Review: Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins is about a high school student named Lola. Lola has a boyfriend whose a little older than her but still very sweet, a loyal best friend, and an impeccable fashion sense.
Her perfect world comes crashing down when her old neighbors move back into their old house. What happened with her and her neighbors? How will she survive living next to them? I would rate this book a 5 out of 5 because it kept me in suspense the whole time and the author made the romance between the main characters come to life. I read this book because I love Stephanie Perkin's books. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes teen romance.
Grade 9

Faraway McCarthy was born to be a time traveler. Literally. His mother, Empra McCarthy, had him in the midst of a time traveling journey of her own and he was born outside of time. Currently, he's the #1 cadet at the time traveling training school and is looking forward to a career as illustrious as his mother's. But then his final exam is sabotaged, and he's unceremoniously kicked out of school. When a black market smuggler approaches him with the opportunity to recruit his own crew and travel to the past to steal ancient artifacts, Far takes the offer.

This was pure fun - I love heists and time travel shenanigans, and this had both. While it is a longer book, the fast pacing and well drawn characters make this a relatively quick read. Each member of the crew has at least one chapter written from their perspective, and I really enjoyed getting to know them all, particularly Imogen (Far's snarky but kind cousin). They are a somewhat diverse, fun group, and their strong friendships and healthy relationships were a joy to read about. Are any of the concepts or plot points particularly novel? Nope, but it didn't matter, because the cast and the story are just that fun.

In addition to the crew committing heists, there are other mysterious elements in the form of another time traveler who appears out of nowhere on a job (on the Titanic!) as well as in the mystery of where (when?) Empra is - she went out on a mission when Far was quite young and never came back. The reveals of both mysteries are pretty great, and I honestly didn't see either coming.

Also, and this cannot be stressed enough, but the crew of the Invictus has a pet and it is a RED PANDA (!!!) named Saffron. So much cuteness.

As it's not exactly a novel concept, I think this books screams for comparison (Doctor Who seems inevitable), but I would almost think of this more like an entirely human time traveling version of the Guardians of the Galaxy. I read it when I was suffering from reading fatigue, and it was a total refresher. I really liked it! 4 stars.

This is a really good quick read about two 5th grade boys that are bullied and the beginning of a friendship. It's told from the perspective of each boy, Joe and Ravi. Ravi is from India, Joe has special needs. Smart and engaging, this book gets 5 stars.

Mobs-Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville is a novel, in which the narrator, Ishmael, befriends Queequeg, a South Seas harpooner, and together they look for a whaling crew. Eventually, they join Captain Ahab aboard the Pequot.
Ishmael soon finds that Ahab had lost his leg and vessel to a powerful whale, who is called Moby-Dick. The captain and his crew sail around the world to hunt down the whale for revenge. The book does have a very deep and ambitious theme, as Herman Melville addresses many controversies throughout his writing, with subtle remarks. The characters and plot fit perfect together and everything is well developed with some sort of backstory. My only problem with this book is that it includes many useless and boring chapters. They don't add anything to the story, and while they attempt to bring up a deep topic, they completely and utterly fail to. Overall this book is decent and definitely aspires to be the "mighty book" that it's meant to be. I would recommend it to people who like high seas adventure novels.

Grade: 8

Thr3e by Ted Dekker (great title after reading the book) is one of the greatest murder mystery novels out there. The book begins with the main protagonist, or so it seems, Kevin Parson. He receives a phone call from a psychopath in Killer named Slater saying that he has three minutes to confess his sin to the world or else his car will blow up. This is just one of the many events that take Kevin, Samantha, his greatest friend, and Jennifer, an FBI agent, through a world of mystery and motives. The twists and turns are the main attraction of this novel, as the reader won't expect what comes next. Character backstories also play a gigantic role in this novel, and all of them are well crafted to fit the plot. Anyways, I would recommend it to anyone willing to take the time to read a book.

Grade: 8

The book Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is about Marty Preston and his willingness to, in a sense, serve an abused dog. The dog is named Shiloh after he runs away to young Marty, after being abused by Judd Travers. He keeps the dog in secret for fear of being caught by his family or Judd.
Unlike other typical dog books or even movies, the book shows a very deep bond between Shiloh and Marty, in which Marty has to earn Shiloh by working for Judd. Every single character put into the book is well developed and plays some sort of part in the story. Several other conflicts, such as Marty's mother not wanting to keep secrets from her husband, arise, and they are all well though-out. Overall, the book is a very emotional book, and should be deeply felt by the reader. I would recommend the book to any sort of animal lover or people who like realistic fiction.

