The Dead Inside

             The Dead Inside by Cyndy Etler. So. How should I put this? I started this book thinking it was going to be a tragic story about a girl who went through some harsh sort of fake rehab environment. It was, but it wasn't what I was expecting. It's not like I can exactly criticize the author on their plot, because they were writing about their real life experiences, but I was left feeling like there was more to be said after I read the book. The book started out with a long intro about her life before she went off to the drug rehab place before jumping into the main story. This part was necessary but also very gruesome. There were scenes in this book that I really wish were not. I know she was simply writing about stuff that happened to her, but did we really need to know every detail? I think we could have gotten the message from a short sentence at the most. It was helpful in emphasizing her way of life however - hanging out with older men, smoking, trying to fit in with the druggie kids.

                She showed the worst things she did in order to emphasize that even in her worst spots, her condition was not so bad that she had to be sent to this extreme center. The introduction to the center started out great. Everyone was harsh and very shocking to her normal life. They did things in that first moment that were abusive and absurd to the average person. She was in shock. When she drove home that night with her host family, the description there was also good. She got in trouble for recognizing "druggie music symbols" on the road when she pointed out a sticker on a car that represented The Rolling Stones. At the house, she was also forced to uncomfortable situations and she had to sleep in a locked room full of only mattresses.

             Then she moved on to the next stripping of her humanity: the beast. Emotional torture where people are forced to confess the horrible pasts they never had, and ignore the ones they actually did. People were sent to this rehab place for no reason sometimes, but that wasn't acknowledged. It was a money-sucking company, and if you didn't confess to using multiple types of drugs and hanging out with "druggie friends" then you weren't going to fit in. People were beat and shouted at until they confessed, and this was rewarded. When Cyndy tried to talk about the actual emotional torture she had at home with an abusive, raping man who was her mother's boyfriend, she got in trouble. She was shot down and told she should never talk about her parents in that way, even though this was probably a lot of what started to lead Cyndy down a bad road.

            In time they learned to be mean. Encourage the others to confess, make them confess, show your anger, and make everyone "better." They became numb. Shells of themselves. Fearing of all people, fearing that they would go back to the way they were. They didn't only stop them from using drugs, they stopped their true personality from coming through. It took a long time before Cyndy could be herself again. Even after that, she was scarred for life from this experience.

            There was a lot of helpful information at the end of this book, showing how extreme these money-stealing "rehab centers" were. There were reports of people going into these centers for no reason. Some did drugs, but many did not do as many as they were forced to say they did. At one point, someone was admitted for simply sniffing a marker. A marker! As I was reading one review about this book, someone remarked how it is amazing that Cyndy survived and is able to help others today as a writer and a teen life coach. Cyndy only did the things that she did because she was searching for people for something to give her love, as she found a lack of it at home. This is an excellent story to show how someone took a horrific event and turned it around to spread some help and love to others, to prevent the same things.

          Straight Inc. is still a company today, although it has morphed and change its name many times. Places like these should be further inspected and stopped from causing damage to people like these.
             

-Finished in January

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This book was pretty good. Here's the song portion for this one:

Harry gets put in the Triwizard Tournament
With dragons, and mermaids
Oh no! Edward Cullen [Cedric Diggory] gets slayed 
He's back [Voldemort]

Harry had a big argument with Ron when Moody (who we later find out was actually Crouch junior) put Harry's name into the goblet of fire so he would be in the Triwizard tournament. At the time, many had thought Harry managed to put his name in there, but Harry told him he didn't know how he got nominated. Voldemort did all this just to get Harry's blood in the end and try to kill him, but I think it was way over complicated. Here was the plan from Crouch, Pettigrew, and Voldemort.

