Top 8 by Katie Finn

Nowadays everyone has a Myspace, Facebook, or Twitter, thereby exposing themselves to the world and this novel helps expose the risks involved in having such a website. As eye opening as the novel is in terms of the risks of such sites, this novel is still just another teen novel with a lovesick teenager.

Madison's life revolved around her Friendverse (a fictional social networking site). When she leaves for a spring break trip without the Internet, she returns to discover that her site had been hacked. Not only had humiliating pictures been posted, but the hacker wrote blogs the divulged secrets from her friends, personal and harsh opinions of others, and nasty comments that led to the breakup of not only two friends, but Madison and her new boyfriend Justin. Madison then spends the novel trying to clear her name, find the person responsible and get back together with Justin. Soon, though, the cute guy from her spring break shows up in her life and she begins to wonder if maybe he's a better match than Justin. As the suspects dwindle and the hacker reappears, she begins to see who her true friends are and the power of words, even if they're not spoken to your face.


If you get past the teen boy crazy angst and annoying abbreviations and constant use of French that is never translated, the book has a good message or two. First, there's the evils of social networking and how people shouldn't let their lives revolve around it. Anyone can be anyone else online and you'd never know the truth. An evil hacker can be mistaken for a sweet innocent girl. Second, words said to a few people are just as bad a words spread over the Internet. Every bad thing written on Madison's page were words/secrets she'd spread to a select few friends and she didn't see them as wrong until she saw the damage that they did. Also, don't like a guy/girl just because they're good looking, make sure you have things in common. This isn't a big message of the novel, but it's still there.

Without the grand messages this book spreads, there's not much too it. There is the mystery as to the hacker's identity and the new cute boy and the fact that her friend starts acting weird. I felt, though, that the message is really what drove the book home. Overall, it's just a fluffy read, but sometimes there's nothing wrong with that, especially if it has a lesson to teach.
MMK

Creature of the Night by Kate Thompson

Bobby is a rebellious teen. His (probably abusive) angry single mom and his half brother Dennis and he have moved to a house a couple hours outside of Dublin Ireland to escape Bobby's supposed friends for whom he steals cars and with whom he smokes weed and tries various drugs. They are also trying to escape bill collection agencies. The cottage has been unoccupied for quite some time. There are rumors of murders and the like. This is Ireland where fairies, leprechauns and the like abound so the wee folk are also suspected in two known disappearances. Thus the enticing title Creature of the Night. A wee woman dressed in a plaid flannel shirt like that worn in the picture of one of the missing persons visits Dennis, Bobby's brother during the night. She has a like of small bowls of milk, chocolates, pink/yellow cakes. At least with Dennis she is not at all frightening and really only a minor part of the total story. What is going on with Dennis, the mother and the wee woman are merely backdrop for the story of Bobby's coming of age. In spite of himself he has grown to enjoy working on the neighboring farm. He is required to do this to pay for an auto he stole and ultimately destroyed. He seems to believe he has to maintain his bad boy image though. So every time things start going better he goes of on a drinking spree with stolen money. I must say I wearied of descriptions of puking and hangovers. If his mother would just get wise things would go better. Right at the end the body of one of the missing persons is found, an investigation is underway, Bobby's mom moves back to Dublin and Bobby is still at loose ends. Fast forward 14 years to the epilogue and things are more or less resolved, but I don't think so. I think this was a cop out for not properly ending the book. I've no idea at the end how Bobby has grown or not, or how mom and other son are faring or if the new owners of the cottage are visited by the wee woman or, or... The nod to horror is just a hook to get people to buy and possibly read a mediocre book. This author has written better books, unfortunately many people who know her other work will purchase this expecting more of the same quality.
JDW5/21

Fake Boyfriend by Kate Brian

How far would you go to help a friend get over a breakup? Creating a fictional new boyfriend for her might be considered an extreme, but that's exactly what happens in this predictable, yet enjoyable novel.

Izzy's boyfriend Shawn has been nothing but heartache, yet she keeps going back to him. When he cheats on her right before prom, her friends say "Enough is enough!" Desperate to ensure that she doesn't take him back like she's done in the past, her friends Vivi and Lane create the perfect man on Myspace and lure Vivi's brother Marshall into playing him online. Soon Izzy is connecting with "Brandon" and they realize if he's supposed to take her to prom, there needs to be a physical "Brandon." In walks Jonathan who they mold into the perfect man. The only problem, though, is that Vivi seems to like Jonathan. On top of that, Vivi's demanding personality is preventing Lane from going after the man she likes, her friend Curtis. What happens if Izzy finds out the truth? How can "Brandon" end things with Izzy without breaking her heart? Will all find love in the end? Is it possible that these friends have gone too far in helping their friend?

