Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

In this gripping novel in verse, Hopkins tells what happens to three suicidal teenagers who meet in a clinic for “troubled youth” in Nevada.  First there’s Conner, who seems to have the perfect life if you don’t look too closely.  He lives in a mansion in an exclusive part of town and is very popular at school. Along with this, however, he has parents with impossibly high expectations who are always comparing him to his “perfect” twin sister Cara.  Then we meet Tony, a street kid who’s been in the juvenile detention system since he was a young child, but readers won’t learn why until much later in the book.  We just find out that he’s gay and been a prostitute on and off just to survive.  Lastly is Vanessa, the beautiful girl with a secret so dark the only way she believes she can relieve her pain is by cutting herself.  These three patients slowly become friends as they find they have more and more in common with each other.  Sharing their pasts is excruciating, but carefully they reveal their darkest mysteries to each other, learning to trust and love in the process.

This book is full of bleak topics: sexual abuse, self-mutilation, drug abuse, parental neglect, mental illness and suicide. Like all of Hopkins’ books, the author has done her research, and presents her characters in a realistic, if depressing fashion.  I found this book engaging, yet sad.  It didn’t really matter that I read it after I read Perfect, as there was only one character in common.  I would highly recommend this to teen readers who like realistic fiction and fans of Hopkins’ other titles.

Click HERE to see the review of the companion novel Perfect.

 

How To Save a Life by Sara Zarr

How To Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Sara Zarr’s newest novel will absolutely delight her fans, both old and new.  She tells this story from two disparate perspectives: high school senior Jill and pregnant nineteen year old Mandy.  Jill’s father died suddenly nearly a year before, and she and her mom are not dealing well with the loss. In fact, Jill has practically disowned her friends and has broken up with her boyfriend Dylan three times because she refuses to let him see her pain and grief, getting mean and snarky instead.  Her mom Robin has decided to adopt a baby, much to Jill’s shock and anger.

“Adding someone to a family, though?  Is major.  Life-changing.  Permanent.  When someone’s been subtracted from a family, you can’t just balance it out with a new acquisition.  In the months after Dad died, a couple people told us we should get a dog.  A dog!  How is this all that different?” she says.

Robin found Mandy on New Year’s Eve through an open adoption website.  Mandy told Robin she is pregnant from true love, but Robin and her daughter Jill slowly find out that sometimes Mandy lies to cover terrible secrets from her past.  In addition,  Mandy has numerous demands for the adoption of her baby, all of which Robin goes along with, making Jill fume even more.  The ending will probably not come as a complete surprise to most readers, but it’s emotionally satisfying and a logical conclusion to everything that’s happened in the story.

This was an amazing story; I found it hard to put the book down. I highly recommend it to all teen readers, especially fans of Sara Zarr, Jodi Piccoult and Sarah Dessen.

Scars by Cheryl Rainfield

Scars by Cheryl Rainfield

For me, this story of a young teen’s sexual abuse and self-harming (cutting) behavior was mesmerizing.  It’s told in the first person perspective by high school freshman Kendra.  The readers learn in the first few pages that Kendra has been abused, can’t remember who her abuser is, thinks he is currently stalking her, and has a therapist to help her cope with all these related issues.  She remembers phrases from what her abuser said, like, “I will kill you if you tell.”  When she hears these things in her mind, or remembers flashes of his hands grabbing her, the only thing that calms Kendra down is when she cuts her self with a utility knife she hides in her room and begins carrying in her backpack.  Although Kendra keeps the scars on her arm a dark secret, her emotions come out in her artwork, which is strong, violent and emotional.  Although her mother only criticizes her art, their close family friend Sandy supports her and tells her how talented she is.  In fact, he helps her show and sell some of her paintings in a local coffee house when her parents tell her they can no longer afford her therapist Carolyn.  Frighteningly, Kendra is remembering more and more of her abuse, and getting closer to identifying the abuser.  At the same time, this means she’s cutting herself more and more.