1. Break into Moody's house
2. Trap Moody in a magical drawer for an entire school year
3. Make polyjuice potion constantly so Crouch can look like Moody
4. Put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire
5. Teach classes all year (nobody even noticed he was teaching everyone illegal curses, or if they did they didn't stop it)
6. Make sure Harry knows about the dragons
7. Make sure Harry eats gillyweed and survives the underwater challenge
8. Turn the trophy into a portkey that will take Harry to Voldemort and Pettigrew
9. Make sure Harry gets to the portkey first so you have to take out every person and make sure Harry doesn't run into any monsters
10. Harry gets to Voldemort
11. Tie him to a grave
12. Take his blood
13. Battle him
14. Lose (this wasn't part of the plan)

I mean, Voldemort could have come back to life with anyone else's blood (who was an enemy) but he wanted Harry's because it would make him stronger than regular blood. That kind of makes sense. However, fake Moody was around Harry all year. Couldn't Moody have just turned something in his office into a portkey and make Harry touch it? Unless Voldemort wasn't strong enough. Still, he could have done something right after the competition. That way there wouldn't be a ton of people watching, he could make it look like an accident or play innocent, and they wouldn't know a thing. Plus, when Harry returned from battling, he would still be trapped in Moody's office. That plan just makes a lot more sense than this complicated mess. 

Everyone starts going into action after this, but it turns out decent in the end, and Rita Skeeter, who ruined so many reputations, is trapped by Hermione because she is a beetle animals, and is basically blackmailed by Hermione. Ta Da! This is the last book of 2017 that I read. 

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Lupin was the teacher. Peter Pettigrew was caught and then uncaught. Lupin was a werewolf. They go back in time to save Sirius and to save Buckbeak. Harry finds out that Sirius was his godfather. Harry blew up Aunt Marge after getting angry. The dementors come and make Harry pass out. He finds out more about his father's friend and his father's childhood. Everybody thought Sirius was evil but he's not. Ron had broken his leg after being pulled in by Sirius. Snape was trying extra hard to get Sirius killed because he didn't like him. Everyone thought the trio was being brainwashed. Good book. Also very good plot. They go to Hogsmeade. He finds out about how "SIRIUS" betrayed his father but it was really Pettigrew. He meets Trewlaney. She's kind of annoying. He goes on the nightbus.

Briar Rose

The book is Briar Rose by Jane Yolen. The climax of the novel is either when Potocki finishes telling the story about her grandmother. The major and minor conflicts are solved by finding out the information. Near the end, Becca solves her conflict of not knowing her grandmother’s past by learning her story from a man in Poland. She also solves her conflict of not knowing if Stan likes her by flirting with him, and then having him kiss her. The most major thing that helped to resolve the plot was the story. Throughout the novel, all Becca wants to do is find the story of her grandmother’s past. Before her grandmother, Gemma, died, Becca had promised her she would find her “castle” and her “prince.” In the end, Becca found the “castle” which was a big grave for all of the dead, exterminated people. The main message of the novel may have been to not give up, as Becca persistently tried to find her grandmother’s story although her sisters discouraged her, and the journey wasn’t easy. However, I feel as though the theme is about how we all have a calling to know the stories of our own grandparents, and their ancestors, and their history. Several times Becca and Stan had a conversation about why they had such an urge to find these stories (Becca wanted to find Gemma’s story and Stan had a desire to find his true birth mother). After Stan found his birth mother, he didn’t even really feel like he wanted to stay around her. They were out of each other’s lives and he discovered his ancestry simply because he felt he had to do so. So I believe one of the themes of this story was how most of us have at least a little curiosity as to where we came from. This novel is very realistic. It is a realistic fiction Holocaust story. In it, Becca is trying to find the story of where Gemma came from. Later on, she gets this story from a man named Josef Potocki in Poland, who tells the story of how he and his fellow partisans saved her from Chelmno, a place where they sent dead people from Holocaust camps. At the end, there is a disclaimer from the author saying that she doesn’t know any woman who had been found alive in Chelmno, and that her book is fictional. I, however, almost have a hard time believing that it wasn’t a true story. Jane Yolen crafted this novel so well that it almost seems like a true Holocaust survivor story. It was absolutely beautiful and it had so much emotion in it for someone who didn’t even go through the Holocaust herself. Of course, she can’t put as much of that raw emotion into it since it wasn’t a personal experience but it wasn’t that far off either. All in all, I think this was a beautifully made book. However, I didn’t think that at all until I got to the part where Potocki began telling the story. For a large portion of the book, the pace is so slow. It’s all about Becca’s struggles trying to find the story, and while interesting, lacks action. For about half of the book, the scenes consist of her pouring over photographs and old things that Gemma had kept. The only interesting parts were the two-page intermissions where Gemma was telling the story. These intermissions were there to tell us Gemma’s story bit by bit. At the end of the novel, the story was completed and all the questions were answered. However, until we met Potocki the novel was very slow. There were hardly any answers. Although, this may have been a good decision on Yolen’s part, as it portrayed real life. Not everyone finds the answers right away or in conveniently placed increments, and so the revealing of the story at the end was well-timed, as long as the audience didn’t stop reading the book first. To correct my statement, the Holocaust portion of the story was not the only interesting part. Not long before that, it picked up a bit when she went to Poland, and met Magda, one of my favorite characters. I would definitely recommend this book to someone else. Although it had it’s flaws, it redeemed itself in the end, and Yolen proved herself to be an amazing author.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