There's not much to say about the book since it was a typical chick flick. The ending is predictable, but there's something reassuring in that. It's nice to take comfort in the happily ever afters since it sometimes feels like there are so few of those out there. The story is cute, even if the situations are formulaic. The characters are complex and ones you can relate to.

Overall, it's a fast and enjoyable read. It's definitely something nice to pick up for a lazy summer afternoon.
MMK

Paper Towns by John Green

Margo Roth Spiegleman and Quentin had been playmates and neighbors as kids. In high school though Margo was a popular cheerleader and party goer. Quentin was quiet, studious, geeky and prone to being bullied. Until the night, shortly before graduation when Margo climbed into Quentin's bedroom through the window and asked him to go with him to do 11 things before the night was over. Some possibly illegal. It was a wild time in which both learned much about their secret lives and desires. After it was over, Margo vanished. She'd vanished before, each time leaving a trail of odd clues to unravel. Quentin decides to decipher the clues and find Margo. But, they seem to point to suicide and he fears he will instead find a body. As Quentin searches he learns more about Margo Roth Spiegleman the real girl behind the fake facade he thought he loved. This just won the Edgar Mystery Award for the teen age group. It is a touching, sad sad story. Read it!
JDW5/18/09

Creature of the night by Kate Thompson

I've been mislead before after reading the reviews on the back of book, but never so badly as I was in this novel. There was nothing gripping or thrilling in this book and it was far from marvelous. Maybe something got lost in translation since it's from Ireland because this book was a struggle to get through. (Yes, I know this book hasn't been translated since they speak English in Ireland, but there has to be some sort of miscommunication if this book is seen as thrilling and marvelous.)

The main character, Bobby, is a troubled teen who enjoys robbing people, stealing cars, getting drunk and doing drugs. When his mother moves the family to the country, all he wants to do is return to Dublin, which his does after stealing a car. After a friend wrecks the car and beats up a man, Bobby ends up back in the country and is forced to work off the debt of the car. In the meantime he's still stealing from his mother and arguing about money and sneaking off to Dublin when he isn't moping about wanting to return, although he is really getting interested in fixing cars which is a step in the right direction. Something "strange" seems to be going on with his younger brother who claims to see a little woman but that's a minor detail in the novel. At the same time, the family had been told to leave a bowl of milk out for the fairies and then Bobby learns that someone had been murdered in the house and the previous renter suddenly went missing, but all of that is taken with a grain of salt, although the stories do seem to bother Bobby late at night (but I don't particularly see why he's so scared because the novel doesn't build it up that much).

I was 200 pages into the book and still wondering when things would get thrilling. I felt like a good 150 of it was about him farming or stealing and it just seemed to go on and on. I don't really care how you're supposed to use a scythe or mow the lawn! As for the little woman that his brother keeps seeing (I think that was supposed to be the thrilling part of the story), she kept taking a back page. 10 pages of farming and arguing with his mother, one page about the little woman. There were maybe 10 pages worth of thrilling information when they figured out what happened to the previous renter, but then it went back to the pointless stuff. I would have given up on this book a lot sooner if I didn't have high hopes of something thrilling and marvelous happening, but it NEVER came! What's so bad about it is that it had potential but it was buried under all of the hay that Bobby baled. Give me more little woman and missing renters and less farming and you might have had a good novel.

I wanted to believe in this book that there was something good to come, but my faith in the reviews let me down, big time. If this book had been marketed differently, like about a troubled teen finding his way down the right path, it might have been a good book, but it wasn't shown in that light. Don't be misled! Read this as a warning that this book isn't as gripping or thrilling as the reviews say. Don't make the same mistake and hold onto the hope that it will get better, because it doesn't.
MMK

NATION by Terry Pratchett

A tidal wave races through an alternative world much like the islands of the South Pacific. Entire islands are washed away. Tall Sailing Ships sank. Natives in their canoes vanish. One small island remained, all its former inhabitants save one washed away. That one was a boy returning from boys island expecting to be officially become a man. The first survivor to be washed ashore was a girl on the remains of a tall sailing ship. A white girl wearing trousers and using a language most strange and wielding something the boy later found out was a gun, was very weird and scary to Mau. And Mau was very scary to the girl. Somehow they manage to communicate with each other and get on with surviving as they must. Over the days a rag tag bunch of survivors in many small numbers in many ways begin to arrive. Their need for help and later to help others gradually help this group of peoples of many languages, cultures, indeed colors become a working community. I kept thinking how different these marooned people were from those in the book Lord of the Flies. Always they worked together for the common good (survival) always they took pleasure in helping each other and learning amazing new skills. Just think of a ghost girl (white) not yet an adult learning to make beer to honor the island's gods. And they found an amazing thing as they were trying to rebuild their lives. In the back of a cave was what appeared to be an ancient planetarium or perhaps stellar observatory. This find coupled with knowing just who would be interested preserves this new community from exploration, settlement, takeover by some powerful country. To me, the story got bogged down in mysticism sometimes. Mau who is never formerly declared a man is respected enough to be called the leader though quite young and has many trance like discussions with the island gods. On the whole this is an uplifting and sometimes funny story.
JDW

The King's Rose by Alisa M. Libby

Historical fiction is not my thing, so I thought I'd step out of my comfort zone and try this novel, intrigued by the promise of something with a "throbbing romantic pulse." While I found the romantic pulse more faltering than throbbing, this book did intrigue me enough to actually google Catherine Howard.

