fallen in love by lauren Kate

Fallen in Love by Lauren Kate contains four short romantic paranormal stories that take place on Valentines Day. In these four short stories the fallen angels try to take care of the humans that they've fallen in love with. Lucy, the main character, dies four times and is reincarnated and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Lauren Kate makes you feel like you can be in any place at any time. The way she paints the story for us is simply beautiful. You can almost smell the beach as you stand on the cliff over looking the Atlantic ocean. Each time Lucy travels into another time zone or another country in Europe you can see, hear, and even sometimes taste the air. When you're in the hospital wing you can picture all the brave soldiers on the cots with their wounds. Lauren Kate makes it seem like all these characters are real. The reader can connect to them. You can't help but feel you want to just jump in the book and tell Lucy that what she is doing to try to end the cycle of rebirth is wrong and will cause her and Daniel to cease to exist. It's a love story like no other.

Lucy goes through time period after time period on a quest to find out why she gets reincarnated. All she ever wants is to be an angel with Daniel. If you read the first three books of the Fallen series you must read this book to see if Lucy breaks the cycle and what happens to her relationship with Daniel. Grades 6-11 will love this series. Its for anyone that will love a adventurous love story.

Book 1 Fallen
Book 2 Torment
Book 3 Passion
Book 4 Fallen In Love 
Book 5 Rapture

Rating: 3

No Choirboy By Susan Kuklin

No Choirboy by Susan Kuklin is a very intense, heart breaking, and violent nonfiction book about juveniles on death row. If you know anyone in prison, you would get a glimpse of their daily lives.

In the book, the inmates tell you about life in prison and how it changed them for the best. In some ways jail made them grow and mature. The author shows a photograph of every troubled youth in each chapter. When you look at their pictures and read their stories, you feel as if you know them and who they are.

The writing style was very interesting because it contains interviews between the author and inmate. Also the author gives her point of view on how the inmate responds.

Other nonfiction books by Susan Kuklin are Beyond Magenta, Families, Thinking Big, and many more.  Kuklin's main focus is to get the truth and give her subject a chance to speak about their thoughts.

Rating: 4 

Allegiant by Veronica Roth

 Veronica Roth ends her Divergent series in her third installment, Allegiant. It follows up where Insurgent stopped and artistically ties together the story threads of the other two books. Veronica Roth made a worthy ending for the Divergent series. I highly recommend this book for people between the grades of six and twelve who enjoy the action, suspense, and romance genres; good-looking, intelligent, and  badass characters; and tragedy. The plot runs smoothly and jumps to a fast past in certain sections of the book.  Some adults may also find joy in reading Allegiant. If you loved the first two books, then it's a must read.


Rating: 4

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is an allegory of escape. Gregor Samsa worked every day and did the same boring routine job. One morning, he has mysteriously transformed into an insect. Gregor's world slowed down and his life was now at a turning point. Gregor cannot get any medical help to return him to his human form. Is there any way he will be able to turn back into a human?

The word "Kafkaesque" has entered our culture. The word means "relating to or suggestive of Franz Kafka, especially having a nightmarish, complex, bizarre, or illogical quality." There are cartoons and TV shows that are related to this, Franz Kafka's most famous story. The author has written many stories that are all eerie and dark and that are similar to The Metamorphosis. I recommend this novella to anyone. I enjoyed how the author wrote specific descriptions of Gregor's body and the structure of the insect as he changed physically. I myself have not read a book that caught my attention as much as this one did. By reading the book you will find out what happens to Gregor as he goes along his journey as an insect and how his family's lives changes dramatically. 

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

In 1897, during the Klondike Gold Rush, a dog named Buck lives a pampered, serene life on the Santa Clara, California, estate of a wealthy judge. Buck is large and strong, a mix of St. Bernard and Scotch shepherd, and the undisputed ruler of all the dogs on the estate.

The gold rush has created an insatiable demand for dogs to pull the sleds of the prospectors across the frozen North. Buck, big, strong, healthy, and well-furred, is stolen by a worker on the judge's estate and sold to pay his gambling debts. Buck is crated and transported north, away from warm California where he led a life of easy nobility, to the frigid North, where dogs are ruled by the clubs and whips of men and the fangs of other dogs.

Buck is broken to the harness and spends his days hauling in the traces with the dog team. He is clubbed and whipped when he makes mistakes and disciplined by bites from the dog team when he fails to perform his duties correctly. He quickly learns the job of pulling the sled and becomes the best dog in the whole Klondike, renowned for his formidable strength and keen intelligence.

As he becomes accustomed to his new life in the North, Buck becomes aware of his latent wild nature, and the instincts of his wild ancestors rise in him and begin to govern him. The pull of these wild instincts and urges grows stronger and stronger the longer he stays in the North, until he can resist them no longer.

Jack London lived a life of adventure. He was a gold prospector during the Klondike Gold Rush, a seal hunter in the North Pacific, a sailor, a war correspondent, and a prizefighter, among other pursuits. His lust for life permeates his work. The Call of the Wild is one of his best works and is one of the most famous dog stories ever written. He died young, at the age of 40, leaving behind a great body of work. Another of his famous stories which you might enjoy is White Fang, also set in the wilds of the North.

A classic of American literature. Rating: 5

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

This is the second book of the beloved "Little House" series. Set in 1869-1870, little Laura, older sister Mary, baby Carrie, and Ma and Pa leave the snug little house in the big woods of Wisconsin and head out to Indian Territory in Kansas, territory that Pa is certain soon will be cleared of Indians and opened for white settlement. He is determined to get there first and get the pick of homesteads.

These books have endured as classics for good reason. They are detailed in their descriptions of pioneer life as lived by a little pioneer girl. Laura remembers everything--how they traveled, what they ate, how it was hunted and cooked, how Pa built the log cabin, the songs they sang, and the clothes they wore. One could not get a more-complete child's-eye view of pioneer life.

Most important, the books celebrate the strong families that make up our pioneer past. Laura's family in particular shines as an example of familial love, strength, resourcefulness, and resilience in the face of discouragement and disaster.

Rating: 5

The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin

Nikki is beautiful. Nikki is charming. Nikki is crazy. Nikki is the mother from hell. From the time Matthew is a preschooler, he has taken on the job of protecting his younger sisters from the unpredictable moods of their mother, Nikki. He never knows when she will turn from loving mother to abusive mother. But he knows that when she does, it is up to him to keep him and his sisters safe.

One hot summer evening, when Nikki has gone out to have fun and left the kids locked in the apartment, Matthew and his sister Callie sneak out to buy popsicles at the grocery story. While there, they witness an encounter among an enraged father, his little boy, and Murdoch, a man who comes between them to defend the little boy. After seeing Murdoch step up, Matthew becomes convinced that he is the man who can help them get away from Nikki. After this night, he searches for Murdoch for months, hoping to meet him again, become friends, and ultimately be saved from his mother.

Murdoch does eventually enter the lives of Matthew and his sisters, but not in the way Matthew wants. His efforts to get help from the various adults in his life--Murdoch, his aunt, his absentee father--are fruitless, until Nikki turns the corner into true mental illness and her behavior becomes something no can ignore anymore.

Matthew is a realistic character who embodies the "rescuer" mentality many abused children possess. He figures out "rules," things to do to try to turn Nikki from her rages. Sometimes he is successful. Sometimes not. Readers will be riveted by his struggle.

Rating: 4