This book was really good. It is also Daniel Radcliffe's favorite book. It's one of my favorite plots as well. This is how it goes, in the song, and then the plot.

Ron breaks his wand
Now Ginny's gone
And Harry's in moral danger
Tom Riddle hides a snake inside
His gigantic secret chamber

In this one, Ginny finds Tom Riddle's Journal, which she thought was normal (nobody thought to warn them bout any of this?) and talks to it. He draws her into the Chamber of Secrets that wants to get rid of all mud bloods. Ron breaks his wand. They get locked out of the platform by Dobby and have to take the flying car. They get in trouble and get hit by the whomping willow. Harry has to fight a giant snake and Hermione is paralyzed by the basilisk. She temporarily turned into stone because she did not see him all the way but Myrtle was killed that way many years ago. Harry frees Dobby by the end, and Tom Riddle's journal is destroyed therefore destroying Tom Riddle (who was just a memory by the journal's magic). Gilderoy Lockhart was the teacher, but he lost his memory by trying to erase the memory of the other kids and some people found out he was a fraud. He was fired.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

I was a little late jumping on the Harry Potter train, but I don't regret it. I feel like because I'm older now, I can fully appreciate the series for the literary beauty that it is. These books are by J.K. Rowling, and this is the plot of the first book.

Harry is a boy who was the only one to survive the Avada Kedavra curse. After being slightly socially abused by his uncle, aunt, and cousin, the Dursley's. He discovers that his parents were never killed by a car crash, but rather by a powerful evil wizard, who Harry diminished to almost nothing when he was just a child. Hagrid shows up and tells Harry that he is a wizard. Harry fights a giant mountain troll with Ron and Hermione and is nervous when he goes on the platform for the first time.  He wasn't friends with Hermione at first and Ron hated her, but now they were all friends. They also help Hagrid hide a dragon on Hogwarts grounds, but they have to let him go escape to Charlie, Ron's brother, who is a dragon person. That is basically this whole book it's kind of self-explanatory. Wait! Also there was the sorcerer's stone that Voldemort was trying to get by means of the back of Quirrel's head. He was attacked. Harry passes out, and the sorcerer's stone was destroyed by Dumbledore.

