The Classy Crooks Club by Alison Cherry

The moral of this story is loyalty to friends trump social ethics. Kids are already highly impressionable and for a middle-grade book to impart this kind of message, well that doesn’t sit right with me. To make matters worse, the main character’s morals digress toward the end of the novel. For instance, in the middle of the book, AJ stands up to the ladies and her Grandma Jo letting them know that their actions are considered stealing. However, by the end of the […]

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The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is not your typical post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel. In fact, I tend to shy away from the sci-fi genre, but ever since I joined a book club (well, several actually), I’ve been pushed to read books outside my comfort zone. Surprisingly, this book had me hooked after the first sentence. Carey exquisitely shapes a crumbling world through the lens of a unique child, a child that the world despises. The story is written from a perspective […]

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Future Perfect by Jen Larsen

FUTURE PERFECT is a coming of age YA novel about a young girl struggling with happiness and her body. Like many people, the main character worries more about the happiness of others that she loses sight of her own. Larsen unravels the reality that many young men and women go through when struggling with weight, peeling away the superficial layers and revealing the raw vulnerability they so desperately try to hide. Larsen creates real characters with real emotions. The only character that […]

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Deep Water by Lu Hersey

DEEP WATER is a beautifully written mystery novel that draws inspiration from old wives tales and folklore. Set in a small seaside town, the story focuses on a girl searching for answers about her mom’s past and subsequently her own. Not to go on a tangent here, but don’t we tend to seek answers from the history written before us? Going back to the story, while it is more mystery driven, fret not as Lu sprinkles in a dash of forbidden […]

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Anne & Henry by Dawn Ius

A blend between the GOSSIP GIRL series and a YA version of FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, ANNE & HENRY is filled with lust, desire, and teenage hormones. This modern retelling of the tragic love story between Anne Boleyn and Henry Tudor while no doubt has several hot and heavy scenes that leave little to the imagination, the novel also leaves very little room for character development. Anne is not a sympathetic character. Her background story about her sister Mary is […]

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