Cracked up to be review by Kaitlin Kimbrell

cracked up to be

by Courtney Summers

When you're perfect with everything you do people tend to want to be like you. Everybody body has a desire to be perfect, but what is the breaking point?

For Parker Fadley being perfect was all she knew. She was the perfect cheerleader, had the perfect popular boyfriend, the perfect best friend, and the perfect grades. Parker was the most popular girl at St. Peter's High, until that one night. That is when perfect Parker became the perfect mess. Nobody really knew why Parker started to come to school drunk, quit as captain of the cheerleading team, broke up with her boyfriend, and started to hate everyone. What happen to perfect Parker? Did she find her breaking point? Can you just not ever stay perfect like you think?

This book is not in my usual choices, but I really liked it. The struggles that Parker goes through actually shows what many people my age might be going through too. This put me in Parker shoes and made me think 'what would I have done if I would have been her?' I don't know what I would have done and I don't know who I would have wanted on my side, if anyone at all. This book did make me realize though that nobody is as perfect as we think.



Better Than Yesterday reviewed by Kaitlin Kimbrell

better than yesterday

by Robyn Schneider

"Sometimes, when we are not looking for a solution, but rather a different way of viewing the problem, it is permissible, even appropriate, to break the rules." Skylar, Marissa, Blake, and Charley became best friends’ freshman year and had together created a group called the Hell Risers, but much has happened since then. Skylar became known as the dirty girl, Marissa was more of just a nerdy girl, Charley had to please his parents with everything he did, and Blake left Hilliard. Now, however, Blake is back and wants to put the old gang of Hell Risers back together again. Since Blake has been gone though he has changed too much and they are scared that something might happen to him, plus they need to keep a secret from him so he won't hate Skylar. Will they stay best friends? Will they fight for what they believe? Will they just forget about each other and never look back? What will happen? To find out read the book.

This book was good! I enjoyed it and it was a quick read because of how interesting it was. There was such a mix of feelings and everything that happened will make you love each character. I honestly loved this book and am thinking about looking into this author for more books. Love and scandal all in one, what could be better? This book really kept me intrigued the whole time and I am glad I chose it to read.

Shift - a review by George Morejon

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury

**** stars

Shift is a book about 2 boys who travel across America, from West Virginia to Oregon, on bicycles after they graduate high school. Chris is the responsible of one of the two, planning out everything they pack up and managing it all. Win, Chris' friend, is the irresponsible kid that gets himself in trouble all the time.

They're having a great time on their ride at first. The ride's feeling good instead of hurting, they're doing crazy fun things like jumping into every body of water they see, and they're camping out under the stars most nights. One day they even meet the nicest people on a farm out in rural Montana and spend a night there. It sounds like a great trip, and it is, but Win goes missing at the end and nobody knows where he's gone. Chris is just starting school now, and has to deal with Win's overbearing father threatning him, along with FBI agents asking about what happened to Win.

I thought this was a good book that only took ~4 hours to read. The storytelling is broken up with a chapter of current time (school, FBI agents) and a chapter of their trip together over the summer. At first I didn't like that, but after about 10 chapters it really started to grow on me and it made both parts better. I got a feeling that both of them discovered som new things about themselves, but taken in a somewhat unusual way. I was always guessing what happened to Win through the whole book.