The Sister's Grimm: The Unusual Suspects

This is the second book in Michael Buckley's series. In this one, we get to know the character Puck a bit more. Now that the girls finally have a foster family, they get to go to a school on a steady basis. Daphne is excited, because she gets to have Snow White for a teacher! However, Sabrina is much less excited, because school is school, and school in this town is horrible.
The teachers are super mean (except for Snow White, because she's awesome, but I think she's only a second grade teacher). The kids are mean and tired on top of it. When the girls stumble upon Sabrina's teacher's room (Mr. Grumpner) and finds that he has been killed, and wrapped in spiderwebs, they know something is going on.
There is another mystery brewing for the Grimms to solve. There are more deaths and this book is slightly gruesome as others are attacked and killed. They find out that the principle, monstrous students at the school, and Rumplestilskin have all been doing something horrible. Rumplestiltskin has been working with the Principle to use his instrument to hypnotize the kids into digging a giant tunnel under the force field and out of the town (it is protected by magic to prevent people from escaping).
Now the Principle's son has been affected, and he doesn't want to be a part of this anymore. Sabrina was hypnotized, but is broken out of it by the principle (the pied piper) and she runs off to save everyone. They are all spiderwebbed and stuck to the ceiling. They get caved into one of the sections of the tunnel.
Sabrina tries to free everyone, but Wendel, the principle's son, is almost killed. He is revived, but it was close. Sabrina was given magic matchsticks that can take her anywhere she wants to go. She only has about three, but they use one to get out of the cave, and leave Mr. Canis, who has turned into his wolf form, to fight Rumplestilskin. The monster kids are unconscious and they have been trained by Rumplestilskin to be murderous. They are returned to their original parents: Beauty and the Beast, The spider and Little Ms. Muffet, and the Princess and the Frog. They had been tricked by Rumplestilskin into giving up their children many years ago.
Everyone is worried about Mr. Canis when the tunnels cave in. He returns later on, but not until the next book. Sabrina thinks this is all her fault. She uses the last match to find her missing parents, who have been held captive by a mysterious group called the Red Hand. She finds that a young girl (Little Red Riding Hood) who is delirious has been keeping them there under a sleeping spell, and that she also has a dragon for a pet (the Jabberwocky) who sets the building on fire. The girl runs away with Sabrina's parents. Puck comes in to the closing portal to save Sabrina. The little girl still wants Mr. Canis for a dog, and Grandmother Relda for a grandmother. She will return!
The book ends with the house burning down around them.

The Sister's Grimm: The Fairytale Detectives

This is the first book of many in one of my favorite childhood series: The Sister's Grimm by Michael Buckley. The books are decent. I mostly like them because I can recall the moments I read certain events in the story when I was younger, and because the humor is so young and stereotypical that it's funny. Here is the plot:

Two young girls whose parents mysteriously disappeared not long ago have been taken from house to horrible house, where they have been mistreated by their foster parents. They had no other living family, so they find that they might be thrown around until they can find a proper foster family. When one woman claims to be their grandmother, Sabrina, the oldest sister, thinks that this is it for them. They have no living relatives. She must be a fraud! The woman feeds them strange food and tells them that everyone in the town is a fairytale character.
Daphne falls in love with the dog, the grandma, and her helper, Mr. Canis. Daphne doesn't want to leave. Sabrina, however, is determined that their so-called grandmother is a fake, and that they must escape as soon as possible. This lands them in some trouble. As they try to escape for the first time, they run into a winged boy who lives in the forest, and they are attacked by pixies. They are saved, and Sabrina starts to see that they weren't lying.
When a farmer's plants are mysteriously attacked, and squashed, Sabrina, Daphne, and the others must solve the mystery. They have become detectives along with their grandmother. They are the only regular humans in the whole town who know what is actually going on.
When Mr. Canis and Grandmother Relda are taken captive by a rampaging giant, it is up to Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck (the winged boy) to save them. Will they make it? (Obviously they do, because kids wouldn't be happy with an artistically unfinished novel).

The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls was absolutely fantastic. It's so well written and so surprising that it's hard to think it's a true story. It goes through ups and downs that can make you laugh and cry and change your mood about the characters constantly.

In the story, the Walls family (consisting of Rex, Rose Mary, Brian, Rex, Lori, Jeannette, and Maureen) don't have a lot of money. They travel from place to place and their father tries to do odd jobs or make money off gambling most of the time. They do what they can to keep going. When the kids are younger, they think it's wonderful, always being on the move and going on adventures. However, when they get older they start realizing just how different their lives are from a lot of the other kids. They begin digging out of trashcans for food and collecting the little money they can. Jeanette herself goes through some pretty horrible things, but she still loves her parents despite the condition of their lives. Her and her siblings go through this together. I think that's one of the reasons I liked this book. It shows a broken but still together family that loves each other, and it's beautiful.

