Four series I love came to an end this year. Two I’m okay with; one I’m uncertain about, ONE I AM IN COMPLETE DENIAL ABOUT YES JESSICA DAY GEORGE I AM LOOKING AT YOU. Although I am very sad (and in denial, DON’T LOOK AWAY WHEN I AM TALKING TO YOU, JESSICA), fortunately for me [...]

So of course I’d heard of Octavian Nothing. But it was just one of those books (two volumes, actually, but really one book, in my mind) that I’d never gotten around to reading. But I’ve been catching up on John Green’s archives after going crazy for his Looking for Alaska, and I took what he [...]

Oh, unreliable narrators, how I love you. LIAR’s protagonist, Micah, is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and I have been blown away by her.
I can’t tell you much about this book, because just about anything I say will be a spoiler. I’m not going to tell you much more than the jacket does. Micah tells us [...]

I bought Looking for Alaska at a recent book festival because it had a nice shiny round gold Printz Award sticker on the cover that gleamed up at me invitingly from the rows of books on the table. At the cash register, two college-aged cashiers, a boy and a girl, gasped in unison, “We love [...]

Sometimes, an “issue” book is simply an “issue” book.  The protagonist is a cutter.  On drugs.  Pregnant.  Homeless.  Abused.  Et cetera.  The book revolves entirely around said issue, and things progress much in the same manner as an after-school special (which, come to think of it, do they even make those anymore?).  These books often [...]

Secrets are, by nature, phenomenally interesting.  (Also, they’re far better when they belong to someone else and you overhear them.)  It’s why we love James Bond and Alex Rider and Sydney Bristow and Jason Bourne…secrets are their livelihood.  It’s also why we love novels, because the act of reading fiction in itself is a form [...]

(I wish this review was better timed, as this book takes place in the summer and was in fact published in May, but I love camp books year-round and I hope some of you do too.)
Ah, camp books. How I love you!
Sam’s best friend Mal is revolting head over disgusting heels in love for the [...]

Several years back, a certain bookseller named Melissa grabbed my arm and said, “Sarah!  You’ve got to read this!  Now!”  She handed me the galley for THE WARRIOR HEIR, and I put it on my to-be-read pile.  As usual, Melissa was dead-on.  From the moment I started WARRIOR HEIR, I knew this was an author [...]

There are days I go to collect the mail, and rather than the usual stack of bills, it’s all requests from charities.  Children’s charities, health-related charities, feminist charities, religious charities.  Each one is deserving, and each one shows real kindness to real people that I will never be able to help with my own two [...]

note from Melissa: it’s not so obvious who’s writing each review here, because I’m using this crappy template that I can’t adjust and haven’t had a chance to meddle with a better one.  Each post is tagged at the bottom with the author’s name. The majority are by me, but they’re not all by me, [...]