After reading a Sarah Dessen book, I always feel like I need to sit back and think about my own life and I how I can appreciate it more. Her writing makes me thoughtful. The Truth about Forever provoked the same reaction, and, as a bonus, it’s her most romantic book yet. Several years previously…
It’s hard to know what to say about a book that’s only 170 pages long. There’s not much room for character development and only minimal plotting – which effectively describes Putting Boys On The Ledge. With its “After School Special” feel, and its unconvincingly teenaged narrative voice, the book has little to recommend it. Blue…
The cover of They Wear What Under Their Kilts? has to be one of the cutest I¹ve ever seen. Better yet, its perfectly manicured hand mischievously lifting up the edge of a male’s kilt fits the light-hearted, outrageous tone of the story. Emily is the teen narrator and her story is told entirely via witty…
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of reading Nicole Burnham’s debut novel, Going to the Castle, and was pleasantly swept away into a modern day fairy tale. Since then I’ve felt that she was one of those great undiscovered treasures, and was excited to see her spreading her wings outside her Silhouette…
Who needs thigh-expanding hot chocolate when one can read My Life As A Snow Bunny? It’s a warm, feel-good book with just enough sweetness (minus the calories) to liven up a dreary winter day. Written in a chatty, first person style, the story is told by Jo Vincent, a pretty, playful, often sarcastic boy-crazy sixteen…
I seem to like books about the high school experience, despite having absolutely no desire to go back to my own adolescence. I think I enjoy them for the same reason some people love traditional regencies. Like Regency society, the social caste of high school is also rigid with prescribed rules that are known to…
Deanna Miller’s Sky Bounce isn’t easy to categorize. It has strong religious and moral undertones, and I’m almost tempted to call it an inspirational, except that it is firmly set in a highly original fantasy universe. It’s definitely a book for younger readers, and its protagonists are teenagers. Our narrator is an Alula girl named…
A Countess Below Stairs was the first Eva Ibbotson romance I ever read, and I’ve been an avid fan ever since. Why? Because her stories are so vivid. In A Countess Below Stairs, Anna Grazinsky, a White Russian in exile goes to work as a housemaid in a beautiful mansion called Meersham. The owner is…
It’s evident from the opening page of Miranda and the Warrior that we are dealing with a TSTL heroine. Annoyed because her father is “overprotective,” Miranda Thurston escapes from the fort her daddy commands as a U.S. Cavalry officer in order to visit a friend. Daddy is worried about Cheyenne raiding parties, but Miranda knows…
I couldn’t have been more thrilled when my daughter’s fifth grade English class was assigned Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. This wonderfully clever fantasy, illustrated by Jules Feiffer, was written in 1961 and I believe it’s never been out of print. I first read the book in junior high school on a friend’s recommendation and…
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