The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

July 5, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Candlewick Press, 2009. Originally published 2008. 479 pgs. Purchased. Soon after arriving on the New World, all the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, allowing them to hear everything each other thinks. As the last remaining boy in a town full of men, Todd Hewitt isn’t allowed to converse with those who have become men, and he longs for the day he can become a man and join the ranks of those living in Prentisstown. “Everything on […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Book Club, Chunkster, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Young Adult • Tags: Patrick Ness

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

June 20, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Kirby Heyborne and Ariadne Meyers. Listening Library, 2015. 11 hours, 4 minutes. Library copy.  Quirky and unpredictable Theodore Finch counts his days forward from the last time he slept. Grieving Violet Markey counts her days down until graduation, until she can move on with her life after high school. Moving on, though, doesn’t look the way Violet always planned. The website she started with her sister, who didn’t survive the car crash she and Violet were […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Fiction, North America, United States, Young Adult • Tags: Ariadne Meyers, Jennifer Niven, Kirby Heyborne

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

March 4, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Rebecca Lowman and Sunil Malhotra. Listening Library, 2013. 8 hours, 56 minutes. Library copy. After living on the couch of her mother’s best friend for a year, Eleanor’s step-father, Richie, has finally allowed her to back into the family home with her mother and four younger siblings. The whole family walks around on tiptoes around Richie — afraid of being hit, afraid of being banished from the house — and as much as Eleanor hates her step-father, she […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Audiobook, Fiction, Young Adult • Tags: Rainbow Rowell, Rebecca Lowman, Sunil Malhotra

Pure by Julianna Baggott

January 21, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Grand Central Publishing, 2012. 431 pgs. Purchased. Fifteen-year-old Pressia survived the Detonations, a nuclear fallout that wiped out most of the Earth’s population and fused the survivors with the animal, rock, or thing closest to them. Pressia fused with the doll she was holding whilst waiting for her grandfather to pick her and her Japanese mother up at the Baltimore-Washington airport, and the doll now covers her right hand — its eyes flipping open or closed depending upon the angle […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Dystopia, Fiction, North America, United States, Young Adult • Tags: Julianna Baggott

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

March 31, 2015 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Ariadne Meyers. Listening Library, 2014. 6 hours, 27 minutes. Library copy. Seventeen-year-old Cadence is a Sinclair. This singular fact is the probably the most important aspect of Cadence’s life as it explains her privileged upbringing on a private island near Martha’s Vineyard, her mother’s constant admonishment for Cadence to “get it together”, and why Cadence, her teenaged cousins, and a family friend named Gat call themselves “the liars”. Now, during “summer seventeen”, Cadence has returned […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Audiobook, Fiction, New England, North America, United States, Young Adult • Tags: Ariadne Meyers, E. Lockhart

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

December 16, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scholastic, 2010. 390 pgs. Gift. In the final installment of Collins’ dystopian series, Katniss Everdeen – the “Girl on Fire”, the Mockingjay – has now become the symbol of a revolution following her disastrous rescue from the destroyed arena of the Quarter Quell. Separated from Peeta and Johanna, Katniss is reunited with her mother, sister, and Gale in the one district the Capital claimed to have destroyed and utilized as an example of what could occur in […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Dystopia, Fiction, Young Adult • Tags: Suzanne Collins

Smoke by Ellen Hopkins

August 3, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2006. 532 pgs. Library copy. Pattyn Von Stratten’s abusive father is dead, and Pattyn is on the run disguising her identity and living amongst immigrant communities who also fear the police. Only her sister Jackie knows what happened the night their father died, but Jackie is struggling to find her voice in a home where their mother clings to normalcy by allowing the truth of what happened to Jackie before her father’s death […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Chunkster, Fiction, Mountain West, North America, Poetry, United States, Young Adult • Tags: Ellen Hopkins

Bumped by Megan McCafferty

May 30, 2014 by Christina

In 2035, a virus renders everyone over the age of eighteen sterile and teenage pregnancy is not only rampant but encouraged. Sixteen-year-old Melody is still “prebump” meaning she has yet to become pregnant, but her parents are economists and have negotiated a record-breaking contract for her. Biding her time until a sperm donor can be found, Melody wants to become president of her high school pregnancy club and resents the intrusion of her newly found twin sister, Harmony, into her […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Dystopia, Fiction, North America, United States, Young Adult • Tags: Megan McCafferty

Divergent by Veronica Roth

March 9, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Katherine Tegen Books, 2012. 487 pgs. Borrowed from a friend. Dystopian Chicago is divided and ruled by five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue — Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). Each year, sixteen-year-olds from each faction must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. An aptitude test helps guide their choice, but ultimately each person must make […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Chunkster, Dystopia, Fiction, North America, United States, Young Adult • Tags: veronica roth

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

August 21, 2013 by Christina

Fiction — print. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2007.  485 pgs. Library copy. Fifteen-year-old Clarissa Fray — known as Clary to nearly everyone — witness a murder no one else can see. Not her best friend, Simon. Not the other people at the club. Not the bouncers charged with watching for people who pull knives and sneak off to the storage room, which is exactly what Clary sees. But Clary’s sight turns out to be a unique gift, a view into […]

Categories: 2013 Reads, Chunkster, Fantasy, Fiction, New York, North America, United States, Young Adult • Tags: Cassandra Clare

A Break with Charity by Ann Rinaldi

July 31, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003. Originally published 1992. 320 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “A Story About the Salem Witch Trials”, Rinaldi’s novel fictionalizes the life of Susanna English, a fourteen-year-old girl living in the Puritan village of Salem in 1962. Susanna desperately wants to join the circle of girls who meet every week at the parsonage. What she doesn’t realize is that the girls are about to set off a torrent of false accusations leading to the imprisonment and execution […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Fiction, New England, North America, Religion, Reread, United States, Young Adult • Tags: Ann Rinaldi

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

June 11, 2011 by Christina

Hopkins, Ellen. Fallout. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2010. 665 pgs. Library copy. The final book in Hopkin’s trilogy switches from Kristina’s point of view to that of her three oldest children — Hunter, Autumn, and Summer. The oldest, Hunter, lives with Kristina’s parents while Autumn lives with her paternal grandfather and Summer moves from foster care to living with her father to back to foster care. Kristina’s youngest two children, David and Donald, live with her and their […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Chunkster, Fiction, North America, Poetry, United States, Young Adult • Tags: Ellen Hopkins