa to “Give me some brujeria, Rosa. Throw down some shells, fire up some smoke! I need that tracking-lost-things spell!”
  • Mimi uses magic to create a replica of Havana in the middle of Port Coral.
  • When Mimi is describing Cuba, she says that Tia Nela warned her not to leave. “She warned me our land was bleeding and the sea would demand a sacrifice.”
  • Rosa knows something is wrong because the wind chime “was wild with panic.”
  • Rosa and her mother participate in a ritual where they see and hear Mimi and Alvaro’s spirits. The description lasts for about three pages.

Spiritual Content

  • When Rosa asks if Mimi would ever return Cuba Mimi responds, “My spirit will, mi amor.”
  • Rosa has an altar set up in her room, which includes, “a couple of pastel candles and fresh flowers sat beside a faded sepia picture of my grandfather and the single Polaroid I had of my father.”
  • When he sees Rosa, a sailor makes an old warding sign, “To keep evil away.”
  • After Rosa’s mother returns home, Mimi cleanses the house. Rosa’s mother claims it’s because of her “bad juju.”
  • Mimi and Rosa both pray to saints and ancestors throughout the story. For example, when Rosa’s mother comes home drunk, “Mimi reached for the saint medallion on her nightstand and muttered a prayer.”
  • Rosa and Ana perform a cleansing spell. “[Rosa] exhaled a shaky breath before asking for protection and guidance. Anna dimmed the lights, watching me. With the swipe of a match, I lit the wick and held the egg over the flickering candle light for a few seconds before closing my eyes and mindfully holding it to the top of my head.” The description of the full ritual is spread out over about six pages.
  • Rosa cleans off her altar and asks her deceased father and grandfather for advice. She says, “I could really use some help with college. Can you see the future? Yeah, it probably doesn’t work like that. But maybe you can get together with my other ancestors and let me know what you think? Some clarity on this would really help.”
  • Rosa listens to one of Mimi’s patients talking about a healing miracle. The patient says that it was “like listening to someone describe a version of la Virgen.”
  • When Mimi is describing Cuba, she says “If her cities fall, if we’re all gone, may God watch after her.”
  • While at the hospital, Ana and her mother pray silently.
  • When Alex offers to spend the night, Rosa says that she needs to lose herself in “inherited rituals.”

by Evalyn Harper

Somewhere Only We Know

10:00 p.m.: Lucky is the biggest K-pop star on the scene, and she’s just performed her hit song “Heartbeat” in Hong Kong to thousands of adoring fans. She’s about to debut on The Later Tonight Show in America, which will hopefully be a breakout performance for her career. But right now? She’s in her fancy hotel trying to fall asleep, but dying for a hamburger.

11:00 p.m.: Jack is sneaking into a fancy hotel, on assignment for his tabloid job that he keeps secret from his parents. On his way out of the hotel, he runs into a girl wearing slippers who is single-mindedly determined to find a hamburger. She looks kind of familiar. She’s very cute. He’s maybe curious.

12:00 a.m.: Nothing will ever be the same.

Somewhere Only We Know switches back and forth between Lucky and Jack’s point of view, which gives the reader a fun insight into each person’s thought process. Each character has a secret, and the multiple points of view allow the reader to understand the fear behind the secret. Another interesting aspect of the story is the insight into both character’s heritage—both are American-born Koreans, who see Korea in a unique light. Lucky often compares America and Korea’s differences, but one thing that is similar in both countries is the idea that “women need to be pretty more than anything.”

Even though Lucky is a K-pop artist, she is just like many young adults: she desires freedom, wonders what path her life should take, and worries about letting others down. Even though the story takes place over a 24-hour period, Lucky’s joy at being able to explore the world is contagious. Her protective partner in crime, Jack, is not only insanely attractive, but is also struggling to figure out his future as he explores the narrow definitions of right and wrong.

Somewhere Only We Know is a fast-paced, funny romance that readers will not be able to put down. The story will make readers laugh while also exploring the idea of “living a life of quality.” In the end, Jack realizes that a “quality life involved caring for people. Being good to them. Being a good person for them in addition to yourself.” Somewhere Only We Know doesn’t gloss over the hard work that is involved in having a quality life. Lucky finally receives therapy to help her with her anxiety, and Jack has to be honest with his parents about his fears and dreams.

Somewhere Only We Know has two characters that fall in love in a day. Readers will enjoy watching the two stumble their way through that day. In the end, Lucky and Jack go their separate ways because they need to figure out their own issues, but the story leaves the reader with the hopeful thought that maybe love can grow when the time is right.

Sexual Content

  • When Lucky and Jack are walking on a city street, they pass “a couple making out in a dark corner.”
  • When an older man starts flirting with Lucky, she kicked him “in the shin, lightly” and told him, “And you need to stop creeping on me!”
  • When Lucky wakes up in a man’s bed, she states, “I was relieved, but I couldn’t quite figure out if it was from not having been despoiled, or if it was from knowing that if I had been despoiled, I would have wanted to remember it.”
  • When Lucky is leaving Jack’s apartment early in the morning, his landlady sees her and says, “You. Don’t sleep with bad boys like Jack.”
  • In order to avoid talking to a fan, Lucky kisses Jack. She “slipped my hand onto the soft skin on the back of his neck and pressed my body to his. Hips bumping, torsos grazing. . . I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my lips to his.” Even though Jack knew Lucky was creating a diversion, he “reached up and grazed her jaw with my fingertips. Her eyelashes fluttered before I pressed my lips to hers again, softly. Moving over them slowly. Her mouth matched mine in response, with a gentle intake of breath.” The kiss is described over three pages.
  • Jack asks, “Why is it that in rom-coms people always go from hating each other to like, ripping each other’s clothes off?”
  • None of the K-pop stars were supposed to date, “but there were hookups and covert dating.” However, Lucky had never dated.
  • Lucky tells Jack that she likes him. Then she says, “Isn’t it interesting that Koreans have a specific word for that? Because we understand that even saying you like someone is meaningful. In America, the moment is sealed by like, sex or some dramatic love confession. But in Korea, ‘I like you.’ That’s a big deal.”
  • When Jack changes his shirt, Lucky thinks, “good gravy, he was pleasing to look at. All lean, corded muscles and smooth, tanned skin.”
  • Jack kisses Lucky and she thinks, “Jack was good at this. Truly, he was too masterful. The head tilt was perfect. The soft touch of his hands on my face. The pressure of his lips. . . All that existed was Jack in front of me. Jack kissing me. This delicate and hungry exchange of breath.”
  • At a club, Jack and Lucky dance. As they danced, Lucky “shamelessly ran my hands through Jack’s hair, over his arms and chest. . . kissing him now and again.”
  • As Lucky walks, she has to go around “a couple making out against a lamppost.”
  • After a long absence, Lucky sees Jack, and “she reached up and kissed me. Hard. It was the kiss of an outlaw, of a soldier back from war. I gladly submitted, letting her wrap her arms around me, feeling her body lift as she stood on her toes to reach me.”

Violence

  • Lucky tells Jack about the time her sister was injured by a mob of fans. “A fan grabbed at her and she fell forward, onto her chin. She needed stitches. . . Seeing Vivian’s startled face before she hit the ground was the worst moment of my life. Spending a car ride with her while she cried, clutching Ren’s rolled up jacket to her bloody chin, was the second worst.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Every night, Lucky is “given two sleeping pills and one Arivan. The sleeping pills were standard, everyone took them. But the Arivan—that was top secret. Mental illness was still taboo in South Korea. . .”
  • When Jack first sees Lucky, he assumes she is “passed out” drunk; however, she is sleeping because of the pills she took earlier. Later she doesn’t want to tell him that she was “completely out of it from sleeping pills mixed with anxiety meds.”
  • A man asks Lucky if she would like a drink. When they sit down, he orders a gin and tonic.
  • At a karaoke bar, two women announce that they got married, then “the bartender uncorked a bottle of champagne.”
  • As Lucky goes through an area of town with bars and restaurants, she passes “drunk dudes.”
  • Jack’s parents didn’t want him to go on a “backpacking trip of discovery.” Jack’s sister thinks that the rich boys who do are just “discovering weed.”

Language

  • Profanity used: ass, bitch, damn, crap, holy crap, bloody hell, shit.
  • “Dear Lord,” “Oh God,” “Oh my God,” “Jesus,” and “Christ” are used as exclamations frequently.
  • Jack sneaks a girl into a party and dictates, “using some phony contact name that didn’t exist, combined with dickish entitlements, I got us upstairs.”
  • When Lucky goes into a bar, Jack says, “There are cooler places to go that aren’t full of douchebags.”
  • After Jack hurts Lucky’s feelings, he feels like a “jackass.” She thinks he is a “bastard.”
  • A “drunk loser” called Lucky a “bitch.”
  • Jack sends photos of Lucky to his boss, the manager of a tabloid magazine. The man likes “an ass shot” and refers to Lucky as a “bitch.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Lucky and Jack go into a Buddhist temple. Lucky says she is not religious, but she lights incense. Lucky said, “I’m not actually praying. I’m being respectful of other cultures.” Lucky and Jack have a brief conversation about prayer. During the conversation, Lucky says, “Buddhism is pretty interesting. It’s all about the path to liberation—to be free of things like early desires, to be free of cravings.” This comment leads to a short conversation about living life selflessly.

 

 

Unravel Me

Juliette has escaped from The Reestablishment, who wanted to use her as a weapon. She no longer has to hide her love for Adam. But even though Juliette can now make plans, she can never be free from her lethal touch. And even though she doesn’t want to hurt people, she cannot contain her power, and others continue to suffer at her hand.

Juliette doesn’t decide if she wants to join the resistance until Warner threatens her friends. When her friends are taken captive, Juliette knows she must join the fight. But she is haunted by her past and terrified of her future. In the end, Juliette may have to choose between her heart or saving lives—including Adam’s.

Although Unravel Me has an interesting premise, readers will find it difficult to connect with Juliette because she cannot look past her own needs. Not only is Juliette whiny, but she also constantly berates herself and apologizes for her actions. Instead of focusing on understanding her power, Juliette allows her powers to take control, which leads her to hurt others. Instead of taking action, Juliette repeatedly says she’s sorry, but the apologies lack depth because she does nothing to learn how to control her power and prevent further harm.

The evil leader, Warner, reappears in the second installment of the series. Although Warner is self-centered and craves power, Unravel Me tries to paint him in a more positive light. Soon Juliette is confused by her growing attraction to the man who tried to kill Adam. Even though Juliette is trying to understand Warner, the three-way romance just doesn’t work. Juliette was so devastated when she hurts others, but she is somehow willing to overlook Warner’s killing nature. Instead of feeling sorry for Warner, the reader will be left confused. How can Juliette have intense romantic feelings for a power-hungry man who is willing to kill to get what he wants?

Unfortunately, Unravel Me spends so much time delving into Juliette’s emotional pain and indecision that other characters never have the opportunity to make more than a quick appearance. Instead, readers will have a difficult time caring about what happens. Although the story is unique, there are just too many plot twists that don’t make sense. Readers may want to consider leaving Unravel Me on the shelf. If you’re looking for a fast-paced story with a sprinkle of romance, try A Little in Love by Susan E. Fletcher or the Matched trilogy by Ally Condie.