This book and the main character captured my heart.  It turns out that the author suffered through a similar situation, and the readers can feel the emotions bleeding through the pages.  I recommend this to readers  who like realistic teen fiction, teens who are drawn to titles about emotional problems,  and fans of A Child Called It and similar books.  If you know anyone suffering from sexual abuse like the main character in this book, here’s a hotline recommended by our Teen Health & Wellness database:

Break the Cycle Organization for Teens
The Safe Space
http://www.thesafespace.org

Here’s a video book trailer you can watch from home:

Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen

Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen

At Oregrove High, nobody messes with the football team!  When the gymnastics team wants to use the weight room and humiliates the football players in a strength contest, a war of pranks starts between the two teams that escalates until one of the youngest gymnasts is raped by three steroid-fueled football players.  The horrendous act is witnessed by two boys: Danny, a gymnast stuck behind some mats in the back of the storage room and Kurt, a fullback transfer student who beats up the three sick athletes, but has his own history with abuse.  The book is narrated in alternating chapters by these two characters, who could be more different, but eventually become friends.  The suspense of who to tell about the rape or what to do about it kept me on the edge of my seat until the end of the story.

I think this was a great book and recommend it to all mature high school readers. It is dark and realistic, touching on the current hot topic of bullying in a very realistic way.  It gets quite graphic and also has strong language, but both fit perfectly within the context of the story.  I give it 5 stars out of five!!!

Dark Song by Gail Giles

Dark Song by Gail Giles

Fifteen year old Ames is a good girl and diligent student, living in Boulder. Colorado, with her parents and six year old sister. When her father is caught embezzling from clients to make risky investments that failed, the family is left with nothing. Forced to leave her private school when they sell their house, Ames and her family move to Texas where her father’s parents are stingy slumlords. They live in a ramshackle house that was used for crack dealing, cleaning it up in return for living there. The stress and humiliation has turned Ames’ parents short-tempered, and she feels totally abused. When a boy she meets suggests she get revenge on them for ruining her comfortable life, Ames is drawn into his plans. How far will she go? I couldn’t put this book down because I was mesmerized by the way Ames started to change from a good girl to someone who was willing to listen to her negative impulses. If you liked Shattering Glass by the same author, you will love Dark Song!

Review by Mrs. Goldstein-Erickson

Dark Song by Gail Giles

Dark Song by Gail Giles

Ames Ford has the life any teenager would envy: rich parents, posh private school, designer clothes and virtually no responsibilities.  When her father is fired as a stockbroker for “borrowing” money from his clients’ accounts, they are forced to give up their mansion, leave Boulder and move to a raunchy rental house in Texas, that looks like it used to be a crack house.  When they arrive to m0ve in, Marc, a friend of a friend, is there to help them clean out the filth and roaches.  Ames finds herself attracted to him, especially because he is a little older and seems like he’s saving the family from their own problems.  Ames feels angry and betrayed by her parents, who give her more and more responsibility for the family, while at the same time treating her with minimal affection or positive attention.  She ripe to be manipulated by someone like Marc, who it turns out is really 22 years old and out of school.  She isn’t even that surprised when she finds out he has a gun “collection” with enough arms to equip a small militia.  Ames is hardly taken aback when her boyfriend suggests they kill her family and head to Mexico.

I love the way Giles keeps readers on the edge of their seats.  I found Ames’ transition from spoiled teen to rebellious brat a little abrupt, but not enough to give up on her.  Until the end, I wasn’t really sure how things would turn out, and was surprised at the conclusion.  I recommend this for mystery fans, readers who like Gail Giles books, and anyone looking for an  engrossing story.

Glimpse

Glimpse by Carol Lynch Williams

Even though Hope and Lizzie were a year apart in age, they had been best friends ever since they could remember. When little sister Hope walks in on Lizzie, fourteen years old, about to shoot herself with a shotgun, her heart  “pounds so much that it hurts.”

“She fingers the

trigger.

Looks up.

My sister.

My sister just looks

up at me.

Touching

the trigger

of that gun.”

