YA

Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott

heart beat elizabeth scott

Ok, there are lots of things going on here beyond the surface love story.

Most disturbing is the question of what you would do if a pregnant woman died, but there was a chance to save the baby by keeping the woman’s body alive through machines. She’s not there anymore, really. No brain function. No response to her family members. Most of us would say, of course, you have to save the baby. It’s awful that the woman is gone, but any woman would want her baby saved if it was possible. But, how would that affect the rest of the family? What if the woman had other kids, and they knew she was alive but not really?

This is the tortured world of Emma that instantly sucked me in as soon as I started reading. It was impossible not to put yourself in her shoes and imagine the hurt and confusion mixed with the possibility of life.

Of course, if that was ALL this book was about, it would be the most depressing book ever. So you throw in the cute bad boy, Caleb, who understands death and loss more than any of Emma’s friends, and you’ve got yourself a sweet romantic development. And with a great supporting cast of characters, including Emma’s best friend and her stepdad, there’s never a dull moment in Emma’s world.

Heartbeat is a good story full of life, hope, and love. I recommend it for high school and up… but be prepared for it to spark some questions and discussions in your family!

The Smart Girl’s Guide to Going Vegetarian

In a rare deviation from my obsession with fiction, I’m highlighting this new book (it comes out tomorrow) for those teenage girls concerned with diet.

When I was in high school, I decided I thought the idea of meat was gross, so I wasn’t going to eat it. The problem, though, was that I wasn’t smart about how I replaced meat’s role in my diet. I basically just had a lot of dairy and a lot of carbs, which didn’t work out so well for me.

My vegetarianism didn’t last very long like that. After a horrible stretch of time in college where I actually tried the Atkin’s Diet (ALL meat – SO gross), I finally found my way back to a heather, easily maintained vegetarian diet that I really enjoy. There’s not much about meat that I miss at all.

As a teacher now,I’m always hearing about girls who are trying to watch what they eat, or who want to be vegetarian to see if they’ll lose weight, or some variation on that. I think this is a valuable resource.

Not only does The Smart Girl’s Guide to Going Vegetarian include some meal and recipe ideas, but it also explains the nuts and bolts of a vegetarian diet, including how to make sure you’re still being healthy while changing your diet.

So, if your New Year’s resolution involved some form of dieting or cutting back on meat, you should check this out. As a long-time vegetarian myself, I know this would have been incredibly valuable to me in high school!

Enjoy. :)

A Bookish Beginning to the New Year…

enders game7891b-justoneyear36644-rennison1Divergentare you experiencedspeak

 

Last year, I gave you lots of book recs for Christmas gifts, and from the feedback I got it seemed like you guys really appreciated the help. I’m sorry my list is so late this year. Where did all the time go? How is it 2014 already?

Anyway, let’s consider these ideas for good ways to get your year started off with great stories.

For the upper HS/College aged student who would love to travel: Gayle Forman’s books, Just One Day and Just One Year, center around a girl traveling during the summer after her high school graduation and the guy she happens to meet while in England. That description doesn’t do it justice AT ALL, so just trust me. If you’re only getting one of them, get Just One Day.

For the high school/college girl who loves all things British: Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. This series of books makes me laugh out loud constantly. It centers around Georgia Nicholson, a high school girl with a crazy sense of humor, a crazy family, a crazy cat named Angus, and a crazy crush on a very cool, very hot guy. This series goes on for ten books, and all ten are equally as hilarious. In fact, I love them so much that I once used every bit of my birthday money to buy them all in matching editions. True story.

For anybody who likes to think and be inspired: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card was just made into a movie about  month ago. The movie was good. The book is infinitely better. People need to read the book. In a lot of ways, Ender reminded me of Jonas from The Giver – both boys are young when they take on the responsibility of changing their worlds for the better, and I’m a sucker for a story showing a young adult making a difference. What impresses me about Ender’s Game, too, is a completely unexpected and really beautiful display of compassion and empathy at the end.

