Croak by Gina Damico

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Lex is a little bit wild…ok she is a serious DELINQUINT!  Even she doesn’t know why she keeps getting into fights and hurting people.  Her parents have had enough so she is sent to live with her weird uncle for the summer.  A summer of shearing sheep and milking cows should fix her right up.  Only that’s not what her uncle does for a living.  Lex is soon working for him and she finds herself in a strange new world with different rules and danger. 

The book is about reapers (scythe and all).  It kind of reminded me of the show Dead Like Me so I checked it out at the library.  Lex starts out as a character I would not want to know, but as the story goes on I found myself being pulled in.  The end is sad and unusual so I hope they do another book to wrap it all up.  I would recommend this book for guys and girls who like dark humor. 

Rage by Jackie Morse Kessler

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Missy has a terrible secret. She cuts herself to let out all of the bad stuff she feels. She thinks she keeps it hidden so well, but when something brings her secret to light she’s not sure what to do. When her cutting brings her to the edge of death she is presented an offer. Die or become one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Now she is the Red Rider; she is War.


This is the second book by Jackie Morse Kessler. The first featured a girl who became famine. Both books are amazing. I usually hate books that deal with the sad depressing fact that people hurt themselves. For some reason the way Morse Kessler writes, the insight she brings to the topic, and the fact that death likes to wear the skin of a rock god I listened to when I was a teen all comes together in an incredibly readable story. I recommend these books to everyone. There is some implied sexual content and violence, but it’s nothing gratuitous. What happens in the story is what must happen to get the main character where she belongs. GREAT BOOK!

XVI by Julia Karr

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In this distant future when you turn 16 (XVI) you get a tattoo that lets everyone know you are of age to become sexually active. You are safe until you hit the age of 16. Once you are sixteen you are now officially a “sexteen”. Health class is for girls too learn how to attract a guy, and all of the magazines are training you to look and act a certain way so that guys will want to have sex with you. Nina is fifteen and she is not looking forward to turning sixteen. She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She just wants to get good enough grades so that she can go to a good college and get out of being a low income and low class person. Only the upper class people in society get to choose what happens to them. When something tragic happens in her family she is trying to save her sister from a horrible fate and protect herself.

The idea for the book is interesting. It does a good job of illustrating that not all teen girls are boy crazy. That said I didn’t like the book. I usually love a dystopian future story, but this one did nothing for me. The book ended leaving lots of questions, the characters where kind of one dimensional (except for the grandmother) and overall it left me feeling flat. That’s just my opinion. There is a little romance, kissing, but the book is for 14 and up based on all of the talk about being a “sexteen” and the truth about what happens to some of the girls in the book.

Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves

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Kit and Fancy are sisters living in a strange town.  They are outcasts because their father is the Bonesaw Killer.  He is a serial killer who is on death row, while the girls and their mother live in the same small town they have always been in.  The sisters are their father's daughter, and soon they give into the same dark desires that their father indulged in.  Are they bad people because they love blood?  As the sisters discover who they are, they face dangers like bad guys, good boys, and the truth about what they do.

This book is Dexter meets Sweet Valley High.  Sisters ,who on top of dealing with being teenagers and discovering what boys are all about, are also facing a father on death row and their own dark desires for revenge and blood.  What's a burgeoning serial killer to do?  The town that they live in, although in the regular world, is strange and filled with mysterious monsters.  The blood and guts are a little overwhelming, especially in the beginning of the book.  After a while I got used to the gore and really started to enjoy the story.  It feels wrong to cheer for the killers, but in this crazy town they are the lesser of the evils.   I love the book cover and I would recommend the book to more mature teen readers who don't mind a little cursing, romance, blood and guts.

The Turning Book 1: What Curiosity Kills by Helen Ellis

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“Don’t worry Kitty, There’s no such thing as vampires.”  This is a great opening line for a book...What follows is Mary’s story.  When the stray cat brushes her legs with his tail,, and she starts to sprout orange fur, she knows that something about her is different.  When Nick, the super hot guy from school, tries to explain everything to her, she is exposed to the dangerous world of stray cats and New York back alleys.  Twilight fans will like the undercurrent of romance, and girls will like the varied strong female characters.  Fans of the Erin Hunter Warriors Series and everyone who likes felines will like this take on cat fiction.  

This was an interesting book.  The end was fun and a little cute.  This book is a quick and interesting read.  I loved Ms. Whiskers and all of the librarians.  It seems like this will be a series, since this one is called “Book 1”.