Sexual Content

  • Adam kisses Juliette. “His left hand is cupping the back of my head, his right tightening around my waist, pressing me hard against him and destroying every rational thought I’ve ever had . . . Somehow I end up on top of him. He reaches up only to pull me down and he’s kissing me, my throat, my cheeks, and my hands are searching his body, exploring the lines, the planes, the muscle . . . This moment. These lips. This strong body pressed against me and these firm hands finding a way to bring me closer and I know I want so much of him. I want all of him. . .” The two only stop kissing when Juliette’s power begins to hurt Adam. The scene is described over five pages.
  • Juliette asks a man if he spied on her when she was changing. He replies, “. . .you are definitely not my type. And more importantly, I’m not some perverted asshole.”
  • Warner shows Juliette a tattoo on his lower back. She thinks, “I want to study the secrets tucked between his elbows and the whispers caught behind his knees. I want to follow the lines of his silhouette with my eyes and the tips of my fingers. I want to trace rivers and valleys along the curved muscles on his body.”
  • Warner asks Juliette to run away with him. Then he grabs her, and she feels “his skin against my skin and I’m holding my breath. . . I don’t say a word as his hands drop to my waist, to the thin material making a poor attempt to cover my body. His fingers graze the soft skin of my lower back, right underneath the hem of my shirt and I’m losing count of the number of times my heart skips a beat.” Then he kisses her and “he traces the shape of my mouth, the curves the seam the dip and my lips part even though I asked them not to. . .” When he kisses her, she thinks, “His lips are softer than anything I’ve ever known, soft like a first snowfall, like biting into cotton candy, like melting and floating and being weightless in water. . . He kisses me again, this time stronger, desperate . . . His lips touch my bare stomach. . . He’s leaving a trail of fire along my torso, one kiss after another, and I don’t think I can take much more of this. . .” Juliette freaks out and Warner leaves. The scene is described over ten pages.

Violence

  • When Juliette sees Adam being experimented on, she freaks out. She punches “my fist right through the floor. The earth fissures under my fingers and the reverberations surge through my being, ricocheting through my bones until my skull is spinning and my heart is a pendulum slamming into my rib cage.” After her anger is spent, Juliette sees that her “skin is torn and blood is everywhere and I can’t move my fingers. I realize I’m in agony.”
  • After taking hostages, the supreme commander demands to see Juliette. When she arrives, “He’s pinned me against the wall by the throat, his hands carefully sheathed in a pair of leather gloves, already prepared to touch my skin to cut off my oxygen, choke me to death and I’m sure I’m dying, I’m so sure that this is what it feels like to die, to be utterly immobilized, limp from the neck down. . . He lets go of me.”
  • Later, the supreme commander tells his son, Warner, to kill Juliette. When Warner points the gun at his father, his father says, “Shoot me. . . So much talk and never enough follow-through. You embarrass me.” Warner’s father “backhands Warner in the face so hard Warner actually sways for a moment. . .”  Then Juliette grabs Warner’s father’s neck and thinks, “I’ve pinned him to the wall, so overcome by a blind, burning, all-consuming rage that I think my brain has already been caught on fire and dissolved into ash.” Juliette shoots the man in both legs and she is “entertained by the horror in his eyes. The blood ruining the expensive fabric of his clothes. I want to tell him he doesn’t look very attractive with his mouth open like that but then I think he probably wouldn’t care about my opinion anyway.” One of Juliette’s friends pulls her away before she can kill Warner’s father. The scene is described over four pages.
  • In Juliette’s diary, she talks about the day she was taken to the prison. The guards “handcuffed my hands behind my back, the one who strapped me to my seat. They stuck Tasers to my skin over and over for no other reason than to hear me scream but I wouldn’t. . . They slapped me awake even though my eyes were opened when we arrived. Someone unstrapped me without removing my handcuffs and kicked me in both kneecaps before ordering me to rise. . . I really can’t remember the part when they dragged me inside.”
  • In a skirmish between the resistance and the Reestablishment, the Reestablishment’s soldiers “are unloading round after round, shooting at anything that could be a target. . . One man has his hands to the ground, freezing the earth beneath the soldier’s feet, causing them to lose balance. . .” One of the men collects a whirlwind of particles and forms a cyclone. When he lets go, “the soldiers are shouting, screaming, running back and ducking for cover but most are too slow to escape the reach of so much destruction and they’re down, impaled by shards of glass and stone and wood and broken metal but I know this defense won’t last for long.” Juliette uses her powers to cause an earthquake, which allows the resistance fighter to escape. The scene is described over six pages.
  • The Reestablishment gathers a group of citizens together to kill them. In order to try to help the citizens, Juliette and her friends discuss their options. While they talk, they see “27 people lined up, standing side by side in the middle of a big, barren field. Men and women and children of all different ages. . . One of the soldiers fires a shot. The first man crumples to the ground. . .” During the scene, Juliette’s “eyes are locked on a little girl who can’t be much older than James, her eyes so wide, so terrified, the front of her pants already wet from fear and it rips me to pieces. . .” Juliette and her friends shoot at the soldiers and they “see one [bullet] find its mark in a soldier’s neck. . . We’re dodging the bullets aimed in our direction and I see Adam dropping to the ground, I see him shooting with perfect precision and still failing to find a target. . . 3 soldiers go down almost instantly.”
  • During the fight, Juliette sees “dead dead dead is everywhere. So many bodies mixed and meshed into the earth that I have no idea if they’re ours or theirs. . . I’m tackled from behind. Someone pins me down and my face is buried in the ground and I’m kicking, trying to scream but I feel the gun wrenched out of my grip. I feel an elbow in my spine. . .” A soldier points a gun at Juliette, and “I’m only clawing at his covered arm, at the muscle he’s bound around my neck and he shakes me, shouts at me to stop squirming and pulls me tighter to cut off my air supply and my fingers are clenched around his forearm, trying to fight the viselike grip he has around me and I can’t breathe and I’m panicked. . . I’ve crushed all the bones in his arm. . .” Someone hits Juliette on the head, making her “almost entirely unconscious.” The scene is described over 10 pages.
  • Warner’s father shoots Juliette in the chest. She thinks, “My heart has exploded. I’m thrown backward, tripping over my own feet until I hit the floor, my head slamming into the carpeted ground, my arms doing little to break my fall. It’s pain never thought I could feel, never would have even imagined.” Juliette doesn’t die from the wound.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Adam talks about his father, who would only come around “to get drunk and beat the crap out of someone.” After Adam’s mother died, his father would “come by just to get piss-drunk. He used to force me to stand in front of him so he could throw his empty bottles at me.”

Language

  • Profanity is used often. Towards the end of the book, the profanity ramps up and appears on almost every page. Profanity includes ass, asshole, bullshit, bastards, crap, damn, dumbass, goddamn, hell, holy shit, jackass, and shit.
  • “Oh God,” “God,” and “Jesus” are used as exclamations often.
  • Juliette remembers the world before the Reestablishment took over. She “remembers the pissed-off skies and the sequence of sunsets collapsing beneath the moon.”
  • When Adam tries to tell Juliette how he feels, he ends up saying, “Jesus. What the hell am I saying. Shit. Shit. I’m sorry—forget that – forget I said anything. . .”
  • One of Juliette’s friends yells at her. “And I should kick my own ass for it, but I feel sorry for you. So I tell him I’ll help. I rearrange my entire goddamn schedule just to help you deal with your issues.”
  • One of Juliette’s friends says, “Jesus. How early is it? I would kick a soldier in the crotch for a cup of coffee right now.”
  • When someone calls a man a “fetus,” the man gets angry and says, “I am mad. I’m pissed off. And I’m cranky as hell because I’m tired. And hungry. And I need more coffee.”
  • Someone says Adam’s father was being a “dick.”

Supernatural

  • Many characters have special powers. Juliette is trying to learn how to harness her energy. “Our gifts are different forms of Energy. Matter is never created or destroyed. . . as our world changed, so did the Energy within it. Our abilities are taken from the universe, from other matter, from other Energies.”
  • When Juliette touches someone, she drains the life out of them.
  • The first book in the series explains how Juliette goes to a compound where she meets a man who can move things with his mind. There is also a man who tells her, “Sometimes I electrocute people by accident” and another who is really flexible. He “loops one arm around his waist. Twice.”
  • At the compound, two women are healers—one heals the physical body and the other heals emotional wounds. The healers “can set broken bones and repair bullet wounds and revive collapsed lungs and mend even the worst kinds of cuts.”
  • Another person can “blend into the background of any space. Shift myself to match my surroundings.”
  • Adam discovers that he can project his ability and can disable others’ abilities.
  • Adam’s brother can heal quickly.
  • Warner can sense other people’s emotions, which allows him to know when someone is lying. He can also be a conduit to transfer other people’s energy.

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

The Merciful Crow

In the world of Sabor, the Phoenix Caste reigns supreme, the Hawk Caste does their best to maintain the peace, and the Crow Caste are scorned by all. Fie, a future Crow chief, is a teenage girl who’s roped into helping the Crown Prince Jasimir and his body-double Tavin. Together, all three must outrun Queen Rhusana’s expert trackers and killers.

But what’s supposed to be an easy journey to deliver the Prince into an allied governor’s hands quickly turns into much more than Fie or the rest of her Crows ever expected. Hunted by Queen Rhusana’s handpicked trackers, the Vultures, Fie must summon everything she has to outwit and outrun her pursuers. The conflicts only get harder as she begins to fall in love with Tavin, a love that shouldn’t be possible.

From the moment the book begins, it’s an endless adventure that never fails to deliver on the harrowing journey Fie must undertake. With the class-based society Sabor revolves around, the Crows (Fie’s caste) are universally snubbed and hated by the other castes. This is a theme that hits the reader on the head throughout the story. Despite this, Fie, Jasimir, and Tavin are likable protagonists that help to anchor the story.

While the story is similar to Romeo and Juliet, Owen manages to keep The Merciful Crow fresh. The easy-to-read story is written with wonderful pacing that will keep the reader gliding through each chapter. With a good blend of fast-paced action and romance, the book will hook the reader from the beginning until the very end. The Merciful Crow has several surprises and fun twists that add to the quick scenes. Fie’s relationship with Tavin is also a highlight as the two use the journey to grow both as people and as lovers. While the characters feel underdeveloped at times, they are still fun assets to the story.

The Merciful Crow will delight those who want an action-based adventure story set in a troubled fantasy world. The story features a strong female protagonist and has a theme of fighting against prejudice in a hateful world. Even though the plot is not unique—the main protagonists are forced to journey together and eventually fall in love—The Merciful Crow is a fun tale because of the mix of action and love. The Merciful Crow would be a great addition to any young reader’s bookshelf.

Sexual Content

  • Madcap, a Crow, belted “another lewd and anatomically improbable verse of ‘The Lad from Across the Sea’” when dancing with Fie. Madcap is the only Crow with lewd songs, and he sings them another 2-3 times. The actual words of the song itself are never specified.
  • When Fie uses her magic and sees visions of the past. She sees “a lover waiting in the amber-pod gardens”.
  • Fie reminisces about the past when she thinks, “She might have softened her tongue for Hangdog long ago, when the two of them slipped away to more private groves.”
  • When Tavin is trying to distinguish Fie’s preferences, “Madcap made a crude gesture that suggested exactly what they thought Fie trucked with.”
  • When bantering with Tavin, Fie says, “Wager I’ve spent more nights ready to die for my kin than you’ve spent rolling palace girls.” She uses this against Tavin a few more times, often to catch him off guard.
  • Hangdog gets angry at Fie’s relationship with Tavin: “Just because he can’t rut his own women out here doesn’t mean he’s welcome to ours.” Hangdog consistently berates Fie and Tavin in this way. He confronts Fie again: “You’re only good to his kind on your knees.”
  • Another Crow asks of Fie (when it’s only her, Jasimir, and Tavin), “You a-feared of getting with child, too?”
  • Speaking about the Swan Caste: “Swans don’t rut inside the caste…At least, not to conceive.”
  • While wanting to take a bath in a river, Fie thinks, “stripping down in front of lordlings didn’t sit right.”
  • When waking up to find Tavin had gone to wash up in a hot spring, Fie thinks, “The notion of Tavin washing up in a hot spring had an entirely different effect on her.” Jasimir notices Fie’s obvious desire, and says, “I’m not utterly oblivious…But you’re only going to get hurt.”
  • On watch duty with Tavin, Fie kisses him. “He didn’t kiss her back so much as drown himself in her.” She reminisces, as she and Tavin strip down to sleep with each other, that “Before, when she’d lain with Hangdog, it had been matters of urgency, a hasty exchange of services.” She goes on to say, “Tavin too moved with urgency, but it was a curious kind, a need to discover every place that made her shiver…” Afterward, Tavin explains why he never wanted to get anyone pregnant, saying, “Gender’s never mattered to me, but I-I didn’t want to get anyone with child.” This scene takes place over multiple pages.
  • When tempers flare between Jasimir and Tavin as they’re being chased, Jasimir says in regards to Fie, “My condolences if that conflicts with who you want in your bed this week!”
  • Tavin kisses Fie before sacrificing himself to become a decoy. “He pulled Fie to him and pressed a swift, soft kiss to her mouth.”
  • When traveling with only Jasimir, Jas says, “Don’t tell me you’re worried that I’ll get you with child.”
  • When Tavin’s mother asks if anyone has something to say, Fie says, “Tavin and I slept together…Since you’re asking.”
  • When speaking about his father and mother to Fie, Tavin says, “…he’d been drunk enough to command Mother to his bed while Aunt Jasindra was still at the reception.”
  • After coming to terms with each other, Fie says to Tavin, “If I’d known I’d rutted a half prince, probably I would’ve bragged about it more.” Once made up, Tavin “kissed her back, careful at first, then spiraling into dizzy, feverish glee…” Eventually, Fie manages to say, “My room,” telling Tavin to sleep with her again. This scene happens in two pages.
  • When Tavin and Fie are say goodbye to each other at the end, Tavin “opened his mouth, shut it again, and, without a word, pulled her into a long, hard kiss.”