Hope can’t understand what could be so terrible that her Lizzie would want to end her life.  She goes back to beginning to start her story, when their father was killed on his motorcycle while out getting medicine. The readers see glimpses of the past, while living in the difficult present time with Hope.  Lizzie is put in a mental hospital for treatment, and Hope must contend with their abusive mother alone, an unscrupulous and exploitative woman who turned to prostitution years ago as means to support her daughters.  The mental hospital’s psychiatrist believes something has happened recently to change Lizzie’s behavior, and the reader learns along with Hope what has happened with Lizzie and how she can “save” her.

I highly recommend this book to fans of realistic teen fiction and  fans of Ellen Hopkins.  You will find it hard to put down once you get started!

Wayback Wednesday-Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin

The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin

I decided to include this book again because it’s such a great read.  I’ve never given it to a student who hasn’t liked it; and that’s saying something!

This book grabbed my attention the second I started reading it a couple weeks ago. The book is a “letter” from seventeen-year-old Matt to his baby sis Emmy, telling her how they grew up because he knows she won’t remember a lot of it. That’s probably a good thing because their mom is crazy, sweet as sugar one second, then yelling and abusing them before they know what’s happened. What I loved about this book is that I felt like I was right there with Matt as the story was happening, and felt his pain and frustration when he tried to get his estranged father, aunt and one of his mom’s boyfriends to help them.

I would recommend this book to all teen readers, especially those who like realistic fiction, family drama, and books about child abuse.  We have three copies just waiting to be checked out!

Here’s a pretty good book trailer you can see from home:

Wayback Wednesday – Beastly by Alex Flinn

On Wednesday’s I thought I’d start reposting reviews of older books that our readers might not have read yet.  I thought I’d start with Beastly since this will be coming out as a new movie this coming March.  I’ve included a movie trailer at the bottom.

Beastly by Alex Flinn

For sure, it’s another take on “Beauty and the Beast,” but Flinn brings something new to her story, by making the two main characters teenagers at an exclusive prep school in New York City. Junior Kyle Kingsbury is so superficial and downright mean to his fellow students, that readers won’t be too sad when a goth-looking witch turns him into a werewolf type beast. He slowly transforms into a caring, thoughtful human being with the help of his blind tutor, housekeeper, and Lindy, a scholarship student from his old school. The changes in him and his relationship with Lindy make the book hard to put down, despite the happy ending we all know is coming.

Here’s the movie trailer you can see from home:

Dreamland

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen

When Caitlin was younger, her mother used to tuck her and her sister into bed every night, promising to “See you in Dreamland” before shutting the door quietly behind her.  Now, Dreamland is where the sixteen-year-old is trying to live, practically invisible in a place where no one even notices her.  When her almost perfect sister runs away to New York City instead of entering Yale University, Caitlin wants a life of her own choosing, instead of one where she always compares herself to her stellar sister Cassandra.  The handsome, mysterious, and brooding Rogerson seemed to be her opportunity to create an identity of her own choosing.  Here she won’t have to measure up to the cheerleading squad’s tiresome demands.  Here she won’t have to be transformed into her mother’s “project” to replace the beloved Cassandra.  Here she won’t have to struggle to fit in to the popular crowd at her school, something her best friend Rina has no trouble doing.  The problem is that Rogerson has problems of his own, the kind of problems that soon become Caitlin’s, too.  This devastating journey into the heart and mind of a teenager who can’t seem to ask for the help she needs will keep you the edge of your seat wondering if Caitlin will be able to save herself before it’s too late.

This is one of Sarah Dessen’s older titles, but it still as great as anything she has written recently.  I highly recommend it to all her fans, and fans of realistic teen stories.

King of the Screwups

King of the Screwups by K.L. Going

Liam Geller can’t seem to do anything right, at least according to his super successful CEO father.  Despite the fact that he’s one of the most popular guys at his school, is great at sports, and dresses like the cover of GQ, he can’t keep himself from screwing up in his dad’s eyes.  When his parents catch him nearly naked with a beautiful, young classmate on his dad’s home office desk, it’s the final straw.  He’s outta there; banished to his ultra-strict military grandparents in Nevada.  For once, Liam’s mom, a gorgeous former super model, intervenes between her son and her emotionally abusive husband.  She arranges for Liam to stay with his dad’s brother, who he calls Aunt Pete, a gay, glam-rocker, who lives in a trailer park and DJ’s a late night radio program.

