![]() In a society where your time of death is predetermined, Adam Silvera follows the tragic, yet exhilarating story of two boys who know they’re about to die. The timorous Mateo receives a call from The Death Cast, immediately feeling overwhelmed by how little he has accomplished in his life. While Rufus, a troubled foster child, finds himself tangled with the police just moments after his call. Through the Last Friend app, the pair form a fated bond as “Last Friends.” Their differences, rather than forming a wall between them, instead allow them to encourage each other in an adventure they are determined will come to close with no regrets. Though the overarching topic of this book is rather devastating, Adam Silvera does a great job at bringing light into the situation. Almost all the characters in the book have dynamic stories and personalities that you wish the author would go more in depth about. This book is unique in that the title quite literally gives you a spoiler of how the book is going to end. Knowing that they were both going to die at the end, almost made me feel more immersed into the adventure Rufus and Mateo were on. The characters know they’re going to die by the end of the day, and so do you. This book taught me a lot about the worth of life and how important it is to understand that life is short. -JJ, grade 10
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![]() Warning: Spoilers ahead for Scythe, book one of the Arc of a Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman In Thunderhead, the sequel to Scythe, Rowan is on the run. He is attacking and killing corrupt scythes under the moniker of “Scythe Lucifer.” Meanwhile, Citra has become Scythe Anastasia, living as a junior Scythe with Scythe Curie. There is an attempt on Curie’s and Anastacia’s lives, but they survive and investigate the attempt. The reader also follows Greyson Tolliver, a Nimbus agent who is given a special task by the Thunderhead itself. The characters all meet in a dramatic finale that ends with a massive cliffhanger. I read this book because I read Scythe, the first book of the series, as a book group book. I was completely hooked on the story and the characters, but the best part was and is the masterfully constructed world of the future. This seemingly ridiculous premise of immortal humans and legally ordained killers is made believable through Shusterman’s masterful writings. I highly recommend this book, this series, and anything written by Neal Shusterman. -RB, grade 10 ![]() The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz is about two girls: Beth and Tess. Beth, a high schooler, struggles with her father who has a mental illness and is strict with her. Beth’s friend, Lizzy, kills a man who raped her friend. Beth’s friends continue on a path of murdering rapists. Beth is tied between being their friend and separating herself from them. Tess is a time traveler who is trying to fix the laws that restrict women by making small edits in the timeline. She has a time war with a group of men who are trying to change laws that restrict women’s rights. Tess tries to help Beth to separate herself from her malicious friends. In a previous timeline Beth commits suicide to get away from Lizzy. In a future timeline Tess stops Beth from killing herself. I heard this book being mentioned on NPR. This book was interesting to me. The chapters switch from Beth’s perspective to Tess’ perspective. I enjoyed reading Beth’s chapters more than Tess’ chapters, because it was easier to follow her timeline. I thought the jumping back and forth in the timeline was confusing and did not understand how their small edits could change the future, but as I kept reading I grasped the concept of how their edits fixed the timeline -AN, grade 10 ![]() From award-winning author Margaret Atwood comes the thrilling modern classic, “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Set in a dystopian future in which the president was shot, Congress was massacred, and the Constitution suspended, the human population has drastically fallen below replacement level due to pollution and nuclear accidents. To repopulate, the republic of Gilead has designated certain fertile women as “handmaids”, young women who are society’s last chance. Dressed in blood-red, they each undergo training to forget their past lives as regular women, wives, and mothers. They serve only one purpose now - bear children or die. Offred, a handmaid, tells a first-hand recount of her harrowing experiences as she tries to comprehend the now commanding patriarchy. Simultaneously, she reminisces about her old life with her daughter and husband. Filled with captivating language and sinister plot twists, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, like George Orwell’s “1984”, is a haunting warning to humanity and its future. I had heard about this book from numerous sources, most often by reference to the TV show available on Hulu. However, I never had the opportunity to read it until the Pioneer Reads book club chose it as the Science Fiction/Fantasy book of the year. There were several raving reviews