For those who like a good dystopian trilogy: The Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth. There are lots of things I like about this. The whole dystopian, perfect society that’s actually completely horrible mostly because of the government thing is really well done in Roth’s trilogy. I also love the protagonist, Tris, because she’s smart and is beyond driven to do the right thing in all situations, causing you at times to want to yell at her through the pages of the book because you actually WANT her to think about herself a little bit. Tris’s love interest, Four, is incredible and totally book-crush worthy. And, without giving anything away, the ending of the trilogy solidified for me a few things about Veronica Roth: she’s super brave, she clearly has faith, and she’s one amazing writer. I put the last book down full of emotions from the book and full of respect for Roth.mpathy at the end. That’s all I can say without giving it away, but know that it’s good. Really good. And it’s not an easy read – I’d even say it’s not necessarily a YA book, but people would argue with me – so it’s good for readers aged 8th grade and up through adulthood, really.

For high school and college girls, period, because we live in crazy times: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. In Speak, the protagonist lives through the repercussions of breaking up a big summer party resulting in several upperclassmen getting busted. How did she break up the big party? By calling the police due to something horrible that happened, though we don’t find out what happened until the end of the book. It’s a powerful and important book about the power of your voice and the necessity of speaking out against awful actions.

For the teen (or adult for that matter) interested in classic rock and the Woodstock-era: Are You Experienced? by Jordan Sonnenblick. I really, really loved this. I’ve been a fan of Sonnenblick for a long time, and this might just be my new favorite of his. In it, the main character is transported back in time to experience the Woodstock festival, where he learns crazy things about his family and befriends Jimi Hendrix. Really. It’s not at all cheesy, either, in the way it’s done… totally realistic historical fiction with a smudge of mysterious time-travel.

I’d love to hear what’s on your to-read list for 2014!

Gravediggers by Cindy M. Hogan

Gravediggers

If you’re looking for a suspenseful, creepy mystery with a good dose of romance, then Gravediggers is for you. This story was told from Billy’s point of view, a seventeen year old boy whose father was killed several years previously in a hit and run accident. Billy never really believe it was an accident, though, and has almost given up hope that his father’s killer will ever be found.

Until he finds an old ammo box while digging a grave in the church’s graveyard.

Billy and his friends set off to solve the mystery of his father’s death, and of the other strange things going on in their small Southern town, and the result is a good creeper of a story reminiscent of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for teens.

Find it on Amazon here!

Another Little Piece of My Heart by Tracey Martin

Another Little Piece of My Heart

Claire’s life has been completely turned upside down, between her mom’s cancer and death, the realization that her college fund has disappeared, and the break up with her first love, Jared, which was her mother’s dying wish. And, as if that’s not enough to send any teenage girl into a sinking spiral of depression, there’s also the little detail about Jared turning their break up into a song… and getting his big break by ranting about her and their big break up. Now the radio isn’t even safe.

Then, months after all of this happened and right after her high school graduation, Claire’s family heads to the beach for the summer. At the beach, Claire really shines and shows her worth as a character because she doesn’t mope around and ignore the world, though we’d certainly understand and forgive her if she did. Instead she goes and gets herself a job in the local grocery store to try to earn back some of that college money. She’s not a helpless little whiny girl. She’s a get out there and get whatever job you can kind of girl. I like that about her.

Of course, though, she just has to run into Jared. He comes into the store while she’s working, and they spend the summer working through the break up songs, arguing, and more.

This is really a sweet story. I loved the characters and the romance of it all, and the song-writing and music focus was fun, making it stand out from your typical YA romance. I’ll definitely be checking out future Tracey Martin titles!

Another Little Piece of My Heart is available as an ebook, and is actually on sale at Amazon right now for $2.50. I’m telling you, this is a great way to spend $2.50!

Video

Divergent movie scene released… Uhh, yes please.

I need this movie to come out NOW. Theo James as Four is perfect.

http://movies.yahoo.com/video/divergent-exclusive-first-clip-012029180.html?soc_src=copyp

Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando

roomies sara zarr tara altebrando This book made me want to go back to college. Not like now, as an adult, adding college classes to the insane list of everything else I already do, but like be 17 and about to start college for the first time again. (No, I’m not saying I’d wish away my family or anything crazy like that. Calm down.)

Roomies does a great job of capturing two girls’ emotions as they transition from high school at home to living on the campus of UC Berkley. Elizabeth (known as EB) is an East Coast only child living with her single mom of questionable morals. Lauren is a native San Franciscan living with her parents and seemingly dozens of siblings as one big happy family. When they find out they’re going to be roommates, EB starts off an e-mail chain of correspondence spanning the remainder of their summer as they wrestle through the important things leading up to college:

  • Who brings what stuff?
  • What happens to my high school friendships?
  • Long distance romances… yes or no?
  • How can I leave my family?
  • How can I NOT leave my family?
  • Am I really ready to grow up?
  • Will we get along and be able to live with each other?
  • Can even I do this?

