Contemporary

It’s a really good book about a shy girl who has a hard time expressing her feelings. Lara Jean, main character, writes love letters to boys that she’s had a crush on but keeps them afraid of their reaction. Eventually the letters got out and one of the recipients of one of the letters goes to her school. At first there relationship started of fake but the more they fake it the more their feeling become real. It’s a really good book highly recommend!

Everything Everything is about a girl named Madeline Whittier. Madeline is sick, she has been sick for a long time. Her brother and dad died when she was very young and it was only her and her mother. She was so sick that she couldn't leave her house and was practically allergic to the world. Then all of a sudden a new neighbor moved in and that changed her life. The neighbor, a boy named Ollie, moved in and they became fast friends through emailing. After awhile, Carla, Madeline's nurse, let her see Ollie as
long as he got decontaminated beforehand. Madeline was so happy till she went outside and her mom found out and she got grounded and she couldn't see or email Ollie anymore to the point where she made some decisions that questioned her health. Throughout the year she was eighteen, she found out that she was lied to and became a new person.

Almost Home is comprised of four short stories detailing 4 people who take risk of opening their hearts to new relationships. "Whale Island" is about a children's writer who is resisting falling in love with the reporter who interviews her because she has a big family secret to hide. In "Queen of Hearts', a man who was a real geek in high school has become successful and handsome as an adult and has run into the woman who he had a crush on in high school but felt out of her league. "The Honeymoon House" is a story of a photographer who finds a bridesmaid of a halted wedding destroying his house. And finally "The Marrying Kind" reunites two high school sweethearts who has a very brief marriage right when they got out of high school but were cruelly torn apart by family members. A great read if romance novels are your genre!

This book is about a fan girls life. The protagonist started college and is very anxious. She spends her 1st semester in her dorm room. In the second semester her life changes she has a few friends. The girl is obsessed with a book series that makes her life worth living. In the end the book ends in the best possible way.

The Mother-Daughter Book Club is about four girls, whose mothers start a book club with their daughters in the hopes to try and get the girls to become friends. Emma and Jess are already friends, but Cassidy has just moved from California, and Megan is friends with the fab four, the fashionable girls who rule the school and are snarky to their peers. I've read this book and the others in this series many times and I can read them over and over because the series starts when the girls are in sixth grade and they continue all throughout their middle school and high school years, so I feel as if they are the same age as me depending on the book. A fun twist is how the author takes the story-line from the book and uses those events in her book, especially if you have read the book the girls are reading for book club before. This book is good for someone who likes realistic fiction.

This book is the book that inspired the musical Dear Evan Hansen. In the book there is a tragedy. It is written in two point of views. The situation benefits one person but not the other. There are many lies as well. The book ends in a happy sad state, but overall it is a good book.

Maggie and Rose are sisters with very different lives and personalities. The two common things they share are their mother's tragic death, a "car accident" when they were kids and the same shoe size. Rose is an attorney, practical, responsible and has her own apartment. Maggie, the younger of the two, is good looking (which she uses to her advantage), impetuous and manipulative. They live together for a short stint, until a major falling out causes them to go their own ways. Thus begins a journey of self discovery for each woman and the surprise of a grandmother who they thought was long gone. The love/hate relationship of sisters is well captured, along with humor and sharp observations.

Definitely an amazing book. It puts such a difficult topic into beautiful words that pull at the strings of the readers heart. The way the main characters conflicting situation throughout the story unfolds is very surprising. The author places the reader in the main characters shoes and makes it feel as if it is the reader who is going through it. I wish there was a second book that really grasps the life after.
Reviewer Grade: 11th

When books have awards on the cover it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll enjoy the book because the reviewers/critics are often adults and have a different perspective on teen/YA books. However “I’ll give you the Sun” actually lives up to the awards and reviews. This book has a complex plotthat weaves between the perspectives of Noah and Jude. Noah and Jude are twins who were always inseparable until high school and their mother’s death. Noah’s portions of the story are from before their mother’s death at age 13 and Jude’s perspective is from 16. Between the three years they both change dramatically, and you can see why they changed, and how everything became different. I really liked the title of the book, it fits the story without giving away too much. The characters are amazing, they all have depth, complexity, and a unique background, which drives the plot. This also made it easy to relate to the characters because they felt very real and human. Noah has a very clear way of seeing the world through color, and art. Jude sees the world through a very physical sense. It is pretty easy to get into this book and I found it hard to put down. This book has a great message of love and its complexities as well.

The concept is intriguing, and many reviewers tout this book as "romantic," but the experience was flat for me. Jennifer E. Smith is not a bad writer, and I've enjoyed many of her books, but this one could not captivate me. It's mostly because the characters were not extraordinary in any way. They were caricatures only existing with a goal and problem to serve the plot, and I barely knew them, cared nothing at all for them. This contributed to my total lack of emotional involvement. Smith did not create an emotional experience for me, even though the bones of the story and the lessons the characters grasp at the end are smart. I love romance, but this book was not romantic. I felt nothing except an impatience to finish the book so I could begin something else.