Violence

  • The very first line of the book is, “Pa was taking too long to cut the boy’s throats.” Because of a plague running rampant in Sabor, the Crow Caste – being the only caste immune to the disease – end up being called to mercy kill the plague victims before the plague overcomes the victim. This type of scene is brought up again. In another scene, Fie thinks about what would happen if they didn’t kill the victims. “Two weeks in, the dead would be piled up, the crops blackening in the fields.” When Pa proceeds to kill a plague victim, “There was a savage jerk. The sinner died smiling.”
  • The sight of blood is frequently shown. For example, “Damp red streaked down the front of Pa’s robes. He’d dealt a mercy killing, then.”
  • After bringing the supposedly dead prince out to the cart, Fie wonders “if Phoenix boys burned like any other sinner.” Fie then notices, “Death-stink hadn’t settled on the boys yet, but she still flinched at the crimson stains on their shrouds.” Fie “didn’t intend to punch the boy, but she did all the same.”
  • When Hangdog tries to touch Tavin, he found himself “standing stone-still as a sword point strummed the skin beneath his chin.”
  • When discussing the Crow’s mercy killings, Pa asks Jasimir, “You ever listen to a child die by fire?”
  • When Hangdog, Fie’s former lover and a fellow Crow, attempts to betray the Princes, “An arrow sank, soft and immediate, into Hangdog’s eye.” Hangdog dies, and the Crows (not including Fie, Tavin, and Jasimir) are taken hostage. A Vulture witch tells Fie, “Oldest woman in your kin, caught a few too many arrows from us on the bridge.” That woman is Wretch, and she survives the wounds. After Viimo, the witch, tells Fie about Wretch, Fie destroys Viimo’s hands. “One moment Viimo’s hands were hands; the next they were a tangle of raw red flesh and tattered skin.”
  • When dealing with more hate from a Sparrow butcher, Tavin uses his magic to boil the man. “The butcher crumpled, screaming, as blisters boiled over his blackening flesh.”
  • As Fie, Tavin, and Jas are ambushed, “The rest was a frenzy of noise, steel, and blood. One body fell, then another—”
  • Fie gets angry with Jasimir, “Then she slapped the prince.” To stop Jasimir from giving their position away, Fie tackles Jasimir to the ground and “Fie flipped the broken sword and leveled its jagged, trembling point to Jasimir’s right eye.”
  • When attacked by ghasts, Fie attacked the creature with the broken sword: “It sank to the hilt without a sound, but the flesh round her throat stayed iron-solid.” When Jasimir kills an Oleander in the same scene, “Steel flashed, a thorn darting through torchlight.”
  • While fleeing the Vultures sent by the Queen, Fie and Jasimir are shot at, “Then an arrow sailed over her head and into the trunk of a ghost tree.” Another arrow later hits Fie. “She didn’t feel the arrow when it buried itself in her thigh.”
  • When Fie confronts Tatterhelm and the Vultures chasing after her and Jasimir, they fight. “He slammed her into another wall.” This scene takes place over several pages.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Fie “smirked up at him, a little jump-drunk from swinging betwixt fear and relief.”
  • When Jas teaches Fie to write letters, she thinks “hers were overlarge and tilting like a drunk.”
  • After hiding from an ambush, Fie and the others find “The supplies they’d abandoned were knocked about the clearing as if a drunkard had bumbled into them…”

Language

  • At the very beginning, Fie says, “Twelve hells,” a saying that pops up very frequently throughout the story.
  • When finding the stray cat, Pa says, “Covenant’s crap she is, Fie, but we’ll talk your share later.”
  • When they first meet, Wretch calls Tavin and Jasimir “royal louts.”
  • Tavin says, early on, “The damn patchouli, that’s what she called it.” Damn pops up occasionally in the book.
  • Hangdog calls Prince Jasimir a “piss-baby.”
  • Jasimir calls Fie a “bone-thief,” a slur aimed at Crow witches. This pops up occasionally in the book.
  • Hangdog, getting mad at Jasimir, says, “When was the last time your powdered ass set foot off the palace grounds?” Ass is used occasionally in the book.
  • An Oleander, a hunter of Crows, calls Fie’s band “filth.”
  • Fie calls Tavin a “bastard boy.” Bastard is used occasionally in the book. Part Three is titled: “Bastards and Gods.” Soon after, as Tavin tries to help her down from a tree, Fie tells him to “get scummed!”
  • Master-General Draga called King Surimir, “gilded dung.”
  • Viimo tells Tavin to “Choke on horseshit.”
  • Jasimir tells Fie after they lose Tavin, “Fuck the oath!”

Supernatural

  • War-witches are witches meant specifically for battle. Fie thinks, “King Surimir fancied the war-witches as his palace guards, warriors who healed wounds just as easily as they tore their foes apart from within.” Tavin is considered a war-witch due to his Hawk caste standing and his job as Jasimir’s bodyguard.
  • Fie thinks about how she and Hangdog had “both been born witches, and for Crows, that meant they were born to be chiefs.” There are only as many witches as there are dead gods, meaning only a thousand are spread throughout Sabor. Witches and magic pop up as the main premise throughout this book, and come in and out of the story very fluidly. Characters like Fie, Hangdog, Pa, Tavin, Viimo, and others unnamed use magic.
  • Fie and other Crow witches use people’s teeth to produce their magic. The teeth allow the Crows to access the Birthrights of the other castes – the special abilities the thousand dead gods once handed down to the people of Sabor. This happens frequently throughout the book, mostly through Fie.
  • Birthrights aren’t specifically mentioned as magic, but they are used in the same way. For instance, the Vulture caste members that are after Fie, Tavin, and Jasimir use their Birthrights alongside their own magic to track the trio. Birthrights are a major theme in the novel, as they call back to the caste system present in Sabor.
  • The Vultures use their magic at some point to create ghasts. Ghasts are essentially the undead. Hangdog’s corpse is eventually used against Fie in the final part of the book.

Spiritual Content

  • Throughout Sabor, a plague is present. People who come down with the plague are called “sinners.” For example, when Fie and Hangdog go to bring out the sinners at the beginning of the book, Fie thinks, “The steward had called the sinner ‘boys’ when he led the Crows in.” This happens frequently, whenever a plague victim is seen of mentioned.
  • The “thousand dead gods,” (or just “dead gods”) are mentioned frequently throughout the book. An early example: “But by the thousand dead gods of Sabor, Fie wagered they were starting to catch on now.” Fie thinks of a saying, “Dead gods be kind.” Very few of these dead gods are mentioned by name.
  • There are shrines the Crow Caste stops at throughout Sabor. These shrines are dedicated to their gods. For example, “The scattering of huts and god-grave shrines by the road eventually yielded to the twist-trunked, lichen-shawled forest.” These shrines pop up frequently, both literally and in conversation.
  • The dead gods gave out the Birthrights – special abilities given to each Caste. For instance, the Phoenix Caste (the ruling caste) was given the Birthright of fire, which allows them immunity to burning or fire-based injuries. Each Caste’s gods handed out Birthrights to their Caste, save for the Crow Gods. “She wondered, too much, why the Crow’s gods had left them no Birthright at all.” Birthrights come up frequently throughout the book.
  • Some Crow Gods are named early on when Fie and her Crows stop at a shrine. “Loyal Star Hama guarding sleeping crows, Crossroads Eyes leading them away from treacherous roads, Dena Wrathful and her hundred-hundred teeth.” Wretch, a Crow, “set on a new walking song, a marching hymn to the dead god Crossroads-eyes.”
  • A Phoenix dead god is named “Ambra, Queen of Day and Night, stood astride the sun, wreathed in gold Phoenix fire.” Fie uses her name against Jasimir saying, “But Ambra help me, you leave who’s bedding out of it, or I swear to every dead god—”
  • It’s mentioned that the “Swan caste had only three dead gods.”
  • It’s thought that every witch in Sabor is the reincarnation of a dead god. Madcap called Fie, “Little Witness: the dead Crow god,” when she was younger.

by Jonathan Planman

Shatter Me

Juliette has always been an outcast. She doesn’t understand why she is different; she just knows her touch is fatal. After being locked in solitary confinement for 264 days, Juliette is shocked when she gets a new cellmate—a boy. Adam wants to be Juliette’s friend, but she doesn’t know if she can trust him. Then, the Reestablishment takes both her and Adam to a new facility.

The Reestablishment has plans for Juliette. Plans to use her as a weapon. Juliette doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Even though Juliette is still a prisoner, she is discovering the strength to fight back. She wants to have a future. With Adam by her side, Juliette plans her escape. When the time is right, will Juliette be able to escape the Reestablishment? Will Adam lead her to a better life, or does he have plans to betray her?

old from Juliette’s point of view, the story focuses on her thoughts and feelings. However, her thought process is often hard to understand as her thoughts are often described using figurative language. There is also no clear transition between her thoughts and what is actually happening in the story, meaning readers may have to go back and reread some scenes to make sure they understand the text.

The story has an interesting premise, but readers will have a difficult time suspending their disbelief. The story never explains why Juliette’s touch is lethal. Since Juliette’s touch is only lethal when her skin touches someone else’s skin, it is hard to imagine that no one has given Juliette a pair of gloves. Instead of helping Juliet protect others, her parents moved around after each disaster. When Juliette accidentally causes the death of a little boy, she is sent to prison and placed in an isolation cell. Once she is placed in the care of the Reestablishment, her main captor always wears gloves to protect himself. If her captor came up with the simple solution of gloves, why didn’t anyone else?

Juliette soon discovers that both Adam and her captor are immune to her touch. Since Juliette revels in the ability to simply touch another person, Juliette and Adam share steamy kisses between the high-action scenes. Although the plot is hard to believe, fans of dystopian stories will enjoy the unique characters as well as the battle of good versus evil. Full of suspense and surprises, Shatter Me is an action-packed story with plenty of steamy scenes. Readers will want to jump into the next book, Ignite Me, to see if Juliette finds freedom or just a different type of prison.