On top of all of that, which was fun to watch as EB and Lauren grew up over the course of the summer and developed a great foundation of a relationship to start their college experiences off with, the story is told in alternating points of view, which I love. I’m a sucker for a well written story with multiple points of view. I find it fascinating. And in this case, with Zarr and Altebrando both writing (I assume they each wrote one of the girls), they really FELT like two completely different people instead of one person writing two characters. It was cool.

I’d recommend this for girls in high school, probably tenth grade and up, and for college/adult women as well. There’s a lot here to make you reflect on your own college experience. It made me wonder how my college years could have been different if I’d had a chance to get to know a roommate before moving in. Or what I would have done differently that summer before college knowing how those high school relationships would fade away so quickly once I moved across the country.

Anyway, I really enjoyed these two characters and seeing how their final summers at home played out. I’d also really like to see a follow-up of their first year in college or something. While the story ended well and I felt satisfied that it was sufficiently finished, I also wanted to know more about them.

Make sure you check it out! Roomies releases on December 24 and can be ordered here on Amazon.

Drawn by Cecilia Gray

Though most people who know me would probably never suspect me of it, I’m kind of fascinated my graffiti and the whole subculture around it. So, that combined along with the fact that I’ve become a pretty solid fan of Cecilia Gray’s YA work means that I enjoyed Drawn. A lot.

In this title, Sasha is riddled with a unique ability: her voice prompts people to say what they’re actually thinking rather than what they want to say. It seems like that could be fun… but then I think about all the things I think but don’t say out loud, and it’s scary instead. Sasha spends her childhood in and out of foster homes as a result of the chaos this causes in people’s lives, until she’s assigned to work with an FBI agent who takes her in at the age of twelve.

It’s easy to see how Sasha’s human lie detector abilities would be of interest to the FBI, and after successfully working with them for a few years and living with Agent Chelsea Tanner (the closest thing she’s ever had to a mom), Sasha is recruited by the CIA to work with an agent in Brussels. It’s exciting to read – Cecilia’s descriptions and choices of settings for events had me googling images of the city. She made it come alive.

I also really enjoyed the relationships Sasha made in Brussels. She finally finds a good friends, the first one she’s ever really had, in Vivi, and the only chance at romance she’s ever had comes with Sebastian. I was intrigued by the graffiti culture and loved reading the scenes involving the planning and carrying out of each graffiti hit.

The only thing I really wish is that the story had continued more, or that there was a follow up ready to read right now. This felt like the beginning of Sasha’s story; I could easily see a series being centered around her, and I’d hope to see Vivi and Sebastian play main roles in future books!

Find here on Amazon!

Quote

“Human reason c…

“Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it’s so important that we don’t rely on it.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

Poor Little Dead Girls by Lizzie Friend

If you’re a fan of shows like Pretty Little Liars, then you’ll enjoy Poor Little Dead Girls – it is a really good romantic YA mystery suspense thriller.

In this book, Sadie leaves her home in Portland to attend Keating, an exculsive all-girl boarding school near DC. It’s the home to really important kids of really important, powerful people. Sadie, a West Coast normal kid there on a lacrosse scholarship, struggles with some serious culture shock when she first arrives at Keating. And that’s before she even knows about the existence of a secret society with their eyes set on Sadie as their next member.

If doesn’t take long for some strange things to start happening. First, there’s the cloud of mystery surrounding the fact that Sadie’s mom went to Keating and later suffered from mental illness, eventually killing herself. There are hints about a student who went missing the previous school year, but nobody’s willing to talk about it. And when Sadie is taken in the middle of the night, it’s all you can do to not scream at her through the book to just go home to Oregon.

There are some good things going on at Keating, too, that keep her there. One is a quickly made best friend. Another is a super cute new boy, also from the West Coast, who attends the all-boy’s school nearby. As the story goes on at the suspense climbs, these three (and some crazy supporting characters that are really pretty fun) have to depend on each other in life and death situations.

Overall, I enjoyed this a lot. One thing I noticed is that, while the loose ends are tied up nicely in this book, resulting in a good, satisfying, well-resolved ending, there’s definitely a possibility for more books feathuring these same settings and characters. I hope author Lizzie Friend plans to follow up with more!