Rex is the father. He is a gambler, smoker, and drinker. He tries to be the head of the family, but a lot of times he just drags them down, spending all their newfound money on his cigarettes and beer.

Rose Mary is the mother. She is an aspiring artist who can't drive very well at all. She sometimes acts like one of the kids, and doesn't always like taking responsibility.

Lori is the oldest child. She is incredibly smart, responsible, and she is also an aspiring artist like her mother.

Then there's Jeannette. The book is from her point of view (obviously, since she wrote the book) and she's brave and she had been through a LOT. She's the only who who would believe in her father even when he was at his worst. As she grew older, her faith in him faded bit by bit, but I think she was always kind of her daddy's little girl.

Brian is the next oldest. He and Jeannette were probably the closest out of any of the siblings. They would always play together and such.

Maureen is the youngest. Jeannette didn't talk a whole lot about her, as when they moved to Welch, she always stayed over at friend's house.

They were always trying to build their Glass Castle, or their dream house basically. Their father had all the blueprints drawn out and everything.

There are so many little details in this book that are hard to explain, and so many things happened to her. There's a lot going on in the story because it was her real life! So I'm not going to list all the events that happened. You just need to read it and know that it is AMAZING. :)

Carve the Mark

While I don't do this for every novel, I was looking at some others' peoples reviews of Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth. I noticed that many, many people talked about this book being racist. Honestly, I kind of wish stereotypes didn't even exist in the world. As someone I know recently said, "I would rather let the characters I write be awful because they are human trash, rather than their race, class, religion..." and so on. I completely agree with them. If writers didn't have to worry about stereotypes, things would be so much easier. They could simply focus on writing a good story, and that's what Roth did, in my opinion.

I'm sorry if this makes me seem ignorant, but at first, I didn't even notice that Roth had been racist. When I'm reading, I don't really think about the race of a person. I can hardly even think about what their face looks like. Typically, if the author says they have a certain hair or skin color, I may try to imagine it, but I mostly focus on the events and the emotions when I'm reading. I think that's all a person really should be paying attention to. Apparently, she portrayed someone's race poorly because they were an aggressive character. I don't know the exact details, because I didn't really pay attention to that kind of thing. Anyways, I'll say that there were a lot of horrible characters in that novel. There were ones who were probably white, and all different kinds of races. I didn't go in depth and study all the characters, but according to one blog, two of the most violent characters were white. Nobody complains about them.

I think that a reader should only despise an author's work because they killed off a good character, or because they absolutely despise the antagonist, not because they think it is racist that someone who was dark-skinned happened to be evil. What should Roth do? Just completely make all of the evil characters white or any other race but that one specifically?

Overall, I think the story was actually really good. If you aren't going to read this story because you have heard it is racist. Please try to read it anyways and simply focus on the story, rather than the character descriptions. You might enjoy it a lot more. I personally actually loved this book. I'm sorry if I have offended anyone with this post, but this is just my opinion. I just want people to enjoy a good book for what it is, and not worry about the races off the characters. Just read!

Fire Color One

Absolutely amazing. Fire Color One by Jenny Valentine is named after this painting:

http://en.artintern.net/index.php/news/main/html/1/1933

This painting is by Yves Klein. You may not see it at first, but if you look closely, you can see the outlines of two human figures. A beautiful painting, and a beautiful book. Fire Color One is the story of Iris, a girl who has just had to move back to Europe with her mother (Hannah) and her mother's boyfriend (Lowell), due to money problems in the United States. They also moved after Iris committed arson by burning down her school. Fire is her escape. Iris is struggling with the fact that she has been separated by her friend, Thurston. Thurston was the only one who understood her and stories about how they met and what they did together are slowly revealed throughout the novel. Many years before, when Iris was two or three, Hannah left Ernest (Iris' biological father). He lived in Europe, so once they moved back there, she gave him a call.