Sexual Content

  • When Adam holds Juliette, she thinks, “I wish I knew the taste of his lips.”
  • While Adam and Juliette are alone, he grabs her and puts her against the wall. Juliette is “trembling everywhere and he’s so gentle, so careful, touching me like I’m made of porcelain and I want to shatter. He’s running his hands down my body running his eyes across my face running laps with his heart and I’m running marathons with my mind. Everything is on fire. . . suddenly his lips are on my neck and I’m gasping and dying and clutching at his arms and he’s touching me touching me touching me and I’m thunder and lightning. . . ” The scene is described over two pages.
  • Adam tells Juliette that he loves her. Then, “his nose is touching my nose, his lips one breath away, his eyes devouring me already and I’m a puddle with no arms and no legs. . . His hands at my waist, gripping my hips, his legs flush against my own, his chest overpowering me with strength, his frame built by bricks of desire. . . He’s everywhere up my back and over my arms and suddenly he’s kissing me harder, deeper, with a fervent urgency that I’ve never known before.”
  • As Adam and Juliette kiss, she slips “my hands under his shirt and he chokes on a moan that turns into a kiss that needs me and wants me and has to have me so desperately it’s like the most acute form of torture. His weight is pressed into mine, on top of mine, infinite points of feeling . . . his lips are falling down my shirt and I don’t understand why I need to wear clothes anymore. . .” Their embrace is interrupted.
  • When Adam kisses Juliette, she gasps “and he’s kissing me, deep and powerful and unrestrained. His arms around my back, dipping my body until I’m practically horizontal. . .”
  • After Adam and Juliette escape, they get to a safe place and Juliette asks Adam to touch her. Then, “my face is in his hands and my lips are at his lips and he’s kissing me. . . His body is almost on top of mine, one hand in my hair, the other feeling its way down my silhouette, slipping behind my knee to pull me closer, higher, tighter. . . He takes my hands and press them against his chest, guiding my fingers as they trail down the length of his torso before his lips meet mine again and again. . . His hands slip under my shirt, skirting my sides, touching me like he’s never dared to before, and my top is nearly over my head when a door squeaks open. We both freeze.” The scene is described over two pages.
  • One of Adam’s friends tries to get him to move to a safer location. When Adam doesn’t hurry, the man shouts, “I mean, shit, man, I don’t think there’s ever a bad time to get naked, but now is probably not the best time for a nooner. So unless you want to get killed, I suggest you get your ass out here.”
  • When soldiers capture Juliette, a man grabs her, and “his lips touch my skin and I actually whimper.” The man tells her, “God I’d love to just take a bite out of you.” Juliette pretends she likes the man’s touch so she can get his gun. The man’s “hands are exploring my body, slipping down my back to feel the form of my figure and it’s all I can do to keep from doing something reckless. . . And he kisses me. Hungrily. Desperately. Eager to break me open and taste me. . . I pull him closer, grab a fistful of his jacket and kiss him as hard as I can, my fingers already attempting to release the first of his buttons. Warner grips my hips and allows his hands to conquer my body.” When Juliette has the opportunity, she shoots him. The scene is described over three pages.
  • When Adam is beaten, Juliette tells him to get better because “I’m going to memorize every inch of your body with my lips.”
  • When Adam heals from his injuries, he wants to be alone with Juliette. When everyone leaves, Adam leans “in and I’m leaning in until I’m practically on top of him and he’s slipping me into his arms and kissing me with a new kind of desperation . . . His hands are threaded in my hair, his lips so soft and urgent against mine. . .” Adam “kisses my bottom lip. Bites it for just a second.” The scene is described over a page.

Violence

  • Juliette thinks back to when the Reestablishment was taking over the country. She remembers “the bad memories. . . Protests. Rallies. Screams for survival. I see women and children starving to death, homes destroyed and buried in rubble, the countryside a burnt landscape, its only fruit the rotting flesh of casualties. I see dead dead dead red and burgundy and maroon and the richest shade of your mother’s favorite lipstick all smeared into the earth.”
  • While in her cell room, guards come in and begin shouting. While Juliette stands there doing nothing, a guard “slams the butt of his gun into my back and my knees crack as they hit the floor. I finally taste oxygen and a side of blood. . . A steel-toed boot kicks me in the ribs, fast, hard, hollow.” The guards shove a gun into Juliette’s cellmate’s face. The guards make the two walk to a new destination. During the trip, Juliette thinks, “I don’t know how long I’ve been walking before another blow to my back cripples me.” When Juliette falls down, “there’s another heavy boot pressed into my back and I can’t lift my head to distinguish who’s speaking to me.”
  • A soldier is accused of “fraternizing with civilians believed to be rebel party members. He has stolen food and supplies from storage units. . .” When the soldier doesn’t deny the accusations, a man “takes a short breath. Licks his lips. And shoots him in the forehead.” The man’s “limbs are bent at odd angles on the cold, concrete floor. Blood is pooling around him and still no one moves.”
  • When Adam was younger, his drunk father took him to school. Juliette watched “a father slap his 8-year-old son in the face. I watched Adam fall to the floor and I stood there motionless as he was kicked repeatedly in the ribs.” While hitting him, Adam’s father screamed, “It’s your fault, you worthless piece of shit.”
  • In order to understand Juliette’s power, a man puts a toddler in a room that has spikes that come through the floor. In order to save the boy, Juliette is forced to touch him. When she does, “his screams pierce through me like I’m being shot to death, one bullet for every second. He’s clawing at my arms, my chest, kicking my body as hard as he can, crying out in agony until the pain paralyzes him.” After the test, Juliette gets angry. “I catapult through the concrete walls. I crush the glass with 10 fingers.” The test is described over four pages.
  • In order to escape, Adam slams “the butt of his gun into Warner’s head. Warner’s gun misfires and Adam catches his arm and twists his wrist until his grip on the weapon wavers. I grab the gun from Warner’s limp hand and slam the butt of it into his face. . .” During the fight, “Adam slams his knee into Warner’s spine. Warner falls to the floor with a muffled crack and a sharp intake of breath.” After Warner is tied up, Juliette and Adam are able to escape.
  • A man tells Adam, “No one should have to wake up in the morning and find dead bodies in their living room, but shit happens. We deal with it, and we find a way to survive.” As the man continues to talk, Adam gets angry and presses “a gun to his forehead.”
  • As Adam, Juliette, and others flee from the Reestablishment, “there are children everywhere, bright colors of small bodies suddenly screaming at our approaches. . . Adam pushes me to the ground just as a bullet flies past my head. He shoots down another door toward another exit, and we run through the ruins towards another exit, trapped in the maze of what used to be a clothing store. Gunshots and footsteps are close behind. . . Adam is breathing hard. He grips the gun in his hand. Pops his head out for a split second and fires. Someone falls to the floor, screaming.” Several people are killed and Adam is captured.
  • Juliette follows a trail of blood and finds Adam, who is “hanging from bound wrists, shirtless, bloodied, and bruised everywhere. His head is bent, his neck limp, his left leg drenched in blood despite the tourniquet wrapped around his thigh. . . His wrists are rubbed raw, bleeding, his body pounded into one piece of pain, his leg bloodied through with a bullet.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • In the past, Adam’s father drove drunk.
  • A man gives Adam’s ten-year-old brother a sleeping pill. The man doesn’t want the boy to see Adam being chased by the Reestablishment.
  • When Juliette escapes, someone gives her a sedative to help her get over her shock. Later, Adam is also given a sedative to help him recover.

Language

  • Profanity is used often. Towards the end of the book, the profanity ramps up and appears on almost every page. Profanity includes ass, asshole, bullshit, bastards, crap, damn, goddamn, hell, holy shit, and shit.
  • “Oh God,” “God,” and, “Jesus” are used as exclamations often.
  • After Adam treats Juliette badly, he says, “I’m sorry I’m such an asshole.” He also tells her, “I was a jerk yesterday. I treated you like crap and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
  • Someone calls Adam a “sick bastard.”
  • When a man sees Adam and Juliette kissing, he says, “Son of a motherless goat—“
  • One of Adam’s friends refers to Juliette as a “psycho chick.”
  • A man slept in a shed; he described that it “was weird. Crazy shit growing in the place. I almost ate something I thought was fruit before I realized it smelled like ass.”

Supernatural

  • When Juliet touches someone, she drains the life out of them.9 When a guard touches her, “I can hear his anguish, I can feel the power pouring out of his body, I can hear his heart beating in my ears and my head is spinning with the rush of adrenaline fortifying my being. . . My skin is pulsing with someone else’s life and I don’t hate it.” Juliette breaks the connection before the guard is seriously injured.
  • In the past, Juliette tried to help a little boy, but she “killed a little boy in a grocery store simply by helping him to his feet.”
  • Somehow Juliette was able to punch through a steel door. Her “fist flies through 12 inches of steel like it’s made of butter.”
  • Juliette goes to a compound where she meets a man who can move things with his mind. There is also a man who tells her, “Sometimes I electrocute people by accident” and another who is really flexible. He “loops one arm around his waist. Twice.”
  • At the compound, two women are healers—one heals the physical body and the other heals emotional wounds. Yet another person can “blend into the background of any space. Shift myself to match my surroundings.”

Spiritual Content

  • When in a difficult situation, Juliette “prays to God I’m making the right decision.”

What Light

The Christmas season holds a special place in the heart of Sierra’s family. Her parents first met at a Christmas tree lot and quickly fell in love. Now her parents own a Christmas tree farm in Oregon. Every winter, the family travels to California to set up their Christmas tree lot. Because of this, Sierra has never had a normal Christmas holiday, but she has never wanted anything different, having friends in both Oregon and California.

Sierra has always been able to keep her two lives apart, but all that changes when she meets Caleb, a handsome boy with a bad reputation. Even though Sierra is warned to stay away from Caleb’s cute smile, Sierra is drawn to him. The more she gets to know him, the more questions she has about his bad reputation. Sierra is determined to show others that Caleb’s past mistakes should not define him, but with mounting pressure from her parents and friends, Sierra wonders if Caleb is worth the trouble. Amid growing suspicion and misconceptions, Sierra wonders if love really can conquer all.

What Light is a beautiful story about first love, forgiveness, and family. Readers will fall in love with Sierra, who doesn’t hide her intelligence when trying to attract a boy. Instead, she continues to use advanced vocabulary and enjoys the fact that Caleb tries to stump her with new words. Readers will be drawn to Sierra because of her sweet, trusting nature and her love of all things Christmas. Another positive aspect of the story is Sierra’s parents, who use positive communications skills to guide Sierra through her first love, even as they worry about the possibility of Caleb breaking her heart.

As teen romances flood the market, What Light will draw readers in with relatable characters who have healthy relationships. This sweet story steers away from sex, swear words, and other objectionable material. Any reader who is looking for an engaging holiday romance should grab a blanket and a cup of hot cocoa and curl up with What Light. Like a Hallmark Movie, this story will leave readers with a smile and the belief that love can indeed conquer all.

Sexual Content

  • Heather talks about her boyfriend and says, “If the choice is between listening to him or kissing him, kissing is a much better use of his mouth.”
  • When Sierra talks to Heather about her boyfriend, Sierra says, “You and Devon hang out a lot, and I know you make out a lot, but does he know you really like him?”
  • Sierra’s friend tells her to, “put a stupid mistletoe over his head and kiss him already!” During the conversation, the friend also says, “You should probably kiss him, though, before you make any bigger decisions.”
  • The first time Sierra and Caleb kiss, “he touches my cheek with his hand and guides me toward him. His lips are so soft against mine, sweetened with peppermint. I lean further in and get lost kissing him. I slide off him to the mat and then he rolls himself on top of me. I wrap my arms around him and we kiss with more intensity. We pull back to catch our breaths and look into each other’s eyes.”
  • Caleb kisses Sierra and “once again I lose myself in his kiss. I trace my lips from his jaw to his ear.”
  • While on a date, Caleb “kisses me softly. I reach up and touch his cold cheeks, which make his lips feel even warmer. I wonder if every kiss with Caleb will feel this new and magical.”
  • Caleb and Sierra kiss several other times, but the kisses are not described.

