Poems and Poets

Publication Date:  June 23rd, 2015 Genre:  Young Adult, Romance, Realistic Fiction My Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Source:  Own Copy Emmy's best friend was kidnapped ten years ago. Life in her small town home has been stilted since Oliver was taken by his father. Her parents are the most over-protective parents in town and she keeps so many secrets from them it's hard to keep count. Then Oliver comes back. After ten years, Oliver finally learns that his father was the bad guy. It wasn't his mother who deserted him, it wasn't a messy separation that led to him never seeing her again. He needs time to figure out his new world. He's back in a place he doesn't remember calling home and his life has changed drastically. In the second grade, Emmy and Oliver pledged to be best friends forever. Has their relationship withstood the test of time and distance? Can they mend their friendship and build it into something greater? Emmy has held onto him for a decade. Has Ol...

Publication Date: September 3rd 2015 Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary My Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Source: Own copy Three women and three secrets create one compelling story in Jenny Downham's Unbecoming . 17-year old Katie falls in love with the wrong person- or so she thinks. She keeps up her secret tryst without revealing the identity of the one her heart yearns. Caroline, Katie's mother, is rigid and strict and afraid of her past becoming her present. Her confusing childhood has taught her to constantly protect her children. Mary, Caroline's mother, makes a startling  reappearance in her daughter's life after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's following the death of her husband. Still capable of breaking all the rules, Mary is not your usual grandmother. Katie spends her summer caring for Mary, attempting to learn about her mother's disgruntled attitude towards her. As Mary struggles to grasp her memories she reveals her family's secrets to Kati...

Publication Date: January 1st 2015 Genre: Young-Adult and Middle-Grade My Goodreads Rating: 3/5 Source:  Own Copy Stewart is the gifted and talented. He's also geeky and socially awkward. His mom passed away last year and he finds himself missing her quite often. Ashley is gifted and talented. She's popular and stylish. She's also failing 9th grade. Her dad has just come out and divorced her mother.It's a year later, and both her parents have now found themselves boyfriends. Enter the parents- Ashley's mom asks Stewart's dad to move in with them, creating the most awkward living situation for both Ashley and Stewart. Stewart's excited about this new adventure in his life. Ashley... not so much. Stewart doesn't fit in at school and Ashley struggles at home. When both of them attract the attention of Jared, a popular boy at school, things start to go terribly wrong. Do they have a strong enough relationship to confront the problems together? ...

Genre: Middle-Grade Publication Date: Aug 18th 2015 My Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Source: Library Copy Suzy is convinced that her best friend, the incredible swimmer, couldn't have drowned to death. She does some research and realizes that Suzy might have been stung by a rare jellyfish. She stops talking, communicating only with herself and her research, and goes through her first year in middle school as a child determined to prove the police wrong. Her shock and grief resonate with the reader through every page, her sheer determination sets her apart from all other grieving characters and her belief in her friend's abilities strikes the audience. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome on page, Suzy Swanson!

Publication Date: 3rd March 2015 Genre: Young Adult My Goodreads Rating: 5/5 Source: Borrowed Hey guys- I'm back with another review of an amazing book! I read "Mosquitoland" by David Arnold early last year, and found out that I never shared it with you guys! I rated this book five stars on Goodreads- and would have given it ten if I could.  Mim Malone, who has been residing with her mother in Northern Ohio since the whirlwind of her parents' divorce, is suddenly sent to the "wastelands" of Mississippi to live with her father and step-mother. Before she has time to process what happened, she learns that her mother is sick back in Cleveland, so she packs her bag and boards a bus to travel back home.   She meets various interesting characters along the way, who become as much a part of her story as the final journey of meeting her mother one last time. Among these characters is young Walt, a homeless teenager suffering from Down's Syndrome, who...

Publication Date : 19 May 2015 Genre: Young Adult My Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Source:  Own Copy I recently finished reading "Made You Up" by Francesca Zappia, a young-adult novel about a schizophrenic teenager finding her way into normality.   Alexandra is a high-school senior who's recently shifted schools. Over the summer, she makes a friend while working at a restaurant, and uses the owner's Magic 8 Ball to navigate through both her paranoia and schizophrenia.   While waiting on a customer, she bumps into a character she from her childhood, whom she always thought that she'd imagined. When she realizes that he goes to her new school, she's confused by the fact that everyone else can see him as well.  Alex uses her camera regularly to take pictures of what she feels might be a product of her schizophrenia. Over time, the reality is captured in the image, and the imaginary items fade away, allowing her to have a clearer recollection of what happened. ...

Publication Date: February 10th 2015 Genre: Young-Adult My Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Source: Borrowed Hey guys! I'm back with another book review. This is a book I read last year, called "My Heart and Other Black Holes". A friend convinced me to read it, and I'm glad she did. I've never read a novel quite like it, and while the writing wasn't ostentatious or exceptionally brilliant, it was a book I'll never forget.  Aysel is obsessed with planning her own suicide. She has survived an unfortunate scandal involving her father, been moved across town to live with her mother- who can barely stand to look at her- and her step-family, been considered a loner in school, and found an interesting passion for physics.  She works at a call-center, just to stay away from the house, and while she's there she stumbles upon a suicide partner's website. It's on that website that she finds Frozen Robot, her soon to be suicide partner.

Publication Date: October 5th 2015 Genre: Fantasy, Romance My Goodreads Rating: 3/5 Source:  Borrowed Hey everyone! I'm finally back with some more blog posts for you. This post will be all about a book called "Carry On" by Rainbow Rowell. It's a sequel of sorts to her book, "Fangirl". The main characters of "Fangirl" are obsessed with a series called "Simon Snow". Simon Snow didn't exist, until Rainbow Rowell wrote "Carry On". You don't have to read Fangirl to understand Carry On, because it's a great book both as a sequel and as an individual. The book is a fantasy, and revolves around a magical world. Similar to Harry Potter, the book's main character,  Simon Snow , was raised in a non-magical world, The difference however, between the two books, is that in Simon's world, living in a non-magical world and being magical is not possible.  Although the book draws many references to old-fashioned li...