As you can probably guess, there’s lots of room for laughter in this story, but even more, it touched me the way Liam believed he is such a bad person for not living up to his dad’s impossible expectations.  I really liked this story, and recommend it to anyone interested in family dynamics and a hearty belly laugh.

Split

Split by Swati Avasthi

In this well-written first novel, the reader becomes immersed in the story of sixteen-year-old Jace Witherspoon, who arrives at his big brother’s apartment with a split lip, a beat-up face, and a pocket full of change. This is a story about what happens after a young person escapes a home rampant with domestic violence. Jace and Christian’s judge father has been beating on their mother for as long as they can remember. With the help of some friend’s parents, Christian ran away a number of years back, and is now in medical school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Not once did he contact Jace to find out if his younger brother was OK. Of course, he wasn’t; he began intervening between his mom and dad the same way Christian had and had the scars to prove it. When he snapped one day and actually started hitting his father, he was exiled from the home, with only his camera and some money his mother had hidden from her abusive husband.

Jace tries to start a new life with his brother, but their mutual silence about the past cannot be overcome, even with Christian’s girlfriend threatens to leave him. And something terrible happened between Jace and his ex Lauren, something he can hardly think about… How can he even consider dating a new girl named Dakota, even though she’s smart and funny, and just as much a book-nerd as he is?

I adored this book and read it in two days, not being able to hardly put it down. I recommend to all readers and this guys who usually don’t like reading would especially like it.

Click HERE for a short excerpt from Chapter 1.

Watch the book trailer for this book from home:

Push

Push by Sapphire

Push is such a great book; just in case you haven’t read it, I will tell you a little about it.  This book is about a young lady named  Claireece Precious Jones, and she goes by Precious.  She was just 12 when she had her first child;  she had her baby by her own father who used to molest her every night.  Her mother, was obese, and she used to beat Precious and call her names like fat, slut, and whore. Precious was also illiterate; she couldn’t read or write.  Because she was 16 and going on her next child by her father again, she decided to get into an alternative school so she could learn new things and teach her unborn baby things her mother and father never taught  her. Her mother disagreed with this plan and wanted her to stay home and collect welfare.

Towards the end of the book Precious has her second baby at age 16, learns some difficult news about her health, and makes some big decisions about how she wants to live her life.

I would rate this book as 10 because its touching and moving.  I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading it from my description.

Destiny class of 2010

Identical by Ellen Hopkins

Identical by Ellen Hopkins

If you’ve read any titles by Ellen Hopkins before, you know that she writes her stories in free verse poetry.  At first this bothered me.  But then one of our students told me that she noticed how the shapes the groupings of words and lines made added to the meaning of the words.  Here’s an example:

It isn’t an option,

If you tell

a secret

about someone

you don’t really know,

other people might

listen,

but decide you’re

making it up.  Even if you

happen to know for a fact

it’s true.

Although Raeanne and Kaeleigh are identical twins down to their dimples, they couldn’t be more different.  Raeanne spends her free time with her drug dealing boyfriend, “partying” and having sex in his truck.  In contrast, Kaeleigh is involved with the usual high school extracurricular activities.  Their parents, although successfully involved in Ray’s career as a judge and his re-election campaign, have little time for the girls.  Except for one thing—their father has been sexually abusing Kaeleigh since a terrible car accident years before.  The girls’ story is told in alternating points of view, their voices helping distinguish them from one another.  Life gets harder and harder for the girls, until a frightening event occurs followed by a shocking discovery.

Due to the subject matter, this is a book for mature readers.  Although not perfect, I loved this book and think Hopkins is simply an amazing writer who seems to be able to transport herself into the minds and hearts of young adults.