Violence

  • Caleb tells Sierra about a time when he was younger. He was angry at his sister and ran after her with a knife. When Caleb’s sister ran from him, “she got to her room and slammed the door. . . I stabbed her door with the knife over and over. I didn’t way to hurt her. . . but I could not stop stabbing the door. I heard her screaming and crying to our mom on the phone. Finally, I dropped the knife and just slumped onto the floor.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Sierra’s friend went on one date with a boy who was “caught with an open can of beer in his friend’s car.”
  • On New Year’s Eve, a boy promises to be “the designated driver for the entire cheer squad.”

Language

  • God is used as an exclamation twice. Oh my God is used as an exclamation once.
  • Hell, damn, and crappy are all used once
  • Caleb’s sister calls her brother “bone-headed.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Sierra teases a boy, saying, “You probably consider your sweet tooth a major sin.” The boy replies, “No, I don’t remember that one being mentioned in church, but laziness has been, and I am that.”
  • A little girl tells Caleb that her family has “said a prayer for you.”
  • A family’s car breaks down on a long trip and the family has to rent a motel room. When the woman recounts the experience, she says, “Thank you, God, they had a pool there or the kids would have killed each other.”
  • Caleb and Sierra have a brief conversation about church. Caleb is a believer, and although he attends church, the story doesn’t go into his beliefs.
  • Sierra says a prayer. “Please don’t let this be the last time I see Caleb.”

The Heir

Eadlyn, the daughter of Maxon and America, is next in line for the throne and will be the first woman in her country’s history to rule by herself. Eadlyn is powerful—the last thing she needs is a man to get in her way. When unrest begins to develop throughout the country, Eadlyn’s parents come to her with a solution to distract the people while they attempt to settle the turmoil in the country—a Selection of her own.

Eadlyn is against the idea. She doesn’t see how babysitting 35 boys will solve the country’s problems. Eadlyn finally agrees to an attempt at finding a husband through the Selection but plans to sabotage it by acting as unpleasant as possible, encouraging the boys to leave on their own and finishing the Selection her way. However, Eadlyn quickly discovers that she must play to the eye of the public in order to win the public’s favor of herself as the next ruler in line for the throne.

As the Selection runs its course, Eadlyn finds herself enjoying some of the boys and doesn’t entirely hate the thought of them being in her house. However, with fights and attempted inappropriate touching, the press begins to show that Eadlyn doesn’t have control over her own Selection. Will Eadlyn finish her Selection with a husband and continue on to rule the country?

Readers won’t be able to put down this installation of the Selection series as they watch the newest generation of Illea’s royalty work through a possible uprising, budding romance, and a whole new type of Selection. Although the first few chapters of The Heir are slow, the pacing picks up and will leave the readers turning the pages to find out if Eadlyn will find the love of her life and still rule Illea. Readers will want to read the previous books of the Selection series in order to fully enjoy and understand The Heir.

Eadlyn is shown as a powerful, headstrong heir to the throne, who learns how to let her walls down. Eadlyn discovers that letting people see her as more than just a ruler, will actually benefit herself. At the beginning of the book, her condescending, blunt, and rude personality may turn away readers. However, readers will eventually fall in love with Eadlyn as she learns how to be the “people’s ruler.” Entertaining characters from previous books make appearances along with new, well-developed characters. Overall, these components create a storyline that will keep readers turning the pages. The story highlights the importance of family and friends and shows that with the help of others, anything can be accomplished. Because the conclusion of The Heir ends with a cliffhanger, readers will want to have the next book of the series, The Crown, on hand.

Language

  • When Kile and Eadlyn greet one another on a date, Eadlyn jokes, “It’s ‘Royal Pain in the Ass’ to you, sir.”
  • Kile apologizes for calling Eadlyn “bratty.”
  • After a parade ends in a disaster, Eadlyn’s parents ask her what happened. Eadlyn replies, “Hell if I know.”
  • “Darn it” is used once.
  • Loser is used twice. Eadlyn jokingly tells someone, “Come in, loser.”
  • Erik tells Eadlyn, “That’s really none of my business, and you’re obviously having a rough day. I’m an ass.”

Sexual Content

  • General Leger is seen kissing his wife, Miss Lucy. In the studio, “General Leger was there, kissing Miss Lucy on her forehead and whispering something to her.”
  • When Eadlyn recounts her disastrous meeting of the Selected men, she says, “one blatantly stared at my chest for the entirety of our meeting.” Eadlyn later sends this man home for the reason, “‘When we met, you couldn’t stop staring at my breasts.’”
  • Kile and Eadlyn kiss in a hallway with the hopes of being photographed by paparazzi. Eadlyn describes their kiss saying, “Kile leaned down, lips meeting mine, holding them there. Then his lips parted and closed and parted again.” Their kissing is described for about a page.
  • Ahren, Eadlyn’s twin brother, makes fun of her for her lack of relationship experience. Ahren says a picture in the paper does not count as a relationship and, “Neither does making out with Leron Troyes at that Christmas ball in Paris.”
  • When going on a date with Baden, Eadlyn says, “Baden and I are going to make music…. I mean that literally, by the way.”
  • Eadlyn invites Kile over to her room and they kiss. Eadlyn recounts that she “wrapped my hand around his head, pulling him to me, and an instant later his arms were around my waist.” Eadlyn describes their kissing for a page.
  • Eadlyn is overwhelmed and goes to Kile for help. Eadlyn pushes Kile into a closet. “I was so overwhelmed, I pressed my lips into his, knowing that would make everything else stop for a minute.” As their kissing gets hotter, Eadlyn begins to remove his shirt, but Kile stops her.
  • Henri and Eadlyn kiss in the kitchen. Eadlyn describes their kiss as delicate. “I pressed my lips into his, trying to tell him without words that this was okay, that I wanted him to hold me.” Their kiss is described for half a page.
  • Camille, Ahren’s girlfriend, comes to Illea from France. When Camille arrives, Ahren, “held her tightly and kissed every corner of her face.”
  • Camille and Ahren sneak off to spend more time together. “Ahren snuck away with Camille, kissing her every step of the way.”
  • When Camille and Ahren don’t show up to breakfast one morning, Eadlyn assumes that either, “Ahren had come to his senses and told her that he needed to consider other options, and they were both in the process of avoiding each other… or they’d spent the night together and were maybe still in bed.”

Violence

  • When Kile calls Eadlyn “bratty” his mother “twacked her son over the head.”
  • When Jack tries to take things too far with Eadlyn, Ahren comes to Eadlyn’s defense. As Jack continues to torment Eadlyn in front of Ahren, Eadlyn had “never seen Ahren throw a punch before. It was almost as shocking as Jack’s limp body after my brother’s fist forced his head to whip back at an awkward angle.”
  • During a group date, Burke and Fox get into a heated argument over their cooking styles. As their argument continues to heat up, “Burke threw a punch that knocked Fox back several steps. I sucked in a breath, frozen. Fox came back at him, and I was pushed to the floor by Burke’s arm pulling back for another punch.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • As Eadlyn and her parents prepare for the arrival of the Selected men, her mother and the chef discuss the need to finalize the first seven-course dinner. Eadlyn “groaned internally. A true seven-course meal could take six hours from the first sip of a cocktail to the final bite of chocolate.”
  • Eadlyn hides away from her people. She says she “took shelter in long baths or a drink with dinner.”
  • After Eadlyn’s parade for the Selected men goes awry, Eadlyn’s mother and father “were both drinking something a little stronger than wine—a rare occasion—though it didn’t appear to be doing much for their nerves.”
  • When Eadlyn invites Kile into her room, Kile “spotted the wine I’d provided and wasted no time in pouring himself a glass.”
  • When Ean questions Eadlyn on what her favorite food is, Eadlyn answers, “Do mimosas count?”

Spiritual Content

  • When Eadlyn comes across two guards, one of the guards says, “Thank God. Go to the king and tell him we’ve found her.”
  • When Eadlyn’s mother has a heart attack, Eadlyn rushes to the hospital wing. When she gets there, “Aunt May sat next to Miss Marlee, who appeared to be deep in prayer.”
  • When the Selected men find out that Eadlyn’s mother is in the hospital wing, they come to show their support. As they approach Eadlyn, Kile says, “We’ve come to pray.”

Supernatural Content

  • None

Pretend She’s Here

Emily can’t believe that her best friend Lizzie is gone. Every day she misses Lizzie now that she’s dead and her family has moved away. When Lizzy’s parents and her sister come back to town to visit Lizzie’s grave, Emily is happy to see them. Emily thinks that they are the only people who can understand her pain.

Emily doesn’t think twice about getting into the vehicle with them. After all, they are her second family. But soon, Emily realizes that Lizzie’s parents aren’t in town for a quick visit. Instead, they have come on a desperate attempt to bring Lizzie back to life. Soon Emily is trapped by the desperate parents, and she’s afraid there is no escape.

Pretend She’s Here is a unique story that has a major creep factor to keep the pages turning. The story focuses on Emily, who is kidnapped at the beginning of the book. Much of the story is told through Emily’s memory, which unfortunately eliminates much of the suspense. Emily’s large Catholic family is difficult to keep track of, and the many flashbacks of the seven siblings become confusing. There are simply too many characters to keep track of and many of them do not have a distinct personality.

Lizzie’s mom, Mrs. Porter, clearly wants to turn Emily into a replacement for Lizzie. The fact that Mrs. Porter’s family goes along with the plot allows the reader to see how desperate Mrs. Porter has become. However, Mr. Porter fades into the background, and readers will miss seeing how he fits into the family dynamic. The ending of the story is also a bit frustrating because Emily has so many chances to tell people who she really is, and yet she stays silent. At one point, she faints and is taken to the doctor, who sees many clues that Emily is in a desperate situation, but the doctor doesn’t act on her suspicions. Even though the author manages to make this unlikely scenario with the doctor believable, the ending of the book stretches the imagination too far.

Pretend She’s Here isn’t just a frightening kidnapping story; it also has themes of alcoholism, grief, friendship, and the power of forgiveness. While some readers may enjoy the kidnapping story, others may be frightened by it, especially because Emily is taken by someone who she considered her second family. Readers looking for a frightening story that examines the desperation that grief can cause will enjoy Pretend She’s Here. However, readers who are easily frightened should leave this book on the shelf.

Sexual Content

  • Emily’s friend says that she sees “stars” when she kisses her boyfriend.
  • Emily thinks back to her sister who would go up to the church steeple with her boyfriend “to kiss.”
  • Emily thinks about Casey and imagines “the feeling of his lips on mine.”
  • While at school, Emily sees Casey, and “all I wanted was for him to kiss me right there, that exact moment.”
  • While sledding, Emily and Casey’s sled crashes. They started laughing. “Then all at once the laughter stopped, I looked into his eyes, and he kissed me. The world fell out from under me, and I was floating in space, held up by Casey’s arms. . . His lips were soft and the kiss was hot, and I forgot I had a body and a life—and I was part of Casey and he was part of me.”

