high school

Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

love letters to the dead

So obviously a book titled Love Letters to the Dead is going to be a pretty emotional one, but I don’t think I was quite prepared for all there is to find in here.

Through a series of letters written to dead people ranging from Kurt Cobain to Amelia Earhart to Elizabeth Bennet written over the course of a school year, Laurel explores some seriously heavy topics. Her parents divorced, her sister May died, her mom moved away, she switched schools… and that all happened before the book actually picks up. As Laurel writes these letters, working through the decomposition of her family, May’s death, and revealing snippets of the circumstances surrounding her death, she begins to heal and come through as herself rather than just a shell of May. She also experiences her first love, and I really appreciated Sky’s character for his role in Laurel’s healing process. He’s honest and caring and doesn’t try to take advantage of Laurel in her fragile state. He’s there when she needs him.

There were a few times I almost stopped reading. Too much sadness, too much belittling of the religious aunt, too much teen drinking, too much stuff. But I have to admit that I’m so glad I didn’t stop. Laurel is a very realistic teenage girl wrestling with things that most teenagers have to deal with in some way or another, and while she makes some decisions I wouldn’t want my students making, she definitely learns from her mistakes. She comes out a better person than she was going in. I admire Laurel – especially who Laurel becomes by the end of the book – for how she deals with things that have happened to her and makes a conscious choice to change the trajectory of her life.

By the time I was two-thirds done with Love Letters to the Dead, I liked it. When I finished it, I really liked it. After it had a few hours to settle and sink in, I loved it. In the vein of The Fault in Our Stars, it’s not a frilly, finish in a day and smile the whole way through kind of book, but it is a stick with you and make your heart feel full kind of a book. I have a feeling that Laurel and Sky will be with me for a while.

Love Letters to the Dead comes out this Tuesday, April 1st. Find it here on Amazon or at your favorite bookseller!

#ThrowbackThursday: Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicholson series

This recommendation originally posted on Pimples, Popularity, and Protagonists in September 2010. My love of this series is still firmly in place!!!

A few years ago, I read Louise Rennison’s Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I didn’t realize it was part of a ten book series. Then, this summer, I happened to notice a film version of it available for rent on Netflix. I put it in my queue and prepared myself for yet another disappointing book-inpired movie. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the movie version was, and it inspired me to check into Rennison’s other books. Imagine my surprise when I found another nine books featuring the Angus protagonist, Georgia Nicolson! It was pretty exciting. (I know I’m a book nerd, ok?)

I put all of the books on hold at my local library and waited until I had them all to start reading. Then, when they were all finally in, I tore through all nine books following Angus… in a matter of ONE WEEK. Several times, as I was reading in the evenings while my husband was watching TV, I would seriously laugh out loud at the sheer hilarity of the books. I’m seriously considering buying all of the books so I can reread them whenever I need to have a good laugh.

A note about content – some of the titles sound a bit risque sexually… but the content is not. Though all of Georgia’s friends are preoccupied with boys and the constantly rate themselves on a “Snogging Scale” (snogging is British for kissing), the girls never do anything beyond kissing with their boyfriends, and there’s very little inappropriate language in the books. Out of all the young adult series I’ve read, this one is pretty clean.

Basically, in the series, (don’t worry – no spoilers – this is VERY general) Georgia Nicolson and her group of friends navigate their way through a year or so of school at Stalag 14, an all-girls high school. The group calls themselves the Ace Gang, and they are absolutely hilarious together – constantly trying to pull little pranks, getting in trouble, and torturing the school’s staff. Georgia’s family is crazy (maybe certifiably) and full of funny situations, and Georgia’s love life is, well, complicated but constantly interesting and exciting.

I’d recommend this series to teenagers… mature upper grade middle school girls through high school and adult readers (especially if you work with or have teenage girls). Here are all ten books of the series, in order:

1. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging

2. On the Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex god

3. Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas

4. Away Laughing on a Fast Camel

5. Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants

6. The He Ate My Boy Entrancers

7. Startled By His Furry Shorts

8. Love Is a Many Trousered Thing

9. Stop In The Name Of Pants!

10. Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?