Grade: 8

Black Water is the fifth book in the series Pendragon by D. J. MacHale. The story is engaging and tells of the protagonist's, Bobby Pendragon, endeavor to save a world by the name of Eelong. Saint Dane, the antagonist, allows the cat inhabitants of Eelong to spread mysterious plague, which could destroy their own civilization. The book excels at depicting the universe of Halla and creating a society that could function in today's world. The characters and their self-doubts are communicated to the reader in depth, and the book continues to expand the universe of the series. It also seems to show the problems with racism and oligarchy through the book's deeper meaning. The only problem that I have with the book is that it doesn't include or really expand upon the side characters much. I saw ample opportunity for the author to do this, and the book felt somewhat blank without it. I would recommend this book to people who like science fiction or adventure, as the book is filled with many of those elements.

Grade: 8

I love this book. The magic surrounding Tita and her cooking is at times beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking. This book is told by Tita's great-niece and one can imagine the magic as real or as a result of storytelling. Your choice. Either way, this captivating quick read is a must.

Just like Xenocide before it, Children of the Mind is difficult to separate from the previous books in the Ender’s Game series. In fact, Xenocide and Children of the Mind are considered by Orson Scott Card to merely be two parts of the same book, separated at a point in the plot that makes sense.
Even further to the point, I would consider Children of the Mind the last “part” of a story that stretches across four books. While it was easy to take Ender’s Game by itself, every additional piece of the story needs the previous parts for it to have the full impact of what Card was trying to accomplish.

What’s most interesting about this series is how each book has a different focus, almost putting them in distinct genres. Ender’s Game was militaristic sci-fi, while Speaker of the Dead was more along the lines of a mystery. And while Xenocide was the philosophical heart of the series, Children of the Mind was almost a romance in comparison. I appreciated the loose strings and sub-plots being tied up by the end of Children of the Mind, especially when it came to defining the relationships between the characters I had come to know over the last few books.

Even though the basic plot of these last three books was a simple “avoid destruction” motif, the complexity of the whole scenario did require the amount of text dedicated to it. Each element of these stories came into play in some fashion to create a satisfying ending. I’m still in awe of the technological foresight and brilliant solutions to fundamental physics limitations that Card was able to develop in these four books. I rarely have found a series that has been so consistently good across all parts of its story, and I believe the saga of Ender Wiggin is now my new favorite.

A satisfying ending to an incredible series of books, I give Children of the Mind 5.0 stars out of 5.

Much like authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were well ahead of their time in their science fiction writing, Orson Scott Card once again shows that he understood some of the key concepts of our universe. Written in 1991, Card’s Xenocide deepens and furthers the continuing adventure of Ender Wiggin that he began back in Ender’s Game . Picking up where Speaker for the Dead left off, Xenocide adds a powerful adversary while also tying plot points back to the first book in the series. In this sense, the tight intertwining of Xenocide with its predecessors makes it difficult to separate and review by itself.

I appreciate what Card has done by creating a multi-book narrative that requires the reader to have started from the very beginning of the story.
While Xenocide is not nearly the end of the series, as made clear by the astounding twist near the end, it does pull enough unresolved threads from Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead to create the next segment of the story. In this sense, the whole story is a multi-book epic so well-written that no detail or specific piece of continuity is overlooked. Plus, with so much history behind it, Xenocide reads at a frenetic pace, just trying to “beat the clock” of an almost assured planetary destruction.

Surprisingly, if you told me that there was a sci-fi book comprised almost entirely of dialogue and profound, philosophical arguments, I would probably assume it was boring (or at least written by Robert Heinlein). And yet, Card has brought the reasoning proposed in the previous books of this series and pulled them through to their logical conclusions, creating an engaging discussion of artificial intelligence and sentience, while wrapping the whole thing in the context of moral arguments for and against exterminating an entire species. There are no easy answers in this book, but Card has masterfully included concepts like cloud computing, interdimensional travel, and genetic engineering to get his point across.

A fantastic continuation of Ender Wiggin’s story that leaves the reader begging for more, I give Xenocide 5.0 stars out of 5.