Since this is history, don't yell at me for ruining the ending...it already happened and there's no creative license allowed in changing it. Catherine Howard is only 15 when she marries King Henry, a man who is 40 with multiple wives already under his belt, many of whom he sentenced to death. He is also overweight with a festering wound/ulcer on his leg, which makes him all the more less appealing to a thriving 15 year old, crown or not. Marrying the king isn't as simple as she thinks. The King wants a virgin and Catherine hasn't been a virgin since Francis Dereham and she started playing husband and wife when she was twelve. That, however, didn't stop her aunt, the Duchess, from flaunting Catherine and securing her marriage to the King under the disguise that she is, in fact, a virgin. While she struggles to perform her wifely duties, Catherine also struggles with the fact that she is in love with someone else, Thomas Culpeper (yes, he is her cousin, but times were different back then). As she waits for her coronation, Catherine knows that the only way to ensure her safety as queen will be to get pregnant. However, try as much as she and Henry can given his illness, she cannot get pregnant. In an effort to do such a thing, Catherine, the Duchess, and her trusted confidant Lady Rochford hatch a plan to use Thomas as a means to an end. While Catherine knows this is treason, she can't hide her desperation for a child and her lust for Thomas and soon an affair ensues. In the meantime, people from her past appear in her life, including Francis Dereham. Desperate to keep her shady past secret, she offers them jobs at the castle, but only so much can be done before the truth comes out and this King doesn't take too kindly to being played the fool. Before she knows what hit her, Catherine and her family and friends are being interrogated, held prisoner and some even tortured to the point that they confess the deeds done against the king, most resorting to only versions of the truth to protect their own skin while taking down the queen. No one is safe, not even the queen, something she should have learned from her beheaded cousin Anne Boleyn, Henry's 2nd wife.

My dislike for the genre obviously tainted my enjoyment of this novel. I had hopes that it would prove as passionate as the front flap led me to believe, but it didn't really come through. There's not much you can do with history without going crazy on the creative licence, but I think some of it was watered down for the young adult audiences. There were definitely scenes that I saw going further that didn't take that leap. I sympathized with Catherine and her position, torn between duty that her family placed her in and her own personal desires, but at the same time, I found her a bit whiny and I got tired of hearing about her desperation to get pregnant and her love for Thomas. I wanted her to realize that she lost her chance, but that's not how the story goes, so I had to deal. It did seem to drag, leading up to the point that she and Thomas finally come together, and even then, it wasn't as satisfying as I hoped it would be. It picked up a bit when she was found out, but that high was fleeting and the story ended. I thought the novel did a good job, though, of showing the corrupt nature of the court and how people would do anything and sacrifice anyone for the cause.

If you enjoy historical fiction, feel free to pick up this novel. If it's not your thing, well, it's up to you to give it a shot. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't as thrilling as the front flap leads you to believe.
MMK

The Last Templar By Raymond Khoury

This novel was very interesting reading, because although it is fiction, it gave the reader some historical facts . The novel opens up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, N.Y. during the exhibit of the Treasures from the Vatican. All of a sudden, four masked horsemen dressed as Templar Knights appear on horses in the Museum. In the Museum as a invitee was the Archaeologist Tess Chaykin. Only 0ne masked man made it out of the Museum, & he took a valuable instrument that he thought would be valuable to himself. It was a type of instrument that could locate a treasure .
After all this big event, an FBI agent, Sam Reilly, and Tess Chaykin are in the pursuit of clues about crusading knights. They both work together, and travel many places. They do many dangerous activities that might risk their lives searching a treasure ship. They in fact scuba dive over 100 feet deep to find what they were looking for. All that ends with their determination, and perseverance . Tess and Sean find the treasure. Sean ends up in a coma in Greece. Tess has minor injuries compared to Sean.The clinic is located in Greece where there two bodies were recovered by fisherman on the beach.It seems that Sean and Tess were clutching a piece of wood, which saved their lives.
This novel is fascinating , and I recommend it to 11th & 12th graders, who like adventure,& History.
LRD 4/27/o9