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Hi Everyone!

 Today I will be reviewing one of the two required reading books for my high school. The book is, as the title of this entry suggests The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, a national bestseller by Mark Haddon.

Quick Summary:

 Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals, every prime number up to 7,057 and wont touch or eat anything yellow or brown. He lives with his father after his mother died of a heart attack two years ago.  Late one night, Christopher is walking around his neighborhood when he sees that his neighbor’s dog has  been stabbed with a garden fork. Christopher, who relates better to animals than he does to humans, begins to conduct a secret investigation to find the dog’s murderer. The investigation pushes Christopher out of his comfort zone and forces him to come to terms with himself and his family. Christopher also finds that some secrets are best left buried.

This is an amazing book that takes  the reader with an emotional roller coaster. When reading this book, be prepared to laugh and to cry, to be mad and to want to pump your fist in the air in support of Christopher  on his journey as an unusual detective and unlikely hero.

That’s all for now. Until next time, read on!

Fiona

Dear Readers,

I’m very sorry I haven’t written a blog sooner. My computer has been having many problems, but it’s been fixed and now i can get back to writing reviews! It is also now Summer Vacation, so there will be plenty of time for me to write reviews! The book I will be reviewing today is called Hurricane Mia, by Donna Marie Seim.

Quick Summary:

When Mia’s mom becomes sick, Mia and her brother, Jack, are sent away to stay with her grand parent’s house on a distant island in the Caribbean. Mia is miserable. She had plans to spend the summer with her friend, but now she’s being “punished” by being dispatched to a remote island. After Mia and her Gram butt heads,(encounters that leave both parties fuming),Mia meets Neisha, an island girl. Mia and Neisha quickly becomes friends and Neisha tells Mia about “The tea that cures everything”. Mia,Neisha, and Mia’s brother Jack soon hatch a plan to travel through the sea to the island where the tea can be found. But when a brush with a storm has events taking a turn for the worst, Mia begins to despair. Will she ever be able to get the tea back to her mother?

This is a great book for early middle school readers, probably grades 4-6. It’s a great book,full of storms, friendships and garden eating donkeys. Hurricane Mia also has characters that the reader grows to understand and love and some very funny moments, including an encounter with the garden eating donkeys.

And that concludes my review of Hurricane Mia, by Donna Marie Seim.

More reviews to be coming soon, but until then,

Read on!

Fiona

Hello Readers!

 Okay, i know  i know, this is three weeks late. Well, I’m going through  a period of time where I’m reading one book every two days. Normally, I’d be quite happy about this, but it makes reviewing very hard because by the time i get around to writing a review for the book, i tend to forget the details. However, i am now on April vacation, which means i will more time to read and write reviews. Today, i will be reviewing Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher.

Summary:

Two weeks after his classmate and crush Hannah Baker committed suicide, Clay Jenson finds a package on his doorstep with no return address. Upon opening the package, Clay finds seven tapes with Hannah’s voice recorded on them. These tapes were sent to thirteen people who, somehow, played a hand in Hannah’s death. Clay has no idea what he would have done to be on the tapes. He loved Hannah. He was never mean to her, never teased her, didn’t do any of the things the other people on the tapes did. For the rest of the night, Clay listens to the tapes and goes around the town to the locations mentioned on the tapes. As the night progresses, Clay find himself drawn deeper into Hannah’s story. What he learns will change the way he looks at his fellow classmates, and himself. 

I would definitely recommend this book to fans of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Wintergirls. However, this book does deal with some mature content, so I’d say that anyone  eighth grade and up could read this book.

This is one of the rare books that i would give a 10 out of 10. This book has an excellent plot, just the right amount of detail, amazing characters, plenty of twists and turns to keep you intrigued and is really well written.

    That concludes my review of Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. More reviews wil be coming soon, i promise. Until then read on!

            Fiona

Hello readers!

I’m so very very sorry that I have not posted anything in a while. I have been hearing back from private high schools over these past couple of weeks and have been unable to focus on anything else besides that. So here is a long overdue review of an excellent book,Candor by Pam Bachorz. I’d recommend this book to fans of stories science-fiction stories and mind-control stories.

SUMMARY:

Candor is a town in Florida, where everything is perfect. Literally, everything is perfect.  Teens do their homework, study for their tests, eat right,get good grades and respect their elders. There are no drugs, gangs,guns, graffiti and everyone is happy. But what the citizens of Candor don’t know is that there are Messages being leaked into their heads under the cover of the music that plays all the time. The Messages stop people from doing anything “bad” and convince them to make all the “right” desicions.

