Review: Struck

Struck

by Jennifer Bosworth

 

Book Description:

Mia Price is a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.

Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.

Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.

 

Review:

This was a cool book. The way that Mia was addicted to being struck by lightning was original, creepy, and totally compelling to read about.

This is a post-apocalyptic book...sort-of...at the beginning, only Los Angeles is really affected. Well, decimated in reality. However, the leaders of two different and warring cults are both claiming that another storm is coming...one that will cause an earthquake that will devestate the entire world!

Mia was a very intriguing main character. She was tough, used to having to provide for her brother and somewhat catatonic mother... but she also had hints of vulnerability. She admits to her addiction and tries to fight it.

I also really liked some of the secondary characters. I felt like they were very defined. You knew who they were. That also became a fault of the book in one sense... there was a revelation about the real identity of one character that was not surprising, at all. I still very much enjoyed the twist, but it wasn't really that shocking.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one and look forward to more from this author. Though not the best in the genre recently, this had a refreshing new twist that made it stand out for me! 

Review: Tall Story

Tall Story

by Candy Gourlay

Book Description:

Andi is short. And she has lots of wishes. She wishes she could play on the school basketball team, she wishes for her own bedroom, but most of all she wishes that her long-lost half-brother, Bernardo, could come and live in London where he belongs.

Then Andi's biggest wish comes true and she's minutes away from becoming someone's little sister. As she waits anxiously for Bernardo to arrive from the Philippines, she hopes he'll turn out to be tall and just as crazy as she is about basketball. When he finally arrives, he's tall all right. Eight feet tall, in fact—plagued by condition called Gigantism and troubled by secrets that he believes led to his phenomenal growth.

Review:

I hadn't been sure I would like this story, but it was actually a very touching, almost folk-story feeling tale.

I loved both Bernardo and Andi in different ways. He was a wonderful boy, who just happened to grow 8 feet tall, and had to deal with how that affected how all the people around him viewed him. Andi was fiesty, loyal, and incredibly impatient to be independent...and yet, she loved her brother without reservation.  Their family loyalty was amazing to read about!

With a slight touch of "magic" and a great, loving family, this turned out to be a great read! I recommend it if you like real life family stories, folk tales, or even just books about basketball!


Review: My Name is Not Easy

My Name is Not Easy
by Debby Dahl Edwardson

Book Description:
My name is not easy. My name is hard like ocean ice grinding the shore . . . Luke knows his Iñupiaq name is full of sounds white people can’t say. So he leaves it behind when he and his brothers are sent to boarding school hundreds of miles away from their Arctic village. At Sacred Heart School, students—Eskimo, Indian, White—line up on different sides of the cafeteria like there’s some kind of war going on. Here, speaking Iñupiaq—or any native language—is forbidden. And Father Mullen, whose fury is like a force of nature, is ready to slap down those who disobey. Luke struggles to survive at Sacred Heart. But he’s not the only one. There’s smart-aleck Amiq, a daring leader— if he doesn’t self-destruct; Chickie, blond and freckled, a different kind of outsider; and small, quiet Junior, noticing everything and writing it all down. They each have their own story to tell. But once their separate stories come together, things at Sacred Heart School—and the wider world—will never be the same.

Review:
There were parts of this book I really enjoyed. I thought the characters were well drawn and I learned a lot about Alaskan culture during the Cold War. I had no idea that Eskimos and other native tribes were all thrown together in schools far from their own homes. 

I did feel, though, like this book was disjointed and so I had trouble sticking with it. There were a lot of major, important events that happened to the kids in this book and they happened over several years...but I couldn't really keep track of the time that was passing in the book.  It just didn't quite work for me.