Thirteen Reason Why by Jay Asher

 

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘📘

Genre - Teen Fiction, Suicide, Family Issues

Format - Audio Book

Length - 6 hours 24 minutes

*Amazon Blurb*

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, his classmate and crush, who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah's voice explains that there are 13 reasons she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out why. Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a first-hand witness to Hannah's pain, and learns the truth about himself - a truth he never wanted to face.

*My Review*

 This wasn't a book I'd normally read, but I was trying to find something to listen to while on the treadmill and got frustrated looking so I downloaded the first available one....this was it.

Poor Hannah has decided to end her life, but it wasn't just one incident that brought her to this decision - it was thirteen. She let things build up in sort of a snowball effect until she couldn't take it anymore. The fact that she made tapes to explain all the hurt she felt made me feel bad for her even though she wasn't nice in them. There were things that she should've told someone about, but decided to not say anything. It just goes to show that one person really can make a big difference in someone's life and that big difference just could be a life or death one. People should raise kids to be kind and to keep in mind that you never know what someone else is going thru. It's easy to ignore someone, but worth taking a few minutes to check in with them.

 

Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined by Stephanie Meyer (Twilight Saga #1.75)

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘
Genre - Teen, Young Adult, Ghost Stories, Contemporary Fantasy, Vampires, Werewolves
Format - Hardback

*Amazon Blurb*

There are two sides to every story....

You know Bella and Edward, now get to know Beau and Edythe.

When Beaufort Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edythe Cullen, his life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With her porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edythe is both irresistible and enigmatic.

What Beau doesn't realize is the closer he gets to her, the more he is putting himself and those around him at risk. And, it might be too late to turn back....

With a foreword and afterword by Stephenie Meyer, this compelling reimagining of the iconic love story is a must-read for Twilight fans everywhere.

*My Review* 

This book was a recommendation from one of my library patrons. I wasn't even aware that it existed. I am also guilty of not read the Twilight Series, but only watching the movies (which I loved).
I think it would've been easier to read it if I hadn't watched the movies because I kept picturing the characters as they were in the movie. It was hard to try and stop.
The book stays quite true to the movie with the exception of all the genders being swapped until it gets towards the end. I am glad the author changed it like she did because it was wondering the whole time if I would be left hanging to expect a sequel that wouldn't come or if maybe she was planning to write more.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephanie Meyer

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner : 

An Eclipse Novella (The Twilight Saga)

by Stephanie Meyer

Availble on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘
Genre - Teen, Young Adult, Werewolf, Fiction, Vampire, Paranormal Romance
Format - Hardcover
Length - 178 pages

*Amazon Blurb*

Bree Tanner, a self-described "vampire nerd" first introduced in Eclipse, lives in terror in a coven of newborn vampires. She is a member of Victoria's vampire army, and as that army closes in on Bella Swan and the Cullens, she finds her first friend and discovers a truth about daylight.


*My Review* 

If you've watched any of The Twilight movies or read any of the books, then this short side story might be something to read. Though it's quite sort and a bit unnecessary, it does provide a bit of insight of how Carlisle was able to figure out what was going on with Victoria. Honestly, it's been so long since I've watched the movie (yes I watched the movies instead of reading the books), maybe it does show how Carlisle figured it out and this book is not useful at all.

Asylum by Madeleine Roux

Asylum

by Madeleine Roux

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘
Genre - Teen & Young Adult, Fantasy, Supernatural, Mystery, Thrillers, Horror
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 310

*Amazon Blurb*

For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, the New Hampshire College Prep program is the chance of a lifetime. Except that when Dan arrives, he finds that the usual summer housing has been closed, forcing students to stay in the crumbling Brookline Dorm—formerly a psychiatric hospital. As Dan and his new friends Abby and Jordan start exploring Brookline's twisty halls and hidden basement, they uncover disturbing secrets about what really went on here . . . secrets that link Dan and his friends to the asylum's dark past. Because Brookline was no ordinary mental hospital, and there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.

*My Review* 

I think this was a good horror book for young adults. I did enjoy the book, right up until the end. The fact that an old asylum was turned into a college was a great story-line itself. It screams haunted. I mean what teenager wouldn't want to go and stay at an old asylum?
The story flows nicely with the kids meeting up and the trouble they get into. To me it just seemed that with all the secrets hidden beneath the dorms it should have led to more. I was really expecting more "excitement".
The ending seemed a bit rushed too. Maybe it has to do with the fact that this is the first in the series of 3. Overall a good book and I might look into the rest of the series.

Control Freakz by Michael Evans

Control Freakz 

by Michael Evans

Available on Amazon

ARR

Rating (1-5) 📘 📘
Genre - Teen, Young Adult, Politics & Government, Fiction, Depression & Mental Illness, Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic
Pages - 354

*Amazon Blurb*

Natalie had always known her dad's disappearance was connected to something much more sinister inside Area 51, but she never guessed that finding answers would require her to sacrifice everything. After the Great Crash and the election of President Ash, Natalie's dad disappears and her grandpa soon after ends his own life. But these tragic events shrouded in mystery pale in comparison to the horrors that ensue with the onslaught of Protocol 00.

