Reading, Writing, and Me

You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone  by Rachel Lynn Solomon (378 Pages) Overview: Tovah and Adina have one more year of high school; one year to answer all of their questions. The most pressing, though, is if one or both of the twins will contract Huntington's, the genetic disorder claiming their mother's life. What will the promise of a life with or without the disease mean for the girl's, and will it bring the twin's closer or tear them apart. Solomon delves into this as well as relationships, religion, and how knowing their fate will change their view of the world in this thought provoking novel. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 I enjoyed the duel prospectives and the twins here. They each brought their own prospectives to show almost the two extremes of people who've experienced similar situations. Tovah is a devout conservative Jew, just like her parents. She takes all APs and is prized for her intelligence. School, particularly the path to medical school, is he

Nothing Left To Burn  by Heatger Ezell (322 pages) Overview: There's a fire burning Orange County to the ground, and Audrey knows what started it. She's woken up to an evacuation notice and then learns that her sister collapsed at her ballet audition about an hour away. Audrey is scared the cancer has come back to take her sister. She also has her firefighter boyfriend, Brooks, to worry about, though the fire seems to be the high point of his life. Throughout the day and in flashback chapters of the summer, Audrey must figure out how to piece together what's left of what the fire burnt to the ground. Overall: 5++++++++++++ Characters: 5  Wow. I think that I love and identify with Audrey more than any character I've ever read. She's a bit trapped in her own head and stuck between intensities, a devout dancer till she walked out of the audition of her ballet career at fourteen. A controlled, quiet impulsiveness courses under his skin, and, though it doesn't sh

They Both Die At The End  by Adam Silvera (368 pages) Overview: Mateo and Rufus are both going to die at the end, but I'm guessing you got that from the title. The thing is, Mateo and Rufus don't know each other till the day they are going to die. After getting their calls from Death Cast, the new organization that lets everyone know that they are going to die with a call sometime after midnight. While trying to digest the news, they both turn their attention to the Last Friend app in search of finding another "decker" to spend their final day with. As the boys try to think of ways not to waste their final moments, they start to form a bond they never anticipated. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 I have to applaud Silvera for keeping his (mostly) duel prospective narrative voices so separate. Mateo and Rufus not only have different traits but totally different dialects. Mateo is Puerto Rican, quiet, and totally paranoid with a hyperawareness about safe. Both careful an