that went along with the descriptive words “dark” and“graphic”. I dove into its pages and was surprisingly quite disappointed. I found it to be a jumble of narratives, most of which were monotonous and seemingly irrelevant to the plot. I felt that there was hardly any character development generated by Offred herself and that the ending was inadequate. The sequel, “The Testaments”, was recently released, but I do not plan on reading it in the near future as I predict it will be very similar in structure and writing style, which was definitely not my favorite. It is possible that after reading “1984” in 7th grade, I now find it harder to be shocked by dystopias. Honestly, I think I was simply expecting more from the story. -KT, grade 10 ![]() Because You’ll Never Meet Me, by Leah Thomas, is written in letter format from the point of two boys with differing medical conditions. Ollie has an allergy that causes him to have severe seizures when he comes in range of anything electric. This forces him to live as a “hermit in the woods.” His penpal, Moritz, has a pacemaker for his weak heart, along with other hindering conditions for which he is bullied in school. Even though they are in constant communication, they can never meet. Moritz’s electric heart would trigger Ollie’s seizures. Turning off the pacemaker to spare him would send Moritz into cardiac arrest. Their only correspondence is through these letters in which they share their story with joy, anger, hurt, and confusion. They learn to give advice and to trust one another through dark times as they learn how they are connected. I really enjoyed this book. It was given as a presentation by one of my peers for book groups in our class. It immediately caught my interest and when it wasn’t selected for a group, I added it to my reading list. I recommend it for anyone looking for a story that is humorous and heartfelt at the same time. -MR, grade 10 ![]() The Power has to do with an actual electrical power possessed by women. Most are able to yield electricity, and can harm and kill others with it. This new power has moved up women in society, making them something men fear and want to control even more than they already do. The story counts down from 10 years until a big event at the end, and rotates between four people’s perspectives. They are each from different parts of the world, such as America, England and Nigeria. Two of the people are teenage girls, Roxy and Allie, who live in England and America respectively and have very different, but both equally complicated lives, such as Roxy and her extremely successful family that is head of a giant crime syndicate. Another is middle aged mom and American politician Margot, who has to hide her own power so she can safely move up the political ladder and try to make things better in America for other females with the power. And finally, twenty-something rich Nigerian photojournalist Tunde, the only male narrator. His job is capturing the stories of the power sweeping the globe, and the aftermath and chaos it is causing from all perspectives. Women are rising up, men are going crazy trying to push them back down, and the entire world is torn on what to do about the female power that only grows with time. I would give this book a solid 9/10. I love the female power, extreme diversity of the characters, and the ever twisting plot that keeps you wondering. Sometimes it felt like I was really with the characters, running through female riots with Tunde, or trying not to release my power on the annoying, know-it-all higher up, Daniel, who Margot has to defeat on her run for state Governor. My biggest pet peeve about this book though is the grammar and language; it is like a bad editing job. Some parts have confusing sentences, and others use strange slang like “cos” randomly, not just in dialogue, that you wouldn’t think would be in a published book. Also, I’m not a religious person, so I didn’t like the religious stuff involved in Allie’s part; she becomes “Mother Eve,” the religious head of the entire woman’s power movement, which is pretty cool. I personally didn’t like how tied to religion her role in the book (and movement) was though. -CC, grade 12 ![]() The book I chose to read was called "The Three Body Problem". It was written by Cixin Liu and translated into English by Ken Liu. This novel is basically about some scientists in China basically trying to benefit humanity in different ways. "The Three Body Problem" starts off following Ye Wenjie's father (a professor who is very knowledgeable in sciences), then Ye herself (a highly intelligent student with a soft spot for the environment), then Wang Miao (a nano materials researcher). Wang stumbles across a video game called "The Three Body Problem" in which he has to try and use science and math to solve when different periods in the game will strike. There are three bodies in space in this game and the problem at hand is the seemingly unpredictability in how they affect each other. It's later revealed that there's a lot more going on than meets the eye, in both his life and in the video game. I'll give you a hint, it