Cover Reveal: Don’t Fall by Rachel Schieffelbein

Don’t Fall by Rachel Schieffelbein

Summary from Goodreads:
In which a teenage girl endures the over-protective love of her adoptive mother until she falls for a boy who has her wanting to spread her wings, pitched as a contemporary retelling of RAPUNZEL.

Seventeen-year-old Anya leads a very secluded life in a house on the edge of town with her adopted mother. She doesn’t go to school, but instead has a private tutor. Her over-protective mom keeps her so sheltered that she doesn’t even have a best friend. But Anya doesn’t seem to mind. She has her books, her photography, and her daydreams, and would do anything to please her mom. Until one day at the library, the only place she’s allowed to go, she takes a picture of a beautiful boy.

Before long she’s lying to her mom, and sneaking out late at night to meet Zander. But Zander wants more than a secret romance. If Anya wants to be with the boy of her dreams, she will have to risk her relationship with the only other person she’s ever cared about.

Swoon Romance wants you to help them decide the cover for Don’t Fall! 
They have three lovely cover options for you to choose from.  Please vote below on your favorite cover!
Which cover do you like better?
Option #1
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Option #1: Designed by Taylor.ink, photograph by Beth Mitchell
Option #2: Photographed and designed by Laura Lanning
Option #3: Designed by Anna Zaffke, photo from Shutterstock.by  Aleshyn_Andrei

About the Author:
Rachel grew up in a tiny town in Minnesota. She still lives there, with her husband and their four kids. She coaches high school speech and theater, rides Arabian horses, reads as much as she can, and writes stories.
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Just For Fun…

In honor of my latest YA review on She Reads, here’s a cool quote graphic I found featuring Elizabeth Eulberg’s Better Off Friends. Also, Amazon has the hardcover on sale right now. Happy Tuesday, everybody!

better off friends

Veronica Mars – HOW DID I MISS THIS?

veronica mars

Somehow I missed watching ANY Veronica Mars when it actually aired on TV, and it was only after being told last week that I should watch it as research for my book (thanks, Jen) that I signed up for my 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime so I could stream it.

It only took a few minutes of the first episode to reel me in – a smart, witty, gorgeous high school girl working with her PI father to solve both major and minor crimes? Beautiful Southern California setting with clashes between the haves and have-nots? Great supporting characters, including plenty of swoony guys? Perfect. It’s like everything I’d ever want in a YA book series.

The only question now is this: will I be able to finish the series before the movie actually comes out? Let’s hope.

Better off Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg – I LOVE THIS ONE.

better off friends

 

Elizabeth Eulberg is the author of four previous contemporary YA titles, and I’ve had her on my radar since I read Revenge of the Girl With a Great Personality (a super funny and actually sweet YA behind the scenes of children’s beauty pageants and the families of the girls who compete).

Eulberg has an ability to tell a great story full of poignant, really valuable moments that also make you laugh out loud. When I saw she had a new book coming out, I knew I had to read it… especially when I saw it compared to When Harry Met Sally! I mean, come on. Who can resist that?

In Better Off Friends, we get to follow the friendship of Macallan, an eighth grade girl dealing with the still-recent death of her mom, and Levi, an eighth grade boy transplanted from California to Wisconsin. When Macallan is given the task of showing Levi around on their first day of school, she mostly just barely tolerates him until they realize they both love the same quirky British TV show. From there, Levi and Macallan become good friends over the course of the school year.

When high school hits, everybody thinks they’re dating, but they’re still just friends… best friends. The banter between the two of them, and the way they retreat into their own world throughout various situations in the book, is just nothing short of magical in quality. In addition to the alternating point of view between Levi and Macallan as they go back and tell their story, there are also snippets of their present day conversations in between chapters. Eulberg has written a couple of characters here that I would honestly want to hang out with if they were real; they are full of life and so much fun.

The book spans over about four and a half years, which seemed at first like it was moving too quickly, glossing over important things, but by the time I finished I realized the pacing had been perfect – watching Levi and Macallan basically grow up together over those years made the experience even more enjoyable.

