Three Girls and Their Brother

Three Girls and Their Brother by Theresa Rebeck

About:They are the granddaughters of a famous literary critic, but that's not what makes them the new "It" girls. It's because they are flawlessly beautiful, and to top it all off they have stunning red hair. But mom and dad are two bad parents that aren't prepared to defend their children from the piranhas and sharks of the show business. The four siblings learn that despite their differences, wants, jealousies, and needs - all they have in the brutal world of being famous is each other.

Opinion: Some of the minor (and more important) characters in this book are unbelievable. Unbelievably stupid. Seriously, I wanted to throw myself into the story and shake some sense into them. The story had a very common "celebrity" situation: three beautiful girls and their rather more plain brother have crappy parents and are almost literally eaten alive by people who want to use them for their own selfish desires in the fashion industry. This aspect of the story I found a bit more reasonable and believable: The siblings must learn how to deal with some of the stupidest (yet most powerful) people in America while still getting themselves upped in the show biz. This is a fairly good book that goes through all four of the siblings' points of view. As the story progressed I began to think that "Man they are all really starting to sound the same..." but I realized that it wasn't that they sounded the same or that they all had the same personalities because those were all fairly distinctive, but it was that they were starting to actually become siblings that weren't just using each other. They were falling in love with each other (in one of the strangest and possibly most painful ways), and they were learning what family was and what it really meant. On a side note I really liked the two different covers so I'm putting up both.

Rating: 3 and 1/2

Sharp Teeth

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow

About: Werewolves are not a myth. They live on today in L.A., growing in numbers as they convince the lost and beaten to join their ranks, promising power and something more. Changing at will, these beasts are bent on domination...

Opinion: This book is in free verse, which, for those who don't know, is a form of poetry. And it somehow managed to work. When you think of poetry you generally aren't thinking about werewolves, violence, gangs, sex, drugs, and dogcatching, but somehow Toby Barlow manages to build a truly amazing story with poetry and it works brilliantly. Anything you have ever had against werewolves and free verse is forgotten. When I started reading it took a while to get into it, but once the book had me I was stuck. I wanted to keep reading and reading, living this strange world of words and monsters. One of the reviews on the inside cover from Nick Hornby (The Believer) captures how I feel about the book perfectly: "It's stomach-churningly violent in places (they don't mess around, werewolves, do they?), and tender, and satisfyingly complicated: there's an involved plot about rival gangs that lends the book a great deal of noir cool.... And it's as ambitious as any literary novel, because underneath all that fur, it's about identity, community, love death, and all those things we want out books to be about."

Rating: 4 and 1/2

The Musician's Daughter

The Musician's Daughter by Susanne Dunlap

About: Fifteen-year-old Theresa becomes entangled in a web of mystery when her father is discovered dead on Christmas Eve, his precious violin missing and a strange pendant around his neck. Theresa delves into her father's life searching for answers and is stunned to discover his secret life. Driven by love for her father, family, and a man she only thought she knew, she must finish what her father could not.

Opinion: This was really good. It takes place in eighteenth-century Vienna and is loaded with all the really good story stuff: romance, murder, music, mystery, lies, justice, deception... You know, the good stuff. The story really races along the whole time and I was running along with Theresa, totally eager to find out what the heck happened and was still going on. Susanne Dunlap did a really good job with the plot. It was complicated - very realistic situations - and you actually had to think through what was happening (which actually sort of peeved me because I was so used to just racing along with the story but hey, it was worth it). The Musician's Daughter is well worth your time.

Rating: 4

The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

About: Nobody Owens, or Bod, grows up in a graveyard raised by ghost parents and friends and a guardian who is neither dead nor alive. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard, but if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack, who has already killed Bod's family...

Opinion: This book was good. The characters were interesting and the story was constantly moving. The Graveyard Book was a nice change from all of the novels about girls and boys falling helplessly and hopelessly in love with all the wrong people, experimenting with drugs and such, or just teens struggling with volatile hormones (This is not to say that those novels can't be good. They can, but sometimes you need a change of pace). It was a fun read, but I feel it should be noted that it is geared toward younger people.

Rating: 3

Evermore

Evermore by Alyson Noel

About: A teenage girl, Ever, becomes a psychic after an accident kills the rest of her family. She moves to California with her aunt, and takes her ability to see people's auras, hear their thoughts, and know them through touch with her. In her new school she meets Damen, a boy who can silence the noise and random energy in her head. The problem is she cannot decipher him and she's falling helplessly in love with him.

My Opinion: It felt very twilight-y for a large portion of the beginning. Which is not to say that I didn't like this book or Twilight because I did. The characters were somewhat bland but Alyson Noel kept the story intriguing and mysterious. The writing was very good, and I was racing for the end, calculating how much longer I had to wait for Damen to be explained. And the end did not disappoint as the mysteries began to unravel and explanations were made, and the originality of the plot could came through. The beginning of The Immortals series was done quite nicely.

Rating: 3 and 1/2

The Only Alien on the Planet

The Only Alien on the Planet by Kristen B. Randle

About: A girl who moves to a new town and a new school, and there she finds a boy, mute by choice, who has never let anyone into his world. That's about to change...

My Opinion: This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is an all-time favorite that I have read at least five times. The characters grow as real people throughout the novel, the author never lets the reader lose the sense of how real this story is, yet I have never heard of such a thing happening in real life. It is very well-written and worth the read. It has important lessons of life, love, and the limitations and the unbelievable capabilities of the human mind.

Rating:5

Enter Three Witches

The book that I just finished this morning is Enter Three Witches by Caroline B. Cooney.

About: The book is based on Shakespeare's play "Macbeth". It follows the daughter of the Thane of Cawdor as she attempts to regain any hope of a future. This is seemingly impossible because her father who betrayed the King has been hanged.

My Opinion: I rather liked it. It wasn't revolting, but rather enjoyable. It wasn't stellar or life-changing, but a likable read.

Rating: 3