After Protocol 00 is enacted, Natalie’s entire family is taken by the Protection Services Agency, along with the families of her two best friends, Hunter and Ethan. With nothing to lose and the threat of government hitmen kidnapping them at any moment, the three must battle to survive in a horrid, post-apocalyptic world run by President Ash and his invasive government. Risking ruthless leaders, attempted mind control, and her very existence on the planet, Natalie, along with Hunter and Ethan, will stop at nothing in their quest to learn the secrets that destroyed their lives. But there are unrivaled powers working against them, and with impending doom looming at any moment, there is no one to trust and nowhere to hide. In a life devoid of hope, happiness, and safety, Natalie must battle both the darkness lurking inside and out of her in order to regain one fleeting memory of her past that has all but fallen away for good, but it might already be too late.

*My Review* 

Where to begin....

The main character of the book, Natalie, is very unlikable. She is so negative and depressing. She is always complaining about how things have gotten as bad as they can get. Then a few chapters later she says the same thing. There was a lot of repetition in this book which drove me crazy. The work anxiety seemed to be mentioned on every page, sometimes more than one. I really just couldn't take Natalie's lack of anything throughout the book. She didn't try to make anything better, she didn't try to help anyone and constantly needed to be helped.

The author does do a wonderful job at writing a description of how something feels or looks, but I feel like the book was extremely OVER descriptive. The first 3/4 or more of the book was just all description and nothing else. Natalie and her two friends went from their home to a camp. That was all that happened until the very end. I wish the book was more like the ending with the characters actually moving and doing something.

There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

There's Someone Inside Your House 

by Stephanie Perkins

Available On Amazon

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘
Genre - Teen, Romance, Thriller, Suspense, Horror
Format - Audio
Approx Listening Length - 9 hrs 26 min

*Amazon Blurb* 

One by one, the students of Osborne High are dying in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasing and grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and the hunt intensifies for the killer, the dark secrets among them must finally be confronted.

*Review*

It's nice to have finally found an audio book that I could listen to. You never realize how important a narrator is until you are trying to listen to someone talk for hours.

This was a good book that flowed nicely. It was easy to follow who the characters were and what was going on...a series of murders. The main characters, Makani and Ollie, seemed to have quite a realistic teenage relationship who also harbored secrets. Could one of them be committing these murders, and why? Although there were a couple characters who I thought might be the murderer, at the same time I didn't think it was them because it was too easy. It also seemed there was no connection between the murders. I was surprised about who the killer turned out to be.

Undead Girl Gang by Lilly Anderson

Undead Girl Gang

by Lilly Anderson

Available On Amazon

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘
Genre - Teen, Horror, Zombie
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 305

*Amazon Blurb* 

Meet teenage Wiccan Mila Flores, who truly could not care less what you think about her Doc Martens, her attitude, or her weight because she knows that, no matter what, her BFF Riley is right by her side. So when Riley and Fairmont Academy mean girls June Phelan-Park and Dayton Nesseth die under suspicious circumstances, Mila refuses to believe everyone's explanation that her BFF was involved in a suicide pact. Instead, armed with a tube of lip gloss and an ancient grimoire, Mila does the unthinkable to uncover the truth: she brings the girls back to life.
Unfortunately, Riley, June, and Dayton have no recollection of their murders. But they do have unfinished business to attend to. Now, with only seven days until the spell wears off and the girls return to their graves, Mila must wrangle the distracted group of undead teens and work fast to discover their murderer...before the killer strikes again.

*Review*

What do you do when you best friend dies and everyone is claiming it was part of some suicide pat she has with two other girls that weren't even her friends? You bring her back from the dead to ask of course. But when you're young and not really sure of how to use magic things don't always go as planned. That's exactly what happened with Mila. Not only did she bring back her best friends, who can't remember any details about her death, but also June and Dayton who aren't even in the same clique.
Not there are three dead girls running around while Mila is trying to help them figure out why they died. Was school so bad that they couldn't take it anymore? Did someone hate them that much? All the questions that Mila has and the girls (especially June and Dayton) seem to care less about getting answers.
I thought this book was cute, but not much more than that. It's not easy to guess right in the beginning if the girls committed suicide or if they were murdered, but it also doesn't take long to figure it all out, thought a little longer to know all the details.
The ending seemed to drag on a bit longer than needed, but overall I still enjoyed it.

Something Of Substance by Tia Souders

Something Of Substance 

by Tia Souders

Available On Amazon

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Teen & Young Adult, Self Esteem, Social Issues
Format - eBook

This books was amazing and I think it should be on the syllabus for all schools. Grace is a girl who deals with social issues that so many kids do these days. She struggles with self image as well as her parents attention. Unfortunately, she finds the need to be accepted and to fit in even more powerful that her own health. This book really does an amazing job making the reader understand how easy an eating disorder can get out of hand. Also, how easy it is for that person to hide it from the people closest to them. My heart was breaking for Grace and I wanted to jump into it and hug her.

So many school kids are bullied for so many reasons and it's horrible. Because of this some kids will go to great measures to change the person they really are even if it pits their life at risk. In their minds it's all worth it in the end.

If you know someone who is struggling, not just with an eating disorder, I suggest this book. Hopefully they will see that it's not just them who is affected. And of course, if you see something - say something.