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Showing posts from November 11, 2018

The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction

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The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction  by Amy Brashear (November 13) Overview: Hollywood is coming to Griffin Flats, Arkansas. And they're going to blow it up. Well, for the movie. Laura Ratliff wins a radio contest that guarantees she'll get to be a part of it. She decides to take her stepbrother Terrance as her +1, and she's actually excited to see a real Hollywood set, even if the theme of the movie centers around her worst fear, a real nuclear attack. Even though everything seems fine at first, when the movie bombs go off, no one can be sure it was just a prop. Overall: 3 Characters: 4 I loved Laura. She's an awesome main character. In the opening scene, she pulls the string to make the sprinklers run in the science lab so that she wouldn't have to do all of her lab partners work. I knew from that moment that we were kindred spirits. And I did love Laura's voice throughout as well as her stepbrother and best friend. Some of

Four Three Two One

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Four Three Two One by Courtney Stevens (November 13) Overview: There were four survivors of bus 21 after the charter bus was bombed a year ago. There was a young couple from a commune in Kentucky, Golden Jennings and Chandler Clayton. There was a soccer star left wheelchair bound, Rudy. Finally, Caroline, the last survivor was the bomber's girlfriend, and she's left to shoulder his guilt and her own. When the bus gets reassembled as part of an art installation/memorial by one of the paramedics who helped saved Golden, she feels determined to get all of the survivors back together, even if that means hurting some of her own relationships. Overall: 5  Characters: 5 All of these characters are so deep and individual. They've also had the trauma touch their lives in different ways. Golden has always been stuck between leaving the Hive and going to Emerson or staying and getting married to a boy she's loved almost her whole life. She knows there's no combini

Author Event With Alley Carter and Jennifer Lynn Barnes

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Yesterday, I had the chance to go to Blue Willow to see Alley Carter and Jennifer Lynn Barnes speak. It was perfect timing because I'm flying out tomorrow and would have been crushed to miss them. While I have yet to read any of Jennifer's books, Alley was the author that helped me transition from the world of Middle Grade into YA. Her YA voice with more toned down content is the perfect first step into more teenage books. Over the course of the speaking session, Jennifer shared about her new series featuring a group of debutants and their misadventures. She discussed how the book ended up being more personal than she first anticipated. In one scene, where a character is duct-taped to a chair, she pulled from her own personal life. In high school, when she was the only girl in physics C, she got left in the boys bathroom with all of her limbs bound to the chair. Luckily, a past of reading Nancy Drew books helped her work her way out of it, and the story earned a place in he