Violence

  • Emily is kidnapped and her hands are bound behind her back. She tries to escape. Emily “crouched as if about to bar, then used my legs as springs and smashed into Mrs. Porter, knocking her down, making her cry out. I turned and ran as fast as I could into the trees.”
  • In order to get Emily to behave, Mrs. Porter videotapes herself walking with Emily’s mom. Emily sees, “Mrs. Porter’s red plaid jacket and then, in her other hand, a knife with a thick, sharp silver blade. She made a jabbing motion.” After she watches the video, Emily “slapped her in the face as hard as I could, fumbled for the phone. Cloe (Mrs. Porter’s daughter) charged at me, clawed the phone out of my hand. We kept fighting for it, but then she shoved me.”
  • Emily sees her family and tries to get out of the car, but “Mrs. Porter wriggled between the two front seats and pulled my hair so hard my head smashed the headrest. She slapped my face. . . Mrs. Porter had now wriggled her way into the back seat beside me. Fingers still tangled in my hair, she tightened her grip, shaking my head, making every nerve in my scalp scream with pain.” Emily stops struggling when Mrs. Porter tells her, “I’ll kill your mother here and now.”
  • Mrs. Porter stops Emily from leaving. “I started to jump up. But she clawed my wrist, nails digging into my skin, pulling me back down. . . Then I saw the other hand. Her fingers were closed around the knife with the silver blade. . .” Mrs. Porter tries to kill Emily, but Emily “fought her. I hit her as hard as I could, heard my fist crack her cheekbone. I tried to kick her, but she’d leapt up from the bed, gripping my wrist, and my foot missed. She was waving the knife, stabbing the air, but I kept ducking, trying to pull away.” Mrs. Porter stabs Emily, who is rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Someone kidnaps Emily and gives her drugs so she will sleep. “A bottle clinked. I turned my head, saw her lift a small vial in front of her face, insert a syringe into the rubber cap to withdraw liquid, and lightly pump the plunger so a tiny clear stream squirted into the air. . . I felt the needle prick, then a slow ache in my bicep. Almost instantly, I felt light-headed.” Emily falls asleep.
  • Emily’s mother is an alcoholic, and Emily thinks back to a time when her mother missed her play because she was drunk. Emily’s mother, “had been sober over a year now. Since the last horrible fight that had sent her to rehab. . .” Emily thinks about her mom not being at the play, and when she got home, “I found my mother passed out in bed. The fumes left no doubt that there’d been alcohol involved.”
  • Casey’s mom was prescribed oxycodone. She became addicted and died of an overdose. Casey says, “One day she took too many. She never woke up.”
  • A doctor gives Mrs. Porter a prescription for Xanax.
  • While Emily is in the hospital, she is given Morphine which puts her in a “sick, sleepy twilight state.” She is also given opioids.

Language

  • Oh god is used as an exclamation twice; oh my God and OMG are used as an exclamation once.
  • Damn is used once.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Emily’s family is Catholic and attends church. Emily thinks about all of her siblings’ names and how they were “Catholic to the max. My mom had gone to St. Joseph’s College; my dad had gone to Holy Cross.” She and her siblings were given saint’s names and were baptized. Emily thinks, “even though we skipped Mass a lot, we did our best. We believed in the sacraments and had all made our first communion and confirmations.”
  • Emily’s mother says, “By the grace of God, I haven’t picked up a drink since.”
  • Casey, who was blind, tells Emily about his mother. “. . . She never stopped hoping I’d be able to see better someday. . .I had the best doctors, but her real faith was in St. Anthony.”
  • When Emily is in the hospital, she thinks about her mother. “I prayed you wouldn’t drink. I just wanted everything to be okay.”
  • While Emily was missing her mother, she “tried to pray, but I felt there was no one listening. I couldn’t hear God talking back to me. The priest from All Souls Church came, but I told your father not to let him in.”

I Believe in A Thing Called Love

Desi has a plan for everything. With a plan, anything is possible. That’s how she became the student body president and a soccer star. That’s how she’ll get into Stanford. Desi knows how to plan. She knows how to study. But, when it comes to boys, Desi is a flailure. “Flirt + failure = flailure.”

Desi is a disaster at romance. But when a hot art student moves to her school, Desi decides she wants to capture his attention. After watching Korean dramas, Desi realizes that love is, “like a freaking equation!” Desi is determined to be like the K drama’s unlucky heroine, who always ends up with her true love. Desi follows her, “K Drama steps to True Love,” and goes after the moody, elusive artist Luca Drakos. After a boat rescue, love triangle, and staged car crash, will Desi end up in the arms of Luca?

I Believe in A Thing Called Love will capture the reader’s heart from the first chapter. Told from Desi’s point of view, readers will laugh at Desi’s crazy antics, understand her insecurities, and root for her as she goes after the guy of her dreams. Desi wants to control everything, but this smart nerdy girl is hilariously clueless when it comes to boys. Desi isn’t portrayed as a stereotypical smart girl; she also isn’t perfect, and Desi’s imperfections make her even more lovable.

Desi has a strong and warm relationship with her father. Despite the fact that he is a mechanic and often has grease-stained hands, despite his imperfect English, and his love for watching K dramas, Desi is never embarrassed by her father. Desi’s father isn’t just a background character, but a well-developed part of the story. Desi’s father understands her quirks but doesn’t try to change her. The readers will appreciate the scenes with Desi and her father just as much as the failed romance scenes.

I Believe in A Thing Called Love isn’t just a typical teen romance. Through Desi’s experiences, readers will learn valuable lessons. When Desi is afraid that she is acting weird, Luca tells her, “Everyone’s weird, though. If you’re not even a little weird, you are truly weird. In a bad way. Not in the good way.” When Desi thinks about giving up on love, her father tells her, “You cannot control who you love, Desi, but you can always control how hard you fight, okay?” In the end, not all of Desi’s plans work out and despite the pain of failure, Desi knows life can still be good.

Do not pick up I Believe in A Thing Called Love unless you have time to finish the book because once you pick it up, you will not want to put it down. I Believe in A Thing Called Love takes a humorous look at first love and will leave readers with a smile. Desi is a heroine that will not be forgotten easily. The story ends with a list of K dramas that readers may want to watch. And after seeing Desi put the K drama’s love formula to the test, readers may also become hooked on K drama’s themselves.

Sexual Content

  • Desi thinks back to fourth grade when “a boy asked me if I want to look at his ‘special’ books and I told him I wasn’t allowed to look at pornography. Turns out it was comic books and he didn’t even know how boys were made yet. I was the fourth grade perv.”
  • Desi thinks about how Korean romantic comedies are different than in America. One difference is that “in American shows, the leads would barely blink twice before jumping into bed.”
  • Desi tells her friend, “I’m not an experienced seductress who like, has men drinking champagne from her high heels.”
  • Desi’s friend tells her, “I, too, think one should get laid before entering college.”
  • When Desi talks about her crush, a friend says, “I don’t want to see flailure heartbreak. I was hoping it was just you needing to round out your high school years with a good old-fashioned devirginizing.”
  • Desi goes to a “sex party” that was, “fertile ground for hooking up. . . there were rooms for spin the bottle and seven minutes in heaven.” Desi goes into the seven minutes in heaven closet with a friend. They just sit around and look at their phones.
  • Desi wonders, “Was everyone having sex but me? God.”
  • Desi’s friend Fiona is a lesbian, who has dates with a lot of girls. “Girls lined up for Fiona every year. Sometimes it was the classic bad-girl type and they’d make out rebelliously in the hallway at school.” The story talks about how her family reacted when she came out. “Her family eventually recovered, although they still weren’t thrilled with her active love life. I’m pretty sure that would have applied to boyfriends, too, however.”
  • Desi and another girl see Luca kissing a girl.
  • Desi thinks Luca is going to kiss her. “His eyes met mine and suddenly. . . suddenly it felt real . . . This was it. Kiss time. Holy crap. A wave of heat passed between us—the vibrations of our bodies’ atoms and molecules transferring heat. . . And then he blinked.”
  • Luca and Desi kiss. “Lips met mine, soft, a little chapped, and warm. My eyes were open in true K drama heroine fashion.”
  • Desi, “brushed my lips against his. Soft and a bit hesitant. And he kissed me back just as softly, with a little pressure at the very end.”
  • When Luca picks Desi up, he quickly kisses her. “My skin buzzed, every part of me awake and alive.”
  • When Luca finds out he got a scholarship, Desi and he begin jumping around. “Then suddenly we weren’t jumping anymore—just a whole lot of kissing.”
  • Desi and Luca kiss. “He strode over, pulled me into his arms, and kissed me. Not a gentle, sweet kiss—but an urgent one.”

Violence

  • Desi thinks back to first grade when, “I kicked my first crush, Jefferson, in the nuts during taekwondo class, and he had to be taken to the ER.”
  • Luca covers Desi’s mouth so she will be quiet. She, “responded by biting his gloved hand. I tasted rubber. He yelped and let go of me. . .”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • After binge watching television series all weekend long, someone asks Desi, “What! Are you on speed?”
  • When Desi is at home, her dad took, “a sip of beer.”
  • Desi and her friends go to a “sex party” where there is alcohol.
  • Someone asks Desi, “Are you high?”
  • Someone is upset that Desi didn’t want to be her friend. The girl says, “You would never talk to art freaks who smoked pot.”
  • Desi and her friends go to the beach and her friend, “took a swig of beer.”

Language

  • Profanity is used often. Profanity includes ass, bitch, bitchiness, badass, bullshit, crap, dang, damn, douche, f-ing, hell, holy shit, freaking and shit.
  • Pissed, motherf-ing and fuck are all used once.
  • Oh my god, God, Oh Lord, Oh Sweet Jesus, and Jesus are often used as exclamations.
  • Desi thinks, “I might be a flailure in love, but I was the motherf-ing boss of studying.”
  • Someone asks a boy, “Why do you even hang out with a bunch of girls, anyway, you caveman douche.”
  • When someone suggested getting a hummer limo for prom, Fiona says, “I’d rather eat dick.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Learning to Play Gin

Julia James was on top of her game. Her new book 101 Ways to Cheat at Solitaire has sold millions. As the queen of self-help books, she has shown women how to be happy without a man. Julia had no desire to find romance, and she wasn’t prepared for Lance, a gorgeous actor, or the feelings that she had for him.

Suddenly Julia’s books fall off the bestseller list, and her movie star boyfriend moves to L.A. Lost and confused, Julia decides to head to the West Coast to spend some time with her new man. But life in L.A. comes with its own set of complications. Can Julia put her single life behind her and figure out how to win at the game of love?

For maximum enjoyment, readers should read Cheating at Solitaire before picking up Learning to Play Gin because the stories have many of the same characters. The funny, flirty tone does not carry through into the second book of the series. Instead, much of the conflict is internal as Julia tries to figure out how to live her new life. Even though Julia is trying to figure out how to win at love, Lance is absent for most of the book, which leaves the reader wondering why Julia would want to stay with a man more concerned with making movies than making a life with her.

Each chapter starts out with advice on how to play the game of gin; this advice ties into what is going to happen in Julia’s life. The interesting quotes lead the reader to think about the complicated nature of relationships, which is a focus of Learning to Play Gin. The story doesn’t just focus on Julia and Lance, but also shows a divorced couple, a struggling married couple, and a couple who have been happily married for 40 years. The story doesn’t only show the positive, glowing feelings of love that a happy couple feels, but shows how staying in love is often a choice made despite difficult times.

Learning to Play Gin’s slow pace and focus on Julia’s internal conflict makes the story less enjoyable than the first. The ending of the story falls flat because it lacks a clear resolution. Lance appears infrequently in the story, which is a huge disappointment. If you’re looking for a romance with the same fun, flirty tone as Cheating at Solitaire, you may want to leave Learning to Play Gin on the shelf.

Sexual Content

  • While at a party, Julia kisses Lance. As Julia is leaving, “Lance placed one arm on either side of her and leaned down to kiss her good-bye.”
  • Julia and Lance work on their problems. Then, “there was some crying. There was some hugging. And, finally there was a long, sweet kiss.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • As Lance is going to an interview, he notices a bartender. Lance “remembered how it felt to trek home with aching feet and beer-soaked clothes.”
  • In order to help Nina get through her first flight, she gets drunk. Julia thinks, “Maybe I should have gotten her drunk and put her on a plane years ago.”
  • At a party, champagne is served. Lance’s agent wants to introduce him to someone who, “is four drinks into a twelve-drink night and history has taught me you want to catch him somewhere between three and seven.”
  • At Thanksgiving dinner, Julia offers her guest tea, which he accepts “looking like a man who’d give his right arm for a gin and tonic.” Another guest can’t understand why Julia doesn’t drink alcohol and wonders if she is pregnant.
  • When a preteen throws a fit, her mother “searched her purse for a silver flask, which she emptied into her iced tea.”

