Weekly Reads: The Cheerleaders

The Cheerleaders is a teen book that I heard a lot of buzz about before it came out. I had an e-ARC of it, but I didn't get through it before the book was published. I don't read a ton of mysteries, but this one seemed up my alley and a possible contender for the YA book list for the state, and I serve on that committee. I have never read anything by Kara Thomas, so I was excited when my library finally got the book in.

It was a PAGE TURNER. I thought I had things figured out a few times, and I was really sucked into how everything unfolded. A great mystery for teens and adults who like to read YA.

My rating: 4.5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

There are no more cheerleaders in the town of Sunnybrook.

First there was the car accident—two girls gone after hitting a tree on a rainy night. Not long after, the murders happened. Those two girls were killed by the man next door. The police shot him, so no one will ever know why he did it. Monica’s sister was the last cheerleader to die. After her suicide, Sunnybrook High disbanded the cheer squad. No one wanted to be reminded of the girls they lost.

That was five years ago. Now the faculty and students at Sunnybrook High want to remember the lost cheerleaders. But for Monica, it’s not that easy. She just wants to forget. Only, Monica’s world is starting to unravel. There are the letters in her stepdad’s desk, an unearthed, years-old cell phone, a strange new friend at school. . . . Whatever happened five years ago isn’t over. Some people in town know more than they’re saying. And somehow Monica is at the center of it all.

There are no more cheerleaders in Sunnybrook, but that doesn’t mean anyone else is safe. 

Weekly Reads: Little and Lion

Little & Lion is another book that has popped up on my Printz radar and was one that sounded really interesting. I've never read anything by Brandy Colbert, so I was excited to dive into this one. The story itself was really fast paced and had serious moments of sweetness, and I really appreciated a main character who is bisexual. I love that more and more books are featuring lesbian and gay characters; that did not exist when I was a teen, but I love even more when different populations are represented, in this case bisexual/questioning. I just know that the more teens who can get their hands on books that make them feel like weird/strange, and more okay, the better off we'll be. That's the librarian in me talking, obvs. Anyway, I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it. 

My rating 4.5 stars

summary from goodreads:  

When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she isn't sure if she'll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (along with her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support.

But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new...the same girl her brother is in love with. When Lionel's disorder spirals out of control, Suzette is forced to confront her past mistakes and find a way to help her brother before he hurts himself--or worse. 

Weekly Reads: Long Way Down

Anything John Reynolds writes is gold to me. It took our library forever to get this Long Way Down in, and as soon as they did, I dropped everything to read it. I flew through the book, it's written in prose so it's super fast, but it also has you on the edge of the seat waiting to see what is going to happen. Drop whatever you're doing and read it now.

My rating: 5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator. 

Weekly Reads: Paper Towns

I'm probably the last John Green fan on the planet to just read Paper Towns, but here we are. I love his books SO MUCH that I didn't want to speed read my way through all of them, and then just be stuck in this world where there isn't another one for me to read. I had tried to listen to this on audio several years ago, and could not get into the narrator, but I chose it for an upcoming book club meeting.

I could not put it down, it was so great, and had a really good mystery element. I love John Green.

My rating: 4 stars

Summary from Goodreads:

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer Q gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew.

Weekly Reads: When Dimple Met Rishi

When Dimple Met Rishiis a teen book by debut author Sandy Menon. My book group chose it to read, so I picked it up. It was a really sweet love story, and I enjoyed it a lot. My friend likened it to Stephanie Perkins, and I have to agree with that, also a read-alike for fans of Sarah Dessen. Nice, sweet teen read. Check it out.

My rating: 4 stars.

Summary from Goodreads:

Dimple Shah has it all figured out. With graduation behind her, she’s more than ready for a break from her family, from Mamma’s inexplicable obsession with her finding the “Ideal Indian Husband.” Ugh. Dimple knows they must respect her principles on some level, though. If they truly believed she needed a husband right now, they wouldn’t have paid for her to attend a summer program for aspiring web developers…right?

Rishi Patel is a hopeless romantic. So when his parents tell him that his future wife will be attending the same summer program as him—wherein he’ll have to woo her—he’s totally on board. Because as silly as it sounds to most people in his life, Rishi wants to be arranged, believes in the power of tradition, stability, and being a part of something much bigger than himself.

The Shahs and Patels didn’t mean to start turning the wheels on this “suggested arrangement” so early in their children’s lives, but when they noticed them both gravitate toward the same summer program, they figured, Why not?

Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways.

Weekly Reads: Literally

I was really excited to pick up Literallyespecially after it was compared to the movie Stranger Than Fiction. It was a really fast read and I was excited to see how it would finish up, but I was slightly underwhelmed with the ending.

My rating: 3.5 stars

Goodreads Summary:

A girl realizes her life is being written for her in this unique, smart love story that is Stranger Than Fiction for fans of Stephanie Perkins.

Annabelle’s life has always been Perfect with a capital P. Then bestselling young adult author Lucy Keating announces that she’s writing a new novel—and Annabelle is the heroine. 

It turns out, Annabelle is a character that Lucy Keating created. And Lucy has a plan for her. 

But Annabelle doesn’t want to live a life where everything she does is already plotted out. Will she find a way to write her own story—or will Lucy Keating have the last word? 

The real Lucy Keating’s delightful contemporary romance blurs the line between reality and fiction, and is the perfect follow-up for readers who loved her debut Dreamology, which SLJ called, “a sweet, quirky romance with appealing characters.”

Weekly Reads: The Female of the Species

The Female of the Speciesis one of the last books I read leading up to the Printz award. It had stayed off of my radar until a month out to the awards so I had to scramble to read it. It was INTENSE. Holy cow. Total Dexter vibes, and I loooooved me some Dexter. I don't know if it'll walk away with any awards (this'll probably post after the awards, so maybe I'll edit to include if I was wrong....maybe) but it is an intense gritty read that teens with devour. (It was fairly graphic with some depictions of rape culture, so if that's a trigger for you, read with caution.)

My rating: 4.5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it. When her older sister, Anna, was murdered three years ago and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best. The language of violence.

While her crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people, even in her small hometown. She relegates herself to the shadows, a girl who goes unseen in plain sight, unremarkable in the high school hallways.

But Jack Fisher sees her. He’s the guy all other guys want to be: the star athlete gunning for valedictorian with the prom queen on his arm. Guilt over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered hasn’t let him forget Alex over the years, and now her green eyes amid a constellation of freckles have his attention. He doesn’t want to only see Alex Craft; he wants to know her.

So does Peekay, the preacher’s kid, a girl whose identity is entangled with her dad’s job, though that does not stop her from knowing the taste of beer or missing the touch of her ex-boyfriend. When Peekay and Alex start working together at the animal shelter, a friendship forms and Alex’s protective nature extends to more than just the dogs and cats they care for.

Circumstances bring Alex, Jack, and Peekay together as their senior year unfolds. While partying one night, Alex’s darker nature breaks out, setting the teens on a collision course that will change their lives forever.