It turns out that Ernest was actually dying of some disease. Hannah and Lowell are ecstatic, thinking that as soon as Ernest dies, they will collect his many extremely valuable paintings and become rich. Iris doesn't really care about him at first. She doesn't even remember him. She thinks she should feel sad, but can she really feel sad for someone she doesn't know? So they all go to visit Ernest. Almost immediately, Iris and Ernest have a connection and Ernest tells her many rather interesting and some unexpected stories of his life. The end of this is unexpected and wonderful. Fantastically made. I'm not sure if Valentine could have made this book much better.

Zeroes

I was pretty excited when I picked up this book. Zeroes is by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, and Deborah Biancotti. I had read some of Westerfeld's books before, and I had liked them, so I was happy to find another book of his. I had actually picked this book randomly from my library. At my library, around February, in celebration of Valentine's day, they have a "blind date with a book" thing. This is where they wrap books in gift paper, and only write a few clues to the story's plot on the front (that way, if you hate horror books, you won't pick one up, ect. ) I loved doing that last year so I did it again this year with Zeroes. In Zeroes, it's your basic superhero book... except SO much better! The first thing I really like with this book was that all of the powers were so unique! Here is the list. (Also - WARNING! This isn't necessarily a spoiler, but if you would rather have the powers revealed to you throughout the book, then don't read the next section!)

1. Scam - His was pretty interesting. Every since he was younger, "the voice" could talk. Even before he could. The voice is basically this other form of consciousness completely separate from Scam (Ethan). Scam just thinks of what he wants, and the voice will try to convince the people to do it. The voice also knows things it shouldn't. Plus, Ethan thinks the voice is helpful, because it makes him sound less like his stuttering self. It was kind of frustrating, but definitely interesting for the plot to see what Ethan's voice would say next.

2. Crash - Her real name is Chizara. She has hispanic heritage, and she can crash any technology she can sense. Chizara loves doing this (as long as she doesn't harm anyone in the process). All of the technology hurts her. She can feel it stinging and poking at her all day long. When she crashes things, she reaches into the interworking of the devices and she completely melds them or fries them. She's even crashed her own phone before many times. The change in her personality was very evident in the story.

3. Flicker - She prefers to be called Flicker, but her real name is Riley. Riley was born blind. She started to learn braille, until she learned she could see through her sister's eyes and read for herself. She can look through anyone's eyes, except for Anonymous. She uses this too see what is happening inside buildings during missions, and she can hop around the area to look for people. I thought her power was pretty creative.

4. Anonymous - Who? Oh, that's right, Thibault. They always forget about him. Thibault is the one who can go in, and no one would know he was there. Literally. They would forget about him. It does backfire for him, however (insert a sad, lovely back story that you'll have to read the book for!). Sometimes, even his own team forgets him. His power is kind of complicated, and it's kind of fun to figure out how it works as the story goes on.

5. Bellwether - He is also known as "Glorious Leader" or Nate. During meetings or missions he can direct the minds of people or of the team towards the same goal, and it helps keep the people encouraged and gets things done. The team doesn't always appreciate it when he does this, but at some points, it's a nice thing to have around. 

I would recommend the book. Now that I think back, I can clearly see how each of the Zeroes has changed in some way, and I love that I can see an individual difference in each of the characters. The ending is a nice finish as well. It's a good read and you should pick it up! :)

Paper Towns

Paper Towns by John Green. Believe it or not, this is the first John Green book I have read. *gasp!* Yes, I know, I'm not normal. I didn't fall for The Fault in Our Stars like everyone else did. I didn't even finish the Divergent series *another gasp!* See, sometimes, I feel like the way a book is portrayed in the media makes it seem to cheesy and overdone. However, I recommended a book to a friend, and in return, they recommended Paper Towns to me. So, I agreed to read it, and as soon as I started, I actually ended up liking it. Basically, it's about Quentin and Margo. They were friends when they were younger, and one day, they were walking around near the park, and they saw a dead man slumped against a tree. Margo was intrigued, but Quentin was repulsed. This is when their friendship started to drift away. Years later, in high school, Margo shows up at Quentin's window. Quentin has always liked Margo (maybe loved?) so he was welcoming. Margo convinces Quentin to go on this revenge trip with her, and they go around pranking everyone they dislike in the city, and so on... It was interesting to see how each prank came into play, and Quentin and his friends become pretty entertaining (especially in an event that comes across later in the book). John Green is not the ridiculously cheesy writer I thought he was, and in fact, I may consider reading more of his books. I did start reading the first chapter of The Fault in Our Stars and I actually liked it from the beginning. He is a very funny author, and I like books that can make me laugh. Perhaps I'll read it soon in the future. I also liked that the theme of the "paper town" was strong and noticeable throughout the story. It was a good message about growing up and moving on from your childhood. Good job to the author! :)

