10 year old August Pullman was born with facial differences that required many surgeries to fix. Inside, he is a normal kid, who likes things normal kids like, Xbox, ice cream, and Star Wars. Being homeschooled all most of his life, he is now going to a public school for 5th grade. At first, he hates it, but during lunch a girl named Summer decided to sit with him, and the two of them quickly became friends. Later on, he makes friends with a boy named Jack, but this school isn’t only filled with nice people, there are still many people take behind his back, and one of the most notable one is Julian and his cronies. Will August survive 5th grade, or is the teasing and talking behind the back too much for him to handle.
As Global Warming continues, ice from thousands of years before melts. The parasites inside them are released. These parasites, later named The Tox, spreads to an island called Raxter where there’s a private school for girls.
Hetty, Hyatt, and Reese, three close friends, are among many of the students who are infected with The Tox. The infected start developing second spines or hearts, claws, and gills, but those who can’t take it are perished.
Everyone has only one choice, to stay inside in quarantine and wait for food and supplies to be delivered. But when Byatt is sick enough to be taken to the isolation room, Hetty knows some things have to change.
However, by the time Hetty sneaks in to see Byatt, she’s already disappeared.
This is a great book and I would definitely recommend it to people who like the dystopian genre.
A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos is a dystopian fiction novel that was translated from French by Hildegarde Serle. This book is from the point of view of Ophelia, the main character. She lives on an ark called Anima, and these arks were created after the Earth had exploded and broken into these floating islands called arks. Ophelia has special powers, which are travelling through mirrors and reading objects. Due to political reasons, Ophelia got declared to marry Thorn, who is from an ark called The Pole. Ophelia and Thorn are opposites as Ophelia is tiny and shy, and Thorn is rude and keeps to himself. Ophelia has been accompanied by her aunt, Rosaline and lives at The Pole with Thorn’s grandmother and aunt, Berenilde. At The Pole, no one should find out that Ophelia is Thorn’s fiancé, and a lot of planning had been done to keep her identity hidden even when the ladies move into their enemy’s house to live. This book revolves greatly around a fantasy world and how Ophelia is surviving in it.
Until now, this summer, A Winter’s Promise was probably the book I had the most time finishing, and as I progressed, my interest in it slightly started to become less and less. This book disappointed me greatly as BookTok hyped it up so much for me. I pushed myself so much to read this book, which sucked because this was one of the few fantasy books I had read, and it has pretty much scared me away from fantasy and dystopian fiction. I expected a bit more romance in it and just hoped the plot to flow more smoothly than it was. I couldn’t connect to any of the characters except for Ophelia. I feel like too many things were happening at once, and not explained adequately, or it took a long time to figure out what was happening. The plot, in general, was plodding, and a few things were pretty annoying and repetitive. As much as I wanted to love this book, I had to force myself to finish it and had a hard time even looking at the second book I still haven’t started. On a more positive note, many readers did not like the first book but liked the series because things started progressing after the first book. Hopefully reading the second book might make me change my mind but for now I’m not too impressed.
One thing that did satisfy me about this book was the writing style was really unique which is one thing that really kept me on track to finish it. I also think towards the ending of the book it made a bit more sense and in a way started to tie things up. Hopefully in the second book there’s a bit more romance and affection shown between Ophelia and Thorn and maybe that is why readers enjoyed the second book more and really got hooked. Oh also the covers of this book is so pretty and even the rest of the book covers in the series look so gorgeous.
Rating: 5/10 (Ophelia’s scarf and Ophelia herself really deserve at least five stars).
A book inspired by the history of China in the 20th century, The Poppy War follows a peasant girl, Rin, throughout the novel. She aces the entrance exam for the Empire’s military academy. After entering the academy in the hopes of gaining recognition of the society, she slowly becomes disillusioned by the country’s seemingly meritocratic institution. As an outcast, she is scorned for her skin colour and humble background at the academy. As the story progresses, she discovers her lethal, mystical power gifted by the gods of Nikan and makes tough decisions during the battle against the Federation of Mugen in the Third Poppy War.
November 9 byColleen Hoover is a standalone contemporary romance novel which revolves around Fallon and Ben. Fallon and Ben meet each other a day before Fallon moves across the country to pursue her dreams. Their attraction is powerful, and they are as compatible as anyone. They end up spending Fallon’s entire last day together, which is November 9 and agreed to meet each other every November 9 for the following five years. They have no contact in between and live their lives as if the other doesn’t exist for the entire year, but every November 9, no matter how complicated and complex life gets, they meet each other. November 9 is a tough day for both of them as Ben’s mother committed suicide, and Fallon was in a fire that ruined her acting career due to getting burns in the fire burn survivor. They both try to make this day easier to cope with while accompanying each other. Ben, aspiring to be a novelist, also starts to write a story which revolves around how November 9 impacts both him and Fallon, which causes the account to shift in a direction you could have possibly not imagined.