Oscar Banks is the son of the founder of Candor. On the surface, he appears to be the ideal Candor teen. He is best student in his school and does everything the Messages tell him to do. Or so he appears to. What no one, not even his father, knows is that Oscar is able to control the Messages. He can choose when he wants them to tell him what to do. What’s more, he can  create his own Messages,to de-program his father’s. He even sneaks new kids out of Candor, for a price.He must be careful, though, because with one wrong move, he could be sent to the Listening Room, where his memories would be erased and he’d be remodeled into the Perfect Candor Son. But then Nia Silva moves to Candor. She’s so different, unlike anyone Oscar’s ever met.She’s artistic, free-spirited and independent. He doesn’t want to see her changed by the Messages. To prevent this, he is willing to risk everything, even the possibility of being sent to the Listening Room. Oscar is faced with a conflict. Even though he wants to keep Nia the way she is, he mustn’t be seen with her. Firstly, he has a girlfriend, a perfect Candor girl. Secondly, when Oscar’s with Nia, he acts differently. His mask of the Pefect Candor Boy comes off and Nia sees him as how he really is. If he stays with Nia, Perfect Candor Boy will slip away forever and Oscar’s father will send Oscar and Nia to the Listening Room.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give it a 9. Maybe a 9.5 . While it was very well written and the characters were very well developed, there were some points in the book where I felt like I was missing something in the  back story. For the most part, things were explained really well, but there just a few moments where I was like “Huh? where did that come from? How did this happen? What is the story behind this?” But that might have just been me.(I have a thing for back stories. I need to know almost every single detail of the character’s past.)

That,readers, is my review of Candor by Pam Bachorz. More reviews will be coming shortly, I promise.

Until then, Read on!

Fiona

 Hello, readers!

 Today, I am reviewing a book by the name of The Girl Who Became a Beatle. If any readers out there love music or the Beatles, this would be a good book for you.

Quick Summery:

Regina Bloomsbury is a sixteen year old girl living in Twin Oaks. She loves music, especially the Beatles and has her own band, The Caverns, who play ’60s music. However, things aren’t  going to well with the band. When the story opens up, Regina has one last shot to keep the band from breaking up:get a gig.However, things don’t go according to plan and the band breaks up. After what might have been the worst day of her life, Regina makes a wish:

“I wish I could be as famous as the Beatles.”

Surprisingly, the wish comes true and Regina is caught up in a whirl-wind of a world, where her band has replaced the Beatles in history. Now Regina must decide between replacing the Beatles forever and being famous or giving up the wish, and going back to being a small town nobody in a world where the Beatles exist.

This is a book that is easy to read, has a great plot line(who wouldn’t want to be George,John,Paul or Ringo?), relateable characters,and lots of music!

Six Word Review:

Regina makes

a wish

for fame.

Happy Reading!

Fiona

 Ernest Hemingway once wrote a six word novel, that went like this:

For Sale

Baby’s Shoes

Never Worn.

I thought it would be cool if every once in a while I wrote a six word review. So here’s one for the first book of  the Hunger Games Trilogy. Here it goes,

Twenty-four Kids

Fight

To The Death.

And here’s another one:

Katniss

Must choose

Love or Life.

Happy Reading!

Fiona

P.S: One thing I forgot to put in my review of the Hunger Games Trilogy. The suspense in the book is heightened because Katniss must choose between Gale,her hunting partner whom she has feelings for and Peeta, her fellow Hunger Games tribute, the boy who gave her the bread who saved her life once, who admitted on live TV that he loves her. Katniss must chose between falling in love with Peeta and dying, or living, and falling in love with Gale.

“Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun.”

 The first book (or more accurately, books) i will be review is the Hunger Games Trilogy, by Suzanne Collins.

Quick Summery:

The books are set sometime in the distant future, where once a year, 24 tributes,ages 12-17, are chosen to compete in a fight to the death on live TV.Katniss Everdeen, the hero of the books, chooses to go to arena in place of her little sister, Prim. The first book is about what happens in the arena  and the next two books are about what happens after.

 Three Pros:

~ Lots of action, counter balanced with romance, to keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

~ Great characters that the reader grows to love.

~ Great descriptions, that pull the reader into the book.

Three Cons:

~ Graphic. Certain descriptions of  what happens in the arena are quite grisly. Not a book for the weak stomached.

~The books have some very sad parts. Deaths, mostly. This is not a books series for people who cry easily.

~ The third book was… flat compared to the first two. It lacked the zest that the first two books had.  It was like a soda that been shaken up. It was bubbly for a few chapters and then it fell flat.

On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a 8, 2 points off for grisly deaths and multiple sad parts.

And that concludes my review of Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games Trilogy. Hopefully, I have been true to my promise and reviewed this book in a informative, humorous and helpful way.

Happy Reading!

Fiona

Welcome! Welcome to my blog!

The reason I started this blog is this. I love to read. And I’d like to share this passion with other kids my age. It has also come to my attention that most books reviews are aimed at adults and written by adults. Even if a kid my age finds a good book review aimed at them, it would still have been written by an adult, and odds are, it wouldn’t adress what kids want to know about the book. Now, I’m not saying this is true for EVERY book review aimed at kids my age, just a fair amount of them.

Which brings me to why I’ve started this blog. I’ll review books that kids my age or younger or even older than me might like in a informative, humourous and hopefully helpful way. Hope you enjoy reading the reviews( and maybe the books!) as much i enjoyed writing them. If anyone has a book they want me to review, drop me a line via gotbooksreviews@gmail.com

Enjoy!

 Fiona