Thousand Words - Reviewed by Maggie Devero

Thousand Words by Jennifer Brown

Reviewed by Maggie Devero

Do you really believe it when people say that an electronically uploaded picture of yourself stays on the internet even after you think it's gone? That there's no privacy whatsoever? Ashleigh Maynard finds this out the hard way, after a pool party, a few drinks, and a bad decision. At the time, it had seemed a good idea...she missed her constantly preoccupied college boyfriend Kaleb, and it was a way to get his attention focused directly back on her. Unfortunately, this doesn't remain as intimate as Ashleigh had hoped and she is soon faced with sixty hours of community service for a crime she didn't realize she was technically committing. Through this scandal, both family and friends shy away from her and this unwanted connection to the whole problem. Only one person acts at all sympathetic to the scandal and even friendly to her, and this boy is doing community service for something she doesn't know. She struggles with accepting the outcome of the entire event, and learning to deal with it almost alone. During this time, Ashleigh truly learns that "a picture is worth a thousand words, but they don't tell the whole story."

When I first opened the book, and got an idea of the storyline, I honestly was expecting to lose all interest super quickly. A plot even slightly including high school love can be very unappealing when you hear about it day in and day out, both in real high school life and almost every other YA fiction book you pick up. As I pushed through though more chapters, it mostly moved past that topic, throwing in a few twists that at I personally didn't see coming. So I gave it three stars because it was overall a book that I'd enjoyed reading, but isn't anything that will stand out on its own in recent YA standards, nor something I would go back to read again. The author, Jennifer Brown, has also written a couple other books, called Hate List and Bitter End. The topics of those are more angsty than this one, which is the reason I preferred them over Thousand Words. Still, if you enjoy drama, and learning-to-cope-with-your-problems type books, then you will definitely like this one.

The Lying Game by Sara Shepard -- a review by Hope Austin

The Lying Game
by Sara Shepard
***

There are only two things Emma Paxton and Sutton Mercer have in common. They look exactly alike, and both want to find out who murdered Sutton. Sutton is a ghost, following Emma around, trying to make sense of what happened. Emma is a foster kid trying to survive the next school year with her hellish foster family. Through a series of of convoluted events, Emma ditches her Nevada foster family and winds up in Sutton's hometown of Tuscon, Arizona. Emma is instantly mistaken for Sutton and introduced to the lifestyle of the rich and fabulous. Even though Emma knows next to nothing about Sutton, she tries to adjust as best as she can. Although Sutton and Emma can't communicate, they both desperately try to find the answer to one question : Who was Sutton Mercer, and why would somebody want to kill her?

If you're going to read this book, you'll need to have a strong suspension of disbelief, or you'll be staring at the book saying, "You have got to be kidding me." Even so, it was a fun quick read. If you're looking for a book with a deep meaning, skip this one. However, if you just need to pass the time, this is a great book for that. I've said this before, but Sara Shepard knows how to keep a reader on the edge of their seat. What I really liked about it, though, was that it only bore a few similarities to Pretty Little Liars, so you know that Shepard isn't just a one-trick pony. I'll definitely be reading the next one in the series.

The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney -- a review by Hope Austin

The Mockingbirds
by Daisy Whitney
***stars
Alex Patrick is an aspiring pianist at Themis Academy, an ultra-elite boarding school. One morning she wakes up in a strange bed with only a fuzzy recollection of how she got there. As her memories recover, Alex has a shocking realization: she was date-raped. Luckily for her, she has options. She seeks out the help of the Mockingbirds, a To Kill a Mockingbird-inspired, for-the-students-by-the-students group that swears to deliver justice to all students who are wronged.

The author tries to combine the topic of rape with a thriller about vigilante students. It doesn't work. It seems like she wanted to write a story about the aftermath of a date rape, but didn't want anything to do with the trappings of the American legal system, so she made up her own. The story could easily have taken place without the Mockingbirds. That being said, the book does deliver a good (albeit heavy-handed) message about rape and society, specifically about how society sees rape victims.

Vibes -- a review by George Morejon

Vibes

Amy Kathleen Ryan

*** stars

Vibes starts with the main character, Kristi, telling the reader that she's a fat, ugly, unpopular girl that no one likes, who happens to be able to read minds. Her life at home sucks. She hates her mom and her dad abandoned them both. Her school's a total joke, being described as something I would call a new-age hippie experiment gone who-knows-where. Anyway the classes are a joke. She hates the popular crowd, but still can't help being attracted to her ex-best friend's brother, Gusty. Her only friend is one of the school's most unpopular kids, Jacob Flax, a real nerd. Isn't high school grand?

Things are going as well as they ever will until a new kid named Mallory shows up. He's a pimply ginger kid who gives off a dangerous feeling mental vibe, but Kristi's able to really connect with him. Between the feelings with her and Mallory, the character assessment program she has to do with Gusty (thanks to Jacob), and her dad coming home after 2 years of absence, she's got a lot to handle.

This book had a somewhat slow start. It wasn't really that exciting at all in the beginning. Just about the only thing good about it was Kristi's personality around the first third of the book. She was a total jerk-loner type, but she was different from a lot of other stereotypes I would think of for teenage girls. She matures (if you would view the way she changes "maturing") a lot over the novel into almost a different person. Personally I didn't like the change she made, but that's just me. There's a lot of stuff I had to skip over though, so read the book to find out everything. Okay, not everything, since this book has quite a few loose ends to it, but on the plus side there were some unexpected turns in it. I'd say about average time to read, maybe 10 hours. A little slow.