Pivot Point

I am officially in trouble. For the past 10 years, I haven't really had to read everything my kids read. They have stuck to Juvenile and for the most part, that's been fine. There is of course, the occasional outlier.

When at the library this past week with my girls, my eldest perused the Juvenile section and with frustrated angst, asked me if she could look at the YA section. Her words exactly. "The YA section". My life reading adult books is now over.

I've read a lot of YA. I think it's a pretty great genre. Much of it is not, however, appropriate for 10 year olds.

Pivot Point is one of those books that's ALMOST appropriate, but not. Maybe in another 2-3 years.

It is, however, a good YA novel. I loved the concept and the writing was also great. It could (and should) have actually been turned into a series.

It's about a secret city in the mountains near Texas where people lived who have special abilities. Telepathic, telekinetic, time manipulators, etc. Norms (those normal people living outside this community who don't have any abilities) don't know about this place and don't know about special abilities. Pivot Point is about a high school girl, Addison, who comes into her own as it relates to her ability. When her parents tell her about some big changes coming up in her life, she uses her ability to see which choice she should make. Most of the book is about what Addie's optional futures are.

Overall, it's a great book and I have very little to complain about. And what critics I do have, are still pretty benign and positive. While this book does have a sequel, Split Second, this first book should have been made into a series. I would have loved more explanation on the abilities. More details of their lives living inside the compound.

But that's it. The characters were great, the plot was not anticipated, and the writing was interesting. Overall, a great book for mature 12 year olds, due to some sexual language and innuendos. However, the kids in general were respectful of their parents, kind to others, and there is no language in the book.

Because of Anya

Because of Anya is a great little find of a book. It's about a girl who has Alopecia Areata and doesn't want her classmates to know. It's a great book for elementary aged girls of any age to read.

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

This is an amazing book. I love the hard topics discussed like race, education, poverty, and community. Coming from an early childhood background, I appreciate any book that shows how your childhood affects you in ways you could never imagine. I love all the race relations and observations throughout. Jeff Hobbs isn't scared to make the difficult statements that could come across as racist at first. But once dug into deeper, you see it differently.

The biography is the best bio I've ever read. Hobbs does a great job in putting in facts and figures that matter to the overall story in such a way as to not be overwhelming. I didn't know anything about the book when it was recommended to me. And while it wouldn't have ruined anything to know details, I was glad I didn't know. It was a great surprise to see the connection between the author and Robert Peace.

I highly recommend this book to any and everyone 18 years and older.

Palace of Lies

This is the third book in Margaret Peterson Haddix's Palace Chronicles series. I've reviewed the first and second books.

So, the 13 princesses are ruling together when their enemy strikes again. Desmia is the main character in this book and she is having a hard time determining who is telling lies and who is on her side. This book in the series is good, but a little forced and not as good as the other two in the series. Very little violence and appropriate with adult themes, language, and sexual content for an elementary aged student.

Hacker

I loved this book. It's a YA novel about a girl, Nyah who is a prodigy hacker and in order to get hired by a big corporation, she hacks into their system. Once she presents the CEO with their own info, they hire her to fix their problems.

She and her friend hacked into Blakbox system and end up in a heap of trouble. The files they hacked ended up being illegal, so they sent a henchman to kill the girl.

At the same time, one her good friends, who also happens to be a genius, has advanced brain cancer and is trying to invent a machine to hack into his brain in hopes of changing the hard wire in there to fix the cancer. I know, this sounds a little dumb. Trust me, it's not.

It has very technical medical terminology and hacking terminology, so I got a little lost in that. But, that's part of what makes it a great book. The science fiction is believable because of all the details.

It's appropriate except, there is some violence. Nothing that a mature 4th grader can't handle.

Overall, a great book and I highly recommend this quick read.

This is Where We Live

This was an interesting book. I didn't like it at first, but then it got interesting and better as it went along. It's a good commentary on love and commitment, as the world sees it and how it should be; love as emotion versus love as commitment.

Claudia and Jeremy are a young married couple who are seeking their dreams in art and film in LA. Jeremy's past girlfriend, Aoki comes back into the picture and Jeremy has a choice to make. At first, I thought this was your typical run of the mill story of temptation. The kind that makes you want the affair to happen. The bad kind. But the book has more layers than that. It's not just a story of "do what feels right and good". It's about the definition of love and what it means to make sacrifices for someone else. It's about how people react when life doesn't go the way you foresaw it.

Best quote of the book was on page 308:

"Everyone pretends that their lives exist in a vacuum, she thought, but the truth is that our individual lives exist in an intimate relationship to the rest of the world.  Our actions have consequences in place we are too willfully blind to imagine. Everyone was interconnected after all and only now was the world waking up to that fact and realizing that this collectively self centered state of perpetual adolescence - the gimme gimme era- might actually be ethically flawed." 

I didn't enjoy the ending though. usually, I think books with question marks are great. This one, felt rushed and almost like the author just didn't have a good ending so she left it off. But overall, this is a good book.

Austenland

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Stupid book. But, I will admit that I wasn't tempted to put it down; I did want to finish it and see what happened.

It's about a woman who loves Darcy from Pride and prejudice so much that all other men fall short. She ends up going on a 3 week trip to Austenland - a resort where the women pretend to be in Austen's England. It was a weird book. But, sweet ending.

Fail by Shannon Hail. She should stick to YA.