Another great thing about Eulberg, and particularly Better Off Friends, is that she tells great stories for a range of YA audiences without profanity or glorified drinking/drug use and sexual situations. This book could be enjoyed by 7th and 8th graders looking forward to good, healthy friendships (and romance) in high school, high school students in the thick of it, college/early career readers reflecting on high school relationships, and moms hoping their kids have people like these in their lives as they navigate young adulthood.

As you can tell, I really, really loved this new title. So fun, smart, witty, and sweet!

Check it out here on Amazon or at your favorite bookseller.

One for the parents… Preparing Your Teens For College!

prepare college

This is a great handbook for parents who are interested in shaping their kids into well-rounded, well-grounded young adults instead of just surviving the teen years and pushing their kids off to college. Which, hopefully, is most parents. I appreciated that Chediak actually started with building the character and faith of teens before anything academic, making this focus of this on building up and truly preparing students throughout high school. Every student will have unique experiences and face different challenges throughout his/her educational career, so the more we can do to give them the tools they need to thrive, the better off they are. If I have one criticism, it’s that it’s long and could feel overwhelming, but the way he has it broken down into separate “conversations” with key points and the end of each makes it more user friendly for parents who might not have time to sit down and do a complete page by page read-through.

The Killing Woods by Lucy Christopher

the killing woods

I read Stolen, also by Lucy Christopher, a few years ago and loved how it unnerved me. When I requested The Killing Woods on NetGalley, I wasn’t even paying attention to the author’s name and making that connection to Stolen, but I sure made that connection quick when I started reading. Christopher has an uncanny ability to make her reader doubt what we assume to be true. It makes for a wild, psychologically thrilling ride.

In The Killing Woods, we follow Emily and Damon as they try to get to the bottom of who killed Ashlee, Damon’s girlfriend. Emily’s PTSD military father is arrested for the crime, but did he really do it? No one seems to know or be able to remember, and it’s a pretty crazy ride as we go back and forth between Emily and Damon’s POV until the mystery is solved.

I’m recommending this for upper high school and beyond… there’s a ton of drinking/drug use and generally irresponsible behavior, but it’s not portrayed in a positive light at all. In fact, Emily is pretty much the only character who’s actually acting like she has any kind of common sense throughout most of the book. If you can put that stuff aside, though, this is a really well done YA mystery/thriller. It had me on the edge of my seat and a little afraid of the dark while I was reading!

You can find The Killing Woods here on Amazon or at your favorite bookseller.

A fun new YA romantic comedy

I’ve been a fan of Cassie Mae for a while. She writes fun romantic young adult and new adult titles, which I’ve reviewed here before… Friday Night Alibi, Reasons I Fell for the Fat Funny Friend, and Switched. She’s back again, writing under the pen name of Becca Ann, and this time it’s a joint novel with her writing partner, Tessa Marie.

In King Sized Beds and Happy Trails, best friends since forever Ryan and Lexie are going on their senior class trip to a ski resort, and through a series of events (all of which make me shudder as a teacher of teenagers who takes students on overnight trips, because if this happened on one of my trips, OMG), they end up sharing a cabin. Just the two of them and one king sized bed.

For Lexie, this is no big deal. She’s sharing a cabin with her best friend, which doesn’t matter much since she’s there to finally catch the eye of one of their classmates who she’s been obsessing over. For Ryan, though, this is a very big deal… his feelings for Lexie went from friend to much-more-than-friend a while back, and watching her pursue another guy is horrible. Thankfully, it’s not long before Lexi realizes the other guy is kind of douchey when she has Ryan so close to her and, well, then things get interesting.

I really love Lexie and Ryan in this. Their story in told in an alternating POV between the two of them which was really well done.  The overall story was cute, funny, and sweet. I recommend this to upper high school and college – though it’s technically Young Adult, it feels more like New Adult to me. I know I’m definitely looking forward to another Lexi and Ryan story already!

Want to join in some fun? Becca Ann and Tessa Marie are hosting a release party today with giveaways on Facebook. It’s a public event, so stop by, join, and enter to win prizes all day long!

king sized beds