Can you believe it’s already this first week of August?! During the heatwave must have given you lots of time to read some great books and write some more book reviews! There have been so many great reviews coming in lately! Keep them coming because even if you’ve already won this summer, you could win again
We will be awarding prizes all summer long, so keep those reviews coming! Every winner will get their choice of a teen book, a gift certificate for a free smoothie from Booster Juice, a pass for the Richmond Oval, a swim pass for the Aquatic Centre at Minoru pool, and some swag like a water bottle and other fun things.
Also this year, EVERY PERSON who posts a teen book review on the blog (not just the weekly winners) will get a $10 gift certificate that can be redeemed at Exit RichmondThere is 1 certificate per person and it will be given for the first Teen book review you post. I’m very excited that the Teen SRC has a partnership with Exit this year, so start posting!!!
This week’s winner have been writing some great reviews this week. The 2 winners for this week are: Cianna H and Bhavjot S! Congratulations! We will send you an email to collect your prizes.
The book I recommend is called “Ace of Spades,” a splendid suspense novel. The main characters were a girl, Chiamaka and a boy named Devon. Two of them were the only two black students in this white-washed private school, Niveus, and became the elite school’s senior class “perfects” in their final year of high school. To become a “perfect,” you will need to achieve outstanding performance in your grades, extracurricular and contribution to the school. It was no surprise that Chiamaka was chosen, but it was strange for Devon to become ‘perfect’ since he is the “invisible” person in the school and doesn’t do much at school. Nevertheless, the beginning of the school year seemed excellent for them, and everything was under control until they were constantly being targeted and coincidently getting into trouble. Thus, together, they try to find out the truth about who is messing up with their senior academy life and who was the backstabbers.
Psychics have always told Blue Sargent that her true love would die if she kissed him. All her teenage years, she spent swearing off on boys, especially the Aglionby boys or alias Raven boys. Standing next to her psychic half-aunt watching the soon-to-be-dead pass by, she sees a spirit for the first time, a Raven Boy. “There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve her half-aunt said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him”.
In Maggie Stiefvater‘s book The Raven Boys we follow Blue Sargent’s life as it tangles with those she dreads the most the Raven Boys. Being the only non-psychic in her matriarchal house she struggles with identity issues and her new-formed friendship with the rich, members of high-class society, the Raven Boys certainly is not helping. But she can’t help but be drawn to the four Aglionby Boys, Gansey who is on a quest that has encompassed the other three, Ronan, the strong hot-headed boy; Adam, the poor scholarship student who can’t fit in with the others; and Noah, the tacit member of the group.
A lockdown surprises 5 grade 12 students, and they all end up in the same washroom. Alice, is an introvert who is really good at writing, she also has the responsibility to take care of her autistic brother Noah. Isabelle is the popular girl that everyone wants to be friends with, who has a big ego and sometimes only cares about herself. Then there’s Hogan, who used to be a football player, but is now someone feared by many because of the rumors going around that he killed his brother, he may seem scary but in the inside, he just needs someone to understand. There’s also the last guy named Xander, he’s socially awkward and sometimes says things that shouldn’t be said out loud. He’s always snapping pictures of random moments with his camera he calls “The Tank”. After a while, Isabelle gets a text from her best friend Brianna that this lockdown is not a drill, and there’s an actual shooter roaming around in the school, and it also turns out that one of the people know more about this shooter than they realized, and together they try to figure out what the shooter is trying to do, and how to stop them.
Wow! It’s already been a whole month of reading all your book reviews! It’s great to see so many of you participating in the Teen Summer Reading Club. Keep it up!! Even if you’ve already won, you can win again later in the summer.]!
We will be awarding prizes all summer long, so keep those reviews coming! Every winner will get their choice of a teen book, a gift certificate for a free smoothie from Booster Juice, a pass for the Richmond Oval, a swim pass for the Aquatic Centre at Minoru pool, and some swag like a water bottle and other fun things.
Also this year, EVERY PERSON who posts a teen book review on the blog (not just the weekly winners) will get a $10 gift certificate that can be redeemed at Exit RichmondThere is 1 certificate per person and it will be given for the first Teen book review you post. I’m very excited that the Teen SRC has a partnership with Exit this year, so start posting!!!
This week’s winner have been writing some great reviews this week. The 2 winners for this week are: Romina and Ethan L! Congratulations! We will send you an email to collect your prizes.