has something to do with aliens. I read this book because Ms. Hieber suggested it to me and I thought "she's an English teacher, she knows books." I liked this book. It wasn't super good but it wasn't bad. It was just kind of ok. This book tended to be kind of dull for my taste, I prefer a faster paced novel. It was also very thick and I personally felt like it kind of just inched along. I found myself having to reread pages because I kind of just zoned out during it. I liked the fact that this novel was originally written in Chinese, it made for some interesting context and content. Like, it revolved a lot around Communism and had a few references to Chinese historical events mentioned in a foot note. The translator really made sure you knew what was going on. If you really like science and math than this book would be right for you. "The Three Body Problem" was jam packed with science things that, quite frankly, I didn't have any clue what they were talking about. Overall, I'm happy that I read this book but I probably wouldn't read it again. -MZ, grade 10 ![]() Slaughterhouse V, by Kurt Vonnegut, is an anti-war novel with a unique idea that it's center around. The 4th dimension, the main character, Billy Pilgrim claims to have met these aliens called the Tralfamadorians. Who explain them their perception of time where they see time all at once, so they would generally focus more on happier moments in time. Also, death isn't as big as humans make it be, Tralfamadorians explain that if someone were to die they're simply dead at that moment, but alive in another, which is why Billy Pilgrim always says "so it goes" at every death of the book to prove the insignificance of death. As the reader goes through the book they explore Billy Pilgrim's life out of sequence because of how he's "unstuck in time". So one chapter can be taking place at the battle of the bulge then transition to him being in a plane crash. I chose this book because I kept getting recommendations from friends to read stories by Kurt Vonnegut. So I picked this book and Cat's Cradle. I love the way Slaughterhouse V is told it's so light-hearted and the serious moments in the book are taken more relaxed than they should be. This is mainly due to the central idea of the 4th dimension which is a very brilliant way of telling a story, and could be interpreted in two different ways, a PTSD victim or someone who actually had an alien encounter. This is a solid 10/10 book. -AD, grade 12 ![]() The Giver by Lois Lowry is about this utopian society where they are exposed to certain events in life. There’s only one person, called the Giver, in the society where he knows everything. For example, he would know the worse event that happened in life to the best thing that could happen to you. The society has limited things they can see, hear, and touch. If they are exposed to anything that was not supposed to be obtained, they were to be punished in different ways. The Giver is the only one that knows about everything, affection, wars, color, and many other things that the community doesn’t know. Jonas, the main character, was chosen to be the next Giver, but no one is allowed to know that he has all these memories being transferred to him through the original Giver. Jonas would ask why the community doesn’t know any of these memories he is obtaining, and they should know. Later in the story, no one is allowed to leave the community, but Jonas wanted to. If he leaves the community, his memories will be released to the society and they would learn about the events that Jonas did. I chose this book because I wasn’t into the first book I was reading in class. This book was on my parent’s bookshelf. Overall, I thought it was a good book even though I felt like there should have been more. I would give it a 4.5/5 stars. Five stars being the best book. I gave it a 4.5 because I didn’t like the ending of the book and I thought that there should’ve been more to the ending. There’s also a movie to this book and it showed a different ending. All in all, I think this book was a great book. -RV, grade 12 ![]() The book When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is about a sixth-grader named Miranda. Her mom is a single mother and a paralegal. Miranda isn’t sure if she wants to write letter back to “you” a person who has been sending her letters. If she did she would write about how she lost touch with her best friend, Sal. Once she sends him a letter, “you” starts sending her creepy messages; the first one she found with her apartment door unlocked. Later she gets another note talking about three things that will happen to her in the future; and all of them come true. I first heard about this book when someone was talking about it in a book talk. I thought the plot was interesting but it wasn’t picked for a group book. I decided to try it out and it was actually a book that kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. It’s sort of like a mystery and science fiction novel. I highly recommend it to anyone that likes mysteries. -CS, grade 10 |
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