Language

  • Profanity includes: ass, bitch, damn, crap, hell
  • Lance asks his mother, “Why were you a bitch to Julia?”
  • Lance tells his mother that Julia could go home and be “a lot better without the likes of me, but she doesn’t because I’m the greedy bastard that keeps asking her to stay.”
  • Lance’s mom tells her ex-husband, “I was just getting ready to tell our son he’s being a horse’s ass, and I thought you might want to join me.”
  • In an email, Julia’s mother writes, “When little Robbie Matthews came into church he shook the preacher’s hand and said, ‘Oh shit, I forgot my Bible.’”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When Nina’s pants split, Julia “said a silent prayer that, at least, Nina had worn underwear.”
  • Julia goes to a coffee shop that is “like church. No one spoke, but people were saying a lot of prayers. . . They were praying for agents and publicists and six-figure deals. There were praying for what she had.”
  • Lance prays, “Dear God, thank you for this wonderful meal. . . Julia felt pretty sure that Lance could have been struck down that very moment for lying to God.”

Cheating at Solitaire

Julia James has made a career of being single. Her self-help books have helped millions learn to be happy without a man. Her fame, fortune, and future all depend on her staying happily single. When her latest book, 101 Ways to Cheat at Solitaire, is about to hit shelves, the unthinkable happens.

A picture of Julia and a gorgeous out-of-work actor hit the papers. The papers speculate the queen of single has finally found a man. Some women think Julia’s hot romance shows that anyone can find a man and happiness. Other women think that Julia has betrayed all single women. As the debate rages on, Julia’s credibility and book sales hit rock bottom. In order to save her reputation and hide from the press, Julia heads to her home in Oklahoma. The only problem is that the hot actor has decided to hide with her.

Cheating at Solitaire is a fast-paced, fun romance that takes a humorous look at falling in love. Julia is a relatable character who worries about her weight, her reputation, and how to stay on top of the game. She hides her many insecurities and has perfected being alone. Julia clearly does not know how to handle having a hot man around. The interaction between Julia and Lance is humorous and heart-warming. Even though the story focuses on their complicated relationship, it doesn’t follow the typical romantic format.

Julia’s family is full of interesting characters who add depth to the story and highlight the importance of supporting family. Although Ally Carter has made her name writing teen fiction, her debut novel Cheating at Solitaire is aimed at adults. Nevertheless, the easy-to-read story is still appropriate for teens who are fans of Ally Carter. Cheating at Solitaire doesn’t have the same intrigue as her teen novels, but for readers looking for a funny, flirty romance the story hits the target.

Sexual Content

  • When a picture of Lance and Julia appears in the newspaper, several people “congratulated him on ‘getting some of that.’”
  • Julia was admiring how Lance looked in a suit when, “like a magnet, her hand was drawn to a piece of nonexistent lint. Her fingers lingered a little longer than she had intended, and Lance suddenly grabbed her wrist. He put his other arm around her waist and pulled her lightly to him. Electric sparks sizzled up and down her spine.”
  • There is a rumor that Julia is pregnant.
  • Lance asks Julia if he can kiss her. She gets upset and leaves.

Violence

  • Lance covers Julia’s mouth so she will stop talking. When he moves his hand away, “she bit—hard. . . Lance moved away from her and studied the red semicircle that surrounded the knuckle on his pinkie.”
  • The paparazzi tried to take a picture of Julia. “. . .the photographers closed in, pinning her with no escape. Desperate, she grabbed a makeup case from the luggage cart and swung it at the offending light. She heard a crash and a crunch like breaking glass. Feeling the rhythm, she swung again and again.”
  • A man shoves Julia against a wall. “She crashed and felt her elbow bang sharply. . .” Lance steps in, and the man leaves.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Lance goes into a restaurant and approaches a woman he does not know. He thinks that he’s “looking at the kind of woman a normal man would probably only approach if he was drunk or on a dare.”
  • Lance and Julia attend a party where “free booze” is served.
  • Myrtle, a neighbor, drinks “judging by the number of whisky bottles Myrtle hauls to the curb on recycling days.” Lance runs into her while she is drunk. “Myrtle was sloshed. She wasn’t stumbling or slurring her words like a cheap, once-in-a-blue-moon drunk. Instead, she had the body control of a full-fledged alcoholic.”
  • A drunk neighbor thinks Lance is a stripper.

Language

  • Profanity is used occasionally. Each word is used once or twice. Profanity includes ass, crap, damn, shit, and hell.
  • A woman tells Julia that her son’s “sorry SOB of a father ran off.”
  • A man calls Julia a bitch.
  • Julia’s aunt “feels like bitching.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Lance is “grateful that God had granted him naturally straight teeth and a better-than-average metabolism.”
  • Julia “said a silent prayer of thanks” that no one noticed her friend wearing the same dress as her.

The Siren

Kahlen and her parents are on a luxury ship when suddenly the passengers begin jumping overboard and the ship sinks. In a panic, Kahlen calls out—she doesn’t want to die. The Ocean itself saves Kahlen and demands that she serve as a siren for 100 years. Kahlen and the other sirens use their beauty and deadly voice to lure humans to their deaths. Kahlen mourns for the strangers that she causes to die, but she is obedient to the Ocean who spared her life.

Kahlen loves her sisters but is looking forward to being released from her siren duties. In twenty years, Kahlen will be a regular human girl. But then she meets Akinli and falls hopelessly in love. Will she risk everything to be with the boy of her dreams? Or will the Ocean kill their love forever?

The story is told from Kahlen’s point of view. Much of the conflict in the story comes from the internal struggle of the sweet, submissive siren. After one date, Kahlen is so in love with Akinli that she cannot live without him. Akinli appears so infrequently that the readers will be left wondering why Kahlen is head over heels in love with him. Although their romance drives the story, there is not enough interaction and chemistry between the two to keep readers emotionally interested in the outcome of their tragic love story.

Although the siren’s world is interesting, most of the time the girls live on land, blending in with ordinary humans. Not only is the sea world underdeveloped, but so are Kahlen’s sister sirens. However, it is clear that the sirens care for each other and will go to any lengths to help each other. Having the Ocean as a character adds interest, but unfortunately, the possessiveness of the Ocean makes the sirens go to great lengths to hide their deeds from her. In the end, the Ocean is much like a possessive, overbearing mother who only thinks of her own needs.

Similar to Cass’s Selection series, The Siren is an easy-to-read story that follows one girl’s struggle. However, The Siren lacks the action of the Selection series. The Siren is like Romeo and Juliet without the fight scenes. For readers who don’t mind spending an entire book reflecting on one character’s internal struggle, The Siren will be an enjoyable read.

Sexual Content

  • Elizabeth goes to bars to find men where she is “quietly luring boys to bed.” She goes home with the men. “Elizabeth could regularly go to a stranger’s apartment, be as intimate as two people could be. . .”
  • Elizabeth says she has “shared plenty of . . . fluids with human men.”
  • Akinli and Kahlen kiss twice. “With my face still cupped in Akinli’s hand, he kissed me. It was brief, but it was enough to send fireworks running down my veins.”

Violence

  • When explaining the background of sirens, Kahlen thinks about a siren that “used her voice to make three girls who had teased her jump into a well . . . She’d put an entire town in an uproar, and the Ocean had silenced her to keep our secret.” Another Siren “murdered a household of people in the night, including an infant, in an outburst. . .”
  • Padma’s father tried to kill her because girls are “too expensive.” When the sirens find her in the ocean, her clothes, “Had been viciously ripped at. There were fresh bruises all over her arms and legs, but most horrifically, when we followed the trail of welts to her ankles and wrists, we saw there were cinder blocks tied to her, keeping her trapped.”
  • The sirens cause a cruise ship to crash and all the people on the ship die. “All around us, people plunged into the water, their fine dresses and slacks seeming grotesque against the backdrop of so much death. . . We sang until the last scream quieted, until the ship was resting on the Ocean floor.” The scene is described over three pages.
  • When a homeless man attacks Elizabeth, “She whispered in his ear to get him off her, and he threw himself into the Hudson.”
  • When the sirens cause a ship to crash, one man calls out to the girls until his voice was “thicker with gargled water” and then he died.
  • Padma and two others kill Padma’s parents because “none of us could allow her to live in the same world as her abusers did.” Their murder is not described.
  • The Ocean threatens to kill Padma. The Ocean “ripped Padma from Elizabeth’s arms, holding her in a vice grip of nothing but water. Padma screamed, trying to move her arms, but was completely paralyzed.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Kahlen goes out with her siren sisters and had “two drinks, hoping to take the edge off my nerves.”
  • Elizabeth goes to bars to pick up men. One evening, she chooses a boy who had “more to drink that she realized, and he passed out at their table.”
  • Akinli shows Kahlen a picture of him and another guy; the other guy “had a beer in his hand.”

Language

  • One of the characters says his roommate, “took lessons in how to be an ass.”
  • Damn is used twice.
  • Crap is used once.
  • Hell is used three times. For example, Kahlen yells at the Ocean, “Get the hell out of my head!”

Supernatural

  • The story revolves around sirens who are “servants to the Ocean” for a hundred years.
  • The Ocean is a living being that must feed on humans to survive.
  • The Ocean changes the girls into sirens. When Padma is changed, “The Ocean opened Padma’s mouth and forced a strange, dark liquid down her throat. . .” The change makes it so that the girls do not age, but their voices are deadly.
  • Akinli and Kahlen are dying from a mysterious illness. The Ocean explains, “If he hadn’t heard your voice, he’d be fine. . . Now, what happens to one body happens to the other. And since your voice has taken hold of him, killing him slowly, you fall down with him.”

Spiritual Content

  • Kahlen said a prayer.

How to Be Popular

Steph has been a social outcast for the past five years because she accidentally spilled a cherry Big Gulp on a popular girl. This year, Steph’s determined to step out of her comfort zone and join the popular crowd. In order to change her social standing, Steph plans to follow the book How to Be Popular.

In the process of gaining the friendship of the popular crowd, Steph must decide if she’s ready to get rid of her nerdy best friends Becca and Jason. Will Steph throw away her old friends in order to party with the popular kids and hang out with the school quarterback?

Steph is a relatable character who, like many, struggles with the desire to be part of the popular group. Steph’s character is well developed, and her point of view is endearing. Steph’s family relationships add an interesting and often comic element to the story. The book revolves around the usual cast of stereotypical high school characters—the mean girl, the cute high school quarterback, and the nerdy friends.

How to Be Popular is an easy-to-read story that follows a familiar, predictable plot. Although the story contains few surprises, Steph’s journey will entertain those looking for a romance appropriate for middle school readers. If you’re looking for a fun story to take to the beach, How to Be Popular would make a good choice.

Sexual Content

  • Steph finds a “steamy romance novel from the eighties. . . the heroine in one of them turned out to like having sex ‘Turkish-style,’ which in the book did NOT mean ‘while wearing a fez.’”
  • Steph thinks about Mark and Lauren who, “were totally canoodling” and how her friends, “don’t like seeing people putting their tongues in other people’s mouths, on account of the grossness factor.”
  • If Steph looks through her bathroom window, she can see into her neighbor’s window. She likes to watch him undress. She thinks, “my interest in seeing Jason undressed is purely scientific. Which is why I use the binoculars. . .”
  • Darlene has a large bust and Steph thinks boys “flock to her in hopes of someday being able to sink into her soft good-smellingness.” When Steph sits next to Darlene, “all eight of the guys at Darlene’s table yanked their gazes off the front of her chest and looked at me. Or the area just above the sticky part of my thigh-highs, to be more exact.”
  • Someone says that Steph’s grandpa is “warm for your form.”
  • Steph’s grandpa tries to explain how he got his fiancée. He says, “Well, the fact is, Steph, we Kazoulises, well, we’re a passionate bunch, and we know how to please a woman. . . Kitty’s a woman with needs, you know. . .”
  • Steph’s mom thinks Mark is going out with Lauren because Lauren “puts out.” Steph thinks her mom is “out of touch with reality” because “if I were going out with Mark Finley, I would totally put out, too. Even Father Chuck would understand that.”
  • When Steph is looking through her neighbor’s window, she sees him kissing a girl. “BAM!!! They were smashing their lips up together.”
  • In order to manipulate Steph, Mark kisses her. “. . . Mark had leaned down and put his mouth over mine. . . I have no idea whether or not I kissed him back. I was so surprised, I didn’t know what to do. . . I think I just stood there, letting him kiss me. . .” While kissing she “tried really hard to see the fireworks and hear the choir and the birds. . . And I saw them. And heard them. Did I ever.”
  • Steph kisses a boy “so much, in fact, my lips feel a little chapped. But in a good way.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • While watching teens cruise up and down the street, Steph sees a girl “barf up all the Mike’s Hard Lemonade she ingested while sunning herself over at the lake that afternoon.”
  • During an assembly, Steph describes the convocation, “when we all gather in the auditorium to listen to ex-drug addicts and people who killed their friends in drunk driving accidents talk about their experiences.”
  • Several times Steph’s mom says, “God, I need a drink.”
  • A boy from school is planning a party where everyone will get drunk. Someone brings a keg to the party.

