Pretty Little Liars -- new TV show...

Based on the series -- read them all!

Johanna Kelly's Book Review

After

Amy Efaw

*****stars

Could a woman, more specifically, a young teenager girl, convince herself that she was not pregnant? Could a young teenage girl hide her nausea, her swollen belly, her obvious signs of pregnancy, from everyone around her? Devon does. She does not accept the fact that she is pregnant.

She gives birth, on her cold bathroom floor, covered in birth fluids. She cuts an umbilical cord with fingernail clippers. She places her baby girl in a black trash bag, along with bloody feminine products and rotten garbage. She then proceeds to take this bag out to the dumpster.

Is Devon a monster? Or just a scared and helpless teenager, not realizing that she threw away a life? And an innocent, even more helpless life at that?

These questions raced through my mind while taking in the gripping 350 pages that make up After. Do you want Devon, A star athlete, an honor student, a girl with no criminal record, to be punished in an adult court with a life sentance for attemped murder in the first degree? Or do you want Devon to be conseled in the juvenille system, and released, with the maximum sentence, on the day that she turns twenty-one? I did not decide until the very last page. What will you decide? Read After and find out!

The Unwritten Rule by Elizabeth Scott

Breaking the friendship code..., May 8, 2010

This review is from: The Unwritten Rule (Hardcover)

Before you read further, go buy Scott's novel Living Dead Girl -- now there's a novel that will appeal to YA readers everywhere.

I'm not sure why most of the reviewers think this book was so great. To me, it seemed such a cliché of bad friendship, high school, and the mean person getting her comeuppance. Frankly, I can only imagine that the positive reviews from the book are either from women who have "stolen" their best friend's boyfriend or from those who wish they could. The justification for Sarah and Ryan getting together seems to be that Brianna was the "bad friend" who put Sarah down. I am not buying into that whole cliché that Brianna got what she deserved. Sarah was not a good, honest friend to her. Sure Brianna had lots of issues -- and her parents were also portrayed as very one-dimensional as were all the characters in this novel -- but was she deserving of her boyfriend and her so called best friend going behind her back? What prevented them from being upfront and honest from the beginning? Immaturity. I had no respect for either.

There's a reason for this "unwritten rule" among girlfriends, and a code that exists because of the potential for ruining friendships and destroying long held trust between girls who've been together long before any boy came on the scene. I'm staunchly on the side of "if your best friend dated him, he's off limits forever" position.

In this novel, Scott makes Brianna so bad that it sort of ends up justifying Sarah's cheating on her friend and taking her boyfriend. And why, if Ryan did like Sarah so much, did he go out with Brianna in the first place AND why didn't he break up with her long before the 2 month anniversary. His total passivity and weakness make him a totally unappealing male character -- what? he can't help himself when enveloped into Brianna's life? Please. It's insulting to teenage boys everywhere -- they can't choose who they go out with and they go out with a girl when they like another?

I think the author took liberties with an old tired plot line -- and I was sorely disappointed in this totally predictable teen romance novel that rationalizes and excuses dishonest behavior. I think that the discriminating young adult novel reader will see through this thin device and the "happy ending" that has broken an "unwritten rule"...I would still advise girls to stay away from their best friend's boyfriend.

Let me know what you think!!

Ms C.

Ana Stock's Book Review

Love Story

by Erich Segal

An oldie but goodie; this book focuses on a modern theme very pungently: should two young individuals give in on their dreams (i.e. living in Paris) to live a life of love and happiness, and is young love true love? Often teenage relationships are seen by adults as immature and insignificant, after all how does a teen know what true love feels like? Oliver and Jenny had no idea that one night sparked by a snide comment and a quickly pungent response would ever turn into a life in love and marriage. Oliver was born into a comfortable home, to say the least; his family had money and he was a hockey jock at Harvard. Jenny was his exact opposite: music major, and librarian at the Radcliffe library where Oliver went to do research. He preferred the Radcliffe library because it was so much easier to find what he was looking for, but he didn’t go into the library that night to find Jenny, it just so happened that the little snot was working when he asked for help. He almost feels obligated to ask her out but ends up thoroughly enjoying his encounter. After some time and many hockey games that ended in the hospital, he decided that it was time to ask his nerd to marry him. His family disproves, but he does not let that get in the way of their love. She gives up her dream to live in Paris for the sake of their relationship but it was totally worth it because neither could focus on anything but each other. They, like any newly weds, they had little to no money, if only she would have followed her dream right? Wrong, she would have found herself incapable of living the life of a Parisian musician after an awful discovery. Their marriage was strong even when the hand of God seemed to be crushing down on them and tragedy struck. It was in sorrow that they found strength in love. In the end a love is lost and one is rekindled. Nonetheless, both loves were of great importance and illustrated the human capacity for love.