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Title: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 5/5
Why I Read It: I loved Green’s other novels, so I had a hunch I’d like this one too.

Summary: 16-year-old Miles leaves his comfortable but friendless life in Florida to go to boarding school in Alabama. His roommate Chip quickly adopts Miles as a friend and introduces him to a girl who lives down the hall—Alaska. Beautiful and brilliant, Alaska flirts with Miles and he falls for her. But it could never work, and they both know it.

Review: This is my favorite novel from Green.

On the surface, the book offered up plenty to make me laugh. Here, Miles just found out his new school, Culver Creek, has a basketball team:

I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and I hated people who didn’t hate people who watched or played them. In third grade—the very last year that one could play T-ball—my mother wanted me to make friends, so she forced me onto the Orlando Pirates. I made friends all right—with a bunch of kindergartners, which didn’t really bolster my social standing with my peers. Primarily because I towered over the rest of the players, I nearly made it onto the T-ball all-star team that year. The kid who beat me, Clay Wurtzel, had one arm. I was an unusually tall third grader with two arms, and I got beat out by kindergartner Clay Wurtzel. And it wasn’t some pity-the-one-armed-kid thing, either. Clay Wurtzel could flat-out hit, whereas I sometimes struck out even with the ball sitting on the tee. One of the things that appealed to me most about Culver Creek was that my dad assured me there was no PE requirement.

But the soul behind Miles’s story, behind his love for Alaska—that’s what made me fall for this book. My heart ached for Alaska right alongside his.

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• How I Live Now—My rating: 5/5
• An Abundance of Katherines—My rating: 4/5
• I Am the Messenger
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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Audience Pick!

Title: The Bermudez Triangle
Author: Maureen Johnson
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: Mel, Avery, and Nina do everything together, and they always have. But the summer before senior year, Nina goes to leadership camp, leaving Mel and Avery to figure out how to be the Bermudez Triangle minus the Nina Bermudez side.

Review: I am officially caught up on all of MJ’s novels. More, please! (No, fo rilz. When is her next coming out?!)

This one wasn’t my favorite of hers, but it was an enjoyable read. Alternating points of view made it hard for me to settle in and fully connect with any one of the main characters.

But who cares when they’re packaged in MJ’s unique brand of funny? Sometimes, I am seriously concerned for that woman’s mental health. I truly hope she is, in fact, sane and healthy in the head because if one day we find out she’s got some rare brain condition, I’ll feel awfully bad for laughing at the early warning signs.

In this scene, Mel, Avery, and Nina are going to see a movie. Mel and Avery took off in one car together, leaving Nina with their new friend from work, Parker, whom Nina doesn’t know at all.

Parker and Nina were left staring at each other.

“I guess I’ll follow you,” he said. “Unless you want to ride in the Roach.”

“The Roach?”

Parker pointed to a corroded red VW Bug with a taped-up back window.

“Why do you call your car The Roach?”

“She will outlive us all,” he explained, swinging his key ring around his finger. “In the end, it’ll just be some rocks, Styrofoam, and my car.”

“Right,” Nina said. “I’ll just take my car.”

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Did you like this book? Try:

• Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List
• Devilish—My rating: 3.5/5
• Girl at Sea—My rating: 2.5/5
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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Title: Ash
Author: Malinda Lo
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: A friend at work lent this to me, not to mention I love a good fairy tale retelling.

Summary: Ash’s mother is gone. Then after her father remarries, he dies too. Ash’s stepmother forces Ash into servitude to repay her father’s debt. When Ash meets the fairy Sidhean, she forgets her grief and her lack of freedom. But will forgetting be enough for Ash?

Review: I probably would have picked this up eventually, but I’m so glad my co-worker thought to lend this one to me.

I’ll let you in on a secret about this retelling of Cinderella: Prince Charming doesn’t come to Ash’s rescue. Thank God. I’ve been known to indulge in candy like Twilight as much as the next girl, but the world has way too many stereotypically weak characters like Bella and not nearly enough as strong as Ash.

The second chapter slowed the story down a bit, but after that Ash’s journey swept me away.

I did have a few questions about some loose threads of the story at the end, which made me think there would be a sequel. But according to the author’s site, no sequel. Could be I just wasn’t reading closely enough because I was so caught up in finding out what Ash would choose.

Your Turn: Did you get the sequel vibe at the end of this one?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Hate List
• Crazy Beautiful
• Another Faust
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Title: The Boyfriend List (15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver)
Author: E. Lockhart
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks was my favorite YA read of 2008, so what took me so long to read more by the same author?

Summary: In less than two weeks, 15-year-old Ruby Oliver manages to lose her boyfriend and her best friends, making her the official social pariah of her prep school. Then the anxiety attacks start, and she literally can’t breathe.

Review: I liked this book, but I didn’t love it. Because of how much I loved Frankie, I expected to be blown away again. Not exactly fair, I know.

Of all reviews, this one deserves a list, so here are a couple things that got in the way of me loving this book:

• Footnotes—I liked them in An Abundance of Katherines, but here they distracted me from the flow of the story. I think it’s because these footnotes were too frequent, and they didn’t always add much.
• Timeline—The back-and-forth timeline was hard to follow at times. I would catch myself jumping back a page or two to try to figure out when the scene had really happened.

But Ruby grew on me, and at the end of the book I wanted to read the rest of the series.

Why? Little scenes like this. Ruby’s driving, and her mom is in the passenger seat.

We were only going like five miles an hour in a circle around the parking lot, but Mom kept doing these sharp intakes of breath like she was at a horror movie.

“Roo! That guy is pulling out!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you see him? There, he’s backing up.”

“Yeah.”

“So stop!”

I stopped.

“Don’t hit the brake so hard, Roo.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. I jerked forward in my seat. But it’s okay, you’re learning. It’s practice. Oh!” she squealed, as I started around the parking lot again. “Be careful! There’s a squirrel!”

“I wonder where I get my anxiety,” I said.

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Prom—My rating: 4.5/5
• An Abundance of Katherines—My rating: 4/5
• Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Audience Pick!

Title: Catalyst
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4.5/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: High school senior Kate is at the top of her class. She could attend just about any school, but it’s MIT she wants. All that matters is getting that acceptance package, but that’s okay because Kate’s got everything under control. After a fire in her neighborhood, Kate’s father the reverend opens up their house—more specifically Kate’s room—to the one girl from school she can’t stand, and suddenly Kate’s not so in control anymore.

Review: LHA hit the overachieving nail on the head with Kate’s character. This woman can WRITE. On just about every page of this book, I found myself marveling at a turn of phrase. Case in point:

I shiver and hustle to my sad excuse of a motor vehicle, a Yugo named Bert.

I usually drive to school on autopilot. Not today—leaving late has landed me smack in the middle of rush-hour traffic. This is bad. Bert fears traffic. Bert is a wuss, a tissue box on tires with a bulimic hunger for motor oil. I pet the dashboard as I turn onto the main road, and promise him a filter change if he can get me to school without overheating.

I was completely and utterly in love with this book…until one plot point threw me out of the story world because it affected me so much. I don’t want to give spoilers, but does anyone who’s read this know what I mean? Maybe it’s just me.

Even so, I loved this book, and I think you will too.

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Did you like this book? Try:

• Speak—My rating: 5/5
• Twisted
• Fever 1793—My rating: 4/5
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