Language

  • Damn, dang, and beeyotch are used once.
  • God and oh my God are occasionally used as exclamations.
  • Steph thinks she is a moron.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Steph is Catholic and thinks about going to confession. “I am fully going to ask God for forgiveness about this during Communion in church tomorrow. Since I can’t ask Father Chuck. Might as well go straight to the top.”
  • Steph’s “Grandpa stopped going to church after Grandma died. . . But Grandpa says he can worship God just as well on the ninth hole as he can in the church—if not better; since he’s closer to nature, and therefore, God, on the golf course than he is in our pew at St. Charles. I fear for his immortal soul. . . but I figure if God really is all-forgiving . . . Gramps will be all right.”
  • Steph thinks that Darlene is nice because when the mean girls “were in line to get meanness from God, Darlene must have seen a butterfly and gone running after it, or something, since she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.”

Five Feet Apart

Stella Grant has cystic fibrosis, making her no stranger to hospitals and surgeries. Despite her precarious lung function, she’s pretty used to being in control. That is until a handsome hospital newcomer, Will Newman, arrives, sending Stella into a whirlwind of feelings she’s never experienced before. Feelings she didn’t think she’d ever get to experience.

Will is bad news for Stella. His floppy black hair and sea-blue eyes are no danger compared to his incredibly aggressive and contagious form of CF, B. Capaecia. Not to mention that he refuses to follow the doctor’s orders or participate fully in his treatments, which drives Stella absolutely mad.

A not-so-classic forbidden love story ensues. Stella and Will must figure out how to navigate their relationship while maintaining their required distance apart. With their feelings growing and changing, those five feet apart began to feel larger and larger.

Five Feet Apart is a sweet romance with elements of fierce friendship and family turmoil. Stella and Will start out seeing each other as complete opposites but come to realize they have a lot in common. The most important thing they discover is how much they care for one another. Five Feet Apart is not only informative about Cystic Fibrosis, but also witty and entertaining.

Teens will be drawn into the character’s drama right from the start. Both Will and Stella are likable characters, who have their quirks and unique attributes. The story alternates between Will and Stella’s point of view, which makes it hard not to feel for and relate to both characters.

Following the same type of formulas as The Fault in Our Stars and Everything, Everything, Lippincott delivers an emotional, easy-to-read novel chronicling young love. Even though the story’s plot is familiar, Five Feet Apart is worth reading because it describes not only the common turmoil of teenage romance but also puts these commonplace emotions in an uncommon setting, which makes the story thought-provoking and fresh. Romantic and heartwarming to the extreme, this book will command the reader’s attention from start to finish.

Sexual Content

  • Stella is resting during the evening, when she gazes “out the window as the afternoon fades and sees a couple about my age, laughing and kissing as they walk into the hospital.”
  • Stella realizes that Will is letting his friends use his bed for sex. “Oh my god. Gross. He’s letting his friends do it in his room, like it’s a motel.” Stella confronts Will, saying “You letting your friends borrow your room for sex isn’t cute.” Will takes this to mean Stella has something against sex, to which Stella proclaims, “‘Of course not! I’ve had sex.’”
  • Will is reflecting on his encounter with Stella and says she actually looked kind of hot.
  • Stella is describing Poe’s romantic life. Stella describes his past relationships, “Before Michael it was Tim, the week after this it could be David.”
  • Stella has convinced Will to follow his medicine regimen in exchange for her letting him draw her. She tells him there will be no nude drawings allowed.
  • Will asks Poe if he and Stella have ever “hooked up.”
  • Will jokes to Stella that since he can’t meet Bob Ross, he’ll “just have to settle for sex in the Vatican.”
  • Stella is preparing for her first date with Will. Stella “put on some mascara and lip gloss, smiling at the idea of Will seeing me not just alive, but with makeup on, his blue eyes gazing at my gloss-covered lips. Would he want to kiss me?” She also enlists Poe’s help to pick out an outfit. “I pull out a pair of skimpy, silky boxers, eyeing them. I couldn’t. Could I?”
  • Will and Stella are on their first date. While on the date, “She reaches for her silk tank top, her eyes fixed on mine as she pulls it slowly off to reveal a black lace bra. She drops the tank top onto the deck of the pool, my jaw going with it. Then she slips down her shorts, stepping carefully out of them and straightening up. Inviting me to look.” Will looks at her, but knows he can’t do anything more than that.

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Will is reminiscing on his time in public high school, “where my old classmates are slowly chugging their way to finals.”

Language

  • Oh my god and my god are often used as exclamations.
  • Stella says goodbye to her friends leaving for Cabo. “Your plane is at, like, the ass crack of dawn tomorrow.”
  • Stella says the food at prom didn’t suck. She later says she’s been at this hospital for a “freaking decade.”
  • All of the CF patients mention not wanting to “piss off” Barb, because she’s such a “hard ass.”
  • Will and Stella often refer to their circumstances as shitty or bullshit.
  • Will is dreaming about his future once he turns 18. “I could sketch the landscape, draw a final cartoon of me giving the middle finger to the universe, then bite the big one.”
  • Damn is used often. Barb and the adults in the story often use “damn” when a surgery doesn’t go well.
  • Fucking is used occasionally. Some examples are “Are you fucking kidding me,” “That is a complete mind-fuck,” and “All you see of me is my fucking disease.” For example, when Will is in a fight with his mother on his birthday, he screams “all you see of me is my fucking disease.”
  • Poe and Stella call each other a bitch and an asshole during a fight. These words are only used in this encounter.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Will finds Poe sitting in the hospital’s church. When Will asks why he’s there, Poe replies “My mom likes to see me in here. I’m Catholic, but she’s Catholic.”
  • “So what do you think happens when we die?” Will asks Stella.

by Tori Gellman

Midnight Sun

Katie can’t be in the sun. Even the smallest amount of sunlight will cause her great pain because of a rare disease, forcing Katie to sleep during the day and lead an isolated life at night. Her best friend Morgan and her widowed father are her only companions until one night, Katie goes to the train station to play her guitar. As she plays her music, a chance encounter opens her world and her heart.

All-star athlete Charlee Reed thought his life was planned out for him until he met Katie. When he sees Katie playing her guitar, everything changes. He doesn’t know about Katie’s rare disease, but he’s determined to steal her heart.

Midnight Sun’s plot is typical, predictable, and cliché. Despite that, many teens will relate to Katie’s desire to be normal and her struggle to lead a life that matters. Katie’s love interest Charlie—handsome, kind, and generous—is every girl’s dream. The two quickly fall in love and force each other to step out of their comfort zones and follow their dreams.

Midnight Sun follows the same format as The Fault in Our Stars and Me Before You. Romance fans will enjoy this book because of its strong character development. This story encourages readers to follow their dreams and tells them anything is possible. However, the use of cursing and texting abbreviations such as FOMO seems unnecessary. Because of Charlie, Katie seems to accept the progression of her disease and her impending death with little emotion. Although she wonders what death will be like, her acceptance of dying young does not ring true.

Cook missed an opportunity in this novel to focus on the dangers of drinking. Even though Charlie, drunk and foolish, injured himself and lost his scholarship, Charlie still goes to a party and plays beer pong. During the party, drinking to excess is depicted as fun, without much risk. Although this book has some flaws, it is an easy-to-read story that will please readers looking for a character-driven romance.

Sexual Content

  • Katie fantasizes about Charlie. She wishes she could invite him into her room, “Run my fingers through that gorgeous hair. Kiss him.”
  • Morgan is excited that Katie is “meeting up with the guy you’ve lusted after for a decade.” They have a conversation about hooking up. Morgan says, “I am not losing my virginity to a guy I’ve talked to exactly twice in my life.”
  • Charlie and another girl used “to hook up once in a while . . . But it’s not something I’m proud of or want to repeat or anything.”
  • Charlie tells Katie that kids often grind when they dance. Then he shows how it’s done. “He puts a hand on my lower back and starts swaying his hips side to side like a pendulum. I follow his moves.”
  • Charlie kisses Katie. She thinks, “It is pure magic, so everything I ever hoped it would be, I can’t even move or think or breathe for a second. But then instinct kicks in and I feel everything, everything. My nerve endings tingle, my brain is on fire, my heart is a goner.”
  • Charlie and Katie kiss several times. It is described, but not in graphic detail. The first time, “he softly kisses me. He adds just the right amount of lips, tongue, and time.” Later, they kiss again and Katie thinks his lips “taste like sugar and cream and pure goodness . . . I’ve never felt so buzzed on life.”
  • Morgan kisses a boy, but it is not described. Later, Morgan said that she did “make out” with the boy.

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Katie, Morgan, and Charlie go to a party where teens are drinking and playing beer pong. Charlie explains the rules of beer pong and then he and Katie play. Katie doesn’t drink, but her friends do.
  • Katie, Morgan, and Charlie go to a party where the host bought a keg, but doesn’t know how to open it. Morgan complains, “This really is a tame, safe, parent-friendly party!”
  • While playing guitar at the train station, Katie sees a man who “seems drunk.”
  • At a party, someone says, “And that girl over there, she has a prescription drug problem.”
  • When Charlie is drunk, his friend “bet me I couldn’t jump off the roof into the pool and I clipped the edge and I’m an idiot.” He injured himself jumping, which led to him losing his scholarship.

Language

  • Profanity is used often. Profanity includes ass, bitches, crap, damn, jerk, freaking, hell, shit, and WTF.
  • “Goddamn” is used once.
  • Morgan said, “Tonight is going to be fan-fucking-tastic, and so are you!”
  • A girl calls Morgan a “douchebag.”
  • “Oh my God,” is used as an exclamation several times.
  • Morgan tells Katie, “it took gigantic cojones to come to this party.”
  • When Morgan gets her diploma, she “strikes a pose and mouths, Yeah, bitches!”
  • A friend of Katie’s dad “has great stories about what a little pain in the ass my dad was as a kid.”
  • Morgan calls a popular girl a “whore” and “flaming crotch rot.”
  • An advice columnist writes, “everyone has their shit sandwich. The only difference is some people aren’t willing to talk about it.”
  • Morgan tells Katie, “You’re a hot, young, badass woman in charge of her own life, and you text him whenever you damn well please.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Katie wonders what happens after a person dies. She wonders if death is “just you, in the dark, awake and aware. I sincerely hope not, because that would be unnecessarily cruel.”
  • Katie’s mother died in a car crash when she was younger. Katie wonders what happened when her mom died. “Was there a white light, did her grandparents escort her to heaven? Will she get me when it’s my turn? Or will it just be blackness, a big void, a curtain coming down and that’s it, like I never existed at all?”

 

 

 

 

 

Chemistry Lesson

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

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

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

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

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

Sexual Content

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

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

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

Language

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

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None
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