All These Things I've Done

WARNING: contains a few spoilers (but I tried not to give away that much).



"All These Things I've Done" by Gabrielle Zevin is brilliant. Here is one quote that stood out to me (maybe because it's on the last page). "For one moment, I was a person without a last name and so was he. We did not have fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, uncles, or cousins to remind of us what we owed or were owed..." I feel like it summarizes one of the main things Anya Balanchine had been searching for throughout the whole novel, and she finally found the pathway to reaching that. Anya Balanchine is a sixteen year old orphan in the year 2083. Her family is part of an illegal chocolate business. In the future, laws are made so quickly it's hard to keep track. Crime is very existent in the country. Chocolate and coffee are banned. Anya's father is in charge of the family business. Well, he was in charge. Until he was murdered. When Anya was still very young, her mother died in a car accident when someone shot her through the window. They had been going for her father but they missed. Her older brother, Leonyd, or Leo, the oldest child of the family, suffered an injury from the accident and has never been the same since. Even though he is eighteen now, he has the mind of an eight year old. Anya's sister, Natty, doesn't remember her parents much, because she was even younger than Anya at the time. Anya's grandmother lives with them now, but she is very old and must be on a life support machine at all times. This being said, Anya is basically in charge of their small family, and Imogen, the nurse who stays with their grandmother, helps out a bit. Others keep pressuring Anya to follow in her father's footsteps with the chocolate business. Anya is going through so many problems at home, and it doesn't help that she seems to always be getting in trouble at school and with the government. Her problems get worse and better when she meets a boy. She wants to enjoy her self and have a boyfriend. However, it doesn't help that she has a name like Balanchine and is associated with her unsafe, illegal, and criminal family. Anya just wants to enjoy her life, get through high school, pursue her future career, and have a boyfriend, like any teen girl might be going for. However, Anya goes from one awful event to the other. It's a fast paced novel and it's nice to see Anya improve her life and the lives of those around her as the story goes on. I would recommend it.

Now that I have the summary and such out of the way, I just want to say that I loved the characters in this book.

Imogen: She was helpful throughout everything.
Leo: He was just a really lovable character.
Natty: A fun, flirty girl who is positive most of the time, but shows her worries later on.
Scarlet: Such a kind, loyal friend.
Anya: A great, complex character.
Win: One of the best boyfriends in a book that I have read about (I would say it's up there with the husband of Eadlyn from the selection series - I didn't want to mention his name because it would spoil everything).
Gallina (the grandmother): Someone who wants to see the children have a good life but is wearing away mentally. Another kind of complex character.

There is so much packed into this novel and overall I just think it was great.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

I love this book and this title! I feel like this title relates to the book, but it is also creative to use as a title (also, it is derived from a stage direction in one of Shakespeare's books) and I haven't heard of another book similar to this name.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston was a great story. I went threw it in a couple of days. It starts off where this girl, Hermione Winters, is at a competing cheerleading camp. She is the co-captain of her cheerleading team along with her best friend Polly. She was enjoying herself and trying to savor her last year of camp (as she is a senior and would not be attending next year). And then she was raped. As the story goes on, I feel that E.K. Johnston did an excellent job of showing readers how the attacked person may feel. She shows us how our behavior to the attacked people may look to them, and what kinds of things a teenager who has been attacked may go through. As Hermione tries to find her way in this new situation, her relationships with others become weaker and stronger. Hermione represents a strong young woman who refuses to let this attack bring her down. I enjoyed reading this from start to finish and I would definitely recommend it.