Baby Doll

Baby Doll by Divine

Baby Doll was a book that told a story about that side of the project.  It had true drama;  it was about a young lady who was living in a world where people hated her.   Her own mother’s boyfriend was raping her.   Her sister tried to tell her mother that she was getting raped, but she just would say she was lying. The  young lady was getting jumped at schoo,l but when she ran into a man named Big Daddy Blue, everything felt like it was going to be alright .

He got her a job, an apartment, even some clubs. But Big Daddy was dying of cancer.     When he was gone, she was left with six stores and four clubs. Big Daddy’s  main goal was to leave her in charge of the youth program he started, and when she sold all the business for four million dollars.   That’ when she got death threats. One day she was shot in her home. After that day she changed Big Daddy’s dream to new heights. She knew that she didn’t die for a reason, so she did all she could do to fix it.
This was a good book and if you are into drama this is the book for you.

Written by Tenise   Class of 2009

Sold

Sold by Patricia McCormack

Nominee for the California Young Reader medal: 2008-09

In a story that could have come from current news headlines, 13 year old Lakshmi leaves her isolated village high in the mountains of Nepal for what she thinks is a job as a maid in a big city. When she arrives she learns her stepfather has sold her to people who force her into a life as a prostitute. When she resists, even through beatings and starvation, she is finally drugged to break her will. Even though she suffers humiliation and physical pain, she holds onto a hope of returning home. How Lakshmi tries to maintain her hope of escaping a life of degradation provides a gripping story.

Written by Ms. Goldstein-Erickson

Lock and Key

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen

I’m the first one to admit that Sarah Dessen is one of my go to authors when I’m asked for a recommendation for a love story.  While this book has a romance, it has so much more that that’s what makes this title amazing!  This book is the story of seventeen-year-old Ruby, who has literally been abandoned by her mom, and is forced to live with her older sister, who she has always believed ditched the family when she went off to college.  As we all know, the truth is usually much more complicated than we originally thought, and Ruby learns that life isn’t always the way it seems.  Along the way, she meets her hottie next-door-neighbor Nate, who seems to “nice” to be real, but who she finds out has secrets of his own.  In addition to this, she has to adjust to a fancy  private school, where she doesn’t fit in with anyone!  Can her life get any worse?  Try this book and I promise that you’ll find it hard to put down, even when your best bud texts you.

This book will be here right after Thanksgiving!  Ask us for a matching magnet Ms. Goldstein-Erickson got over the summer.

Kabul Beauty School

Kabul Beauty School : An American woman goes behind the veil by Deborah Rodriquez

This is the perfect book to read for that Non-fiction book project so many teachers are assigning this year. It is the story of how a hair stylist named Debbie goes to Afganistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. At first she is going not just to help, but to escape an abusive home situation. But she finds herself falling in love with the country, and ends up starting a beauty school to help the women support their families and become more independent. What I especially appreciated about her story is that she is able to laugh at herself and her own mistakes, using affection and humor to teach the women how to find strength in thier own abilities.

This is currently on order for the library.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Sunsby Khaled Hosseini

If you read and loved Kite Runner like so many of us did, this has got to be your next book. Set in Afghanistan over the last thirty years, this book tells the story of two women who are thrown together by war and other tragic and devastating events. Basically, it is the story of two women trying to survive the Soviet invasion, takeover by the Taliban, and an abusive husband. I couldn’t keep myself from being drawn in to the problems of these two very different women. Although it feels like a realistic portrayal of life in Kabul during this time period, I wish there had been more positive portrayals of men in the story, as they come off very negatively.

I cried so many times while reading this story (which is a compliment from me), but thankfully was left hopeful by its final conclusion.

Beastly

Beastly by Alex Flinn

For sure, it’s another take on “Beauty and the Beast,” but Flinn brings something new to her story, by making the two main characters teenagers at an exclusive prep school in New York City. Junior Kyle Kingsbury is so superficial and downright mean to his fellow students, that readers won’t be too sad when a goth-looking witch turns him into a werewolf type beast. He slowly transforms into a caring, thoughtful human being with the help of his blind tutor, housekeeper, and Lindy, a scholarship student from his old school. The changes in him and his relationship with Lindy make the book hard to put down, despite the happy ending we all know is coming.