Teen Book Reviews

The Ballad of Never After is the sequel to Once Upon a Broken Heart and takes place right after the cliffhanger! Evangeline, the heroine, reads a mysterious letter telling her not to trust Jacks, who has conveniently disappeared. This causes her to battle with who to trust, causing a lot of stress and suspense building throughout the book. She then discovers something about herself which makes her want to revert everything back to when her life was normal, before she went to Jacks. Jacks then appears, trying to convince her to continue doing his favours because she is in his debt. That’s when the story really starts.

I loved this book! With all the mysteries comes a tension between all of the characters because you're thinking “who do I trust?” and “what will Evangeline do?” Garber does a wonderful job with this because it literally kept me on the edge of my seat. However, sometimes you can feel hopelessness as the reader because you want to warn Evangeline about the curse and memory loss and literally everything else that happens. This book does leave on another cliffhanger… so beware of that.

Sam’s camp was being evacuated because of a raging wildfire. Sam realized he had left his phone in the camp. He went back inside the camp. Sam couldn't find it but he finally found it. He was heading for the bus, but the fire stopped him. The only option he had was to run. Along the way, Sam gets supplies, meets 2 friends, and realizes what caused the fire.

Newbery Honor novelist Rodman Philbrick released Wildfire. When I read it I was astonished by how good it was. It kept me reading for hours and hours. I was so into the book I continued reading because it has so many twists and turns. Sam, the main character, always thinks he's going to die but he always finds a way through. Sam is a smart guy who learned about the wilderness from his father. This makes him a key character in the 3 people’s survival. Sam and his friend navigate through the forest and almost kill themselves a bunch of times. This book is engaging. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good action and thriller. The story has many unpredictable twists and turns that will keep you reading.

The Lightning Thief, written by Rick Riordan, we learn about a 12-year-old boy Percy Jackson. Percy goes to camp-half blood where he finds out that he is the son of Poseidon .Percy gets his first quest: he has to save his mother who is in the underworld and to find the master bolt to give the lord of thunder Zeus. If Percy doesn’t retrieve the master bolt in a week Zeus might kill him, and he might never see his mother again. Read to find out how Percy and his friends go through this journey.

I would definitely recommend this book. It’s suitable for all ages and it’s probably the only book in the series that I have read more than once. Though I had heard of this book in the past, it had never occurred to me how amazing it was. The characters are relatable and likable and the story has a storyline to make the reader drawn to it, also the plot of the story make the reader more focused on the book. I think this book was fantastic. It was like I was in the book. The characters make such funny choices, it is hilarious and gets you hooked pretty quickly. It can be hard to understand if you don’t know much about Greek mythology but after reading a few chapters everything will start to make sense. I highly recommend it, especially to people like me who love to read fantasy genres.

All her life, Adele has been told that her visions of the dead are just schizophrenia. This ability, however, doesn't benefit Adele when she discovers that her former best friend Tori is dead when she finds her at a thin burial in the forest. Because Adele has no plausible excuse, she is now the main suspect in Tori's killing. Her only hope of finding the true killer lies with Tori's ghost.

What a nail-biter! Henry never disappoints with keeping her readers on their toes until the very end of her stories. When I first picked this book up, I was in the middle of a terrible reading slump. Not only did this tale get me out of the slump, but also captivated me till the very end with its exquisite twists and turns. The book's dynamic themes add even more to the underlining psychological message about schizophrenia. However, I wish we could have seen the same dynamics within both the protagonist and the antagonist. Nonetheless, Henry truly knows how to cultivate her audience without revealing too much of the climactic ending. Overall, The Lonely Dead is an exhilarating, yet stellar book to devour in one sitting.

The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden is a witty book about a girl who has a hard life, many siblings, and a small house with a mom who has a terrible boyfriend. She is quite inspiring because she just plows through it and does what needs to be done to help her family. Then, she joins the debate club and learns a lot there.

I recommend this book because it just really shows you how much you have compared to some others and makes you open your eyes to people with a much worse situation than you. I think that girls would like this book more than boys because it is told from the point of view of a middle school girl and is not an adventure book, either. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes realistic fiction. I hope that this review helps you choose to read this amazing book!