Teenage fans of Alyson Noel's The Immortals series will be familiar with Ever's younger sister Riley. With Radiance, Alyson Noel gives us an entirely new series for a completely different audience. Whereas I recommend The Immortals for teen readers, this novel is completely appropriate for young tweens. For those unfamiliar with the series, Riley, her parents, and her dog Buttercup died in a car crash (big sister Ever lived and is featured in The Immortals series). For a while Riley refused to "cross over," and lived sort of in limbo, visiting Ever and staying on the Earth plane. This story picks up with her living in "Here & Now." Her life is much like it was on earth, with her parents, her dog, school. But she's also training ...
Category Archives: Jennifer
A Secret Kept
I never got around to reading Tatiana de Rosnay's first novel, Sarah's Key, so I grabbed at the opportunity to read her second novel, A Secret Kept (or actually to hear it on audiobook). I started listening to it the day after I received it, and the way the story unfolded kept me interested and looking for any excuse to squeeze in a few minutes of listening (great motivation to get some housework done!). Antoine Rey is a divorced father of two trying to get over his ex-wife, navigating ennui with his job as an architect and the struggles of parenting teenagers (ACK!). I found him to be slightly wimpy, but as the story progresses, I come to realize that he's not really wimpy, just tired and disappointed with life. A Secret Kept begins ...
Brave Girl Eating
When I was a teen, I was into reading fiction about girls with anorexia, which at that time (mid-80's) was pretty new. I even thought that I might want to become a psychologist or psychiatrist due to the empathy that was borne in me from reading about the inexplicable struggle that these young girls go through. It's been a long time since I was a teen and it seems like eating disorders are much more commonplace (in fact they only affect about 1% of teen girls--see note below**), but I still wonder if anyone reading this hasn't had a friend or a relative who has struggled through anorexia or bulimia. And now with a tween daughter of my own, I feel certain that at some point one of her friends or she herself will struggle. Is ...
39 Clues — a Mom’s Review
When I found out that we were going to be hosting the final blog tour stop at 5 Minutes for Mom for the much-awaited last book in the 39 Clues series, and that our guest post would be from the author of the last book Into the Gauntlet, written by one of Amanda's favorite authors, Margaret Peterson Haddix, I had to finally take a look at these books myself. Amanda had read a few of them last year, but she got out of the habit when the new-releases became harder to get at the library, so she hasn't read the last few. But this review isn't about the kids. If you are ever around elementary school and tweenaged kids, you would know that kids love this series (A while back Dawn posted her ...
Mailbox Monday — August 30
Oh how much we book bloggers love those men and women in blue, those in brown, and those who drive those big white trucks with the green and purple logo. This is what we found in our mailboxes this week. Click over to Chick Loves Lit to see what other bloggers have bought or received or been surprised by this week. While you're here we invite you to check out our current giveaways, subscribe to our feed, and/or follow us @5M4B on Twitter. JENNIFER Every single book that I received this week was unsolicited and for review (except Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games), which I preordered like every other book blogger in the world). Speaking of Mockingjay, if you are a fan (or a fan of a free Ipod Touch), but sure ...
On Reading: Suzanne Collins Mockingjay Reading
Suzanne Collins lives in my area. Yes, THE Suzanne Collins. She generally does library and school appearances and signings, but the past couple of years, she's been very busy with the release of Catching Fire and Mockingjay (linked to Dawn's review), and I don't know if you knew that she's writing the screenplay for The Hunger Games movie right now -- so we haven't been able to see her. When my daughter Amanda and her good friend Haley found out she was going to be doing a reading and signing about an hour away, her mom and I bought the tickets (a hardcover copy of the book at full price, even though I had already preordered one at an incredibly low price at amazon) and made plans to attend. Since the event was on ...
The Lost Girls
The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World. is the story of 3 late-twentysomething women who left their jobs and personal lives behind in New York City to travel the world for an entire year. Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, and Amanda Pressner each come to the trip for different reasons and with different points of views. The shift from person to person helps us to get a more complete perspective of the trip, but also cuts the depth, as we don't get to know the full affect that this trip had on any one person. I have a feeling that everyone will identify most with one of the girls, which makes the 3 alternating point of views interesting: Holly is a sweet optimistic girl with a thirst for adventure and ...
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Jennifer Donovan
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