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When her mom inherits an old, crumbling mansion, Seda’s almost excited to spend the summer there. The grounds are beautiful and it’s fun to explore the sprawling house with its creepy rooms and secret passages. Except now her mom wants to renovate, rather than sell the estate—which means they're not going back to the city…or Seda's friends and school. As the days grow shorter, Seda is filled with dread. They’re about to be cut off from the outside world, and she’s not sure she can handle the solitude or the darkness it brings out in her. Then a group of teens get stranded near the mansion during a blizzard. Seda has no choice but to offer them shelter, even though she knows danger lurks in the dilapidated mansion—and in herself. And as the snow continues to fall, what Seda fears most is about to become her reality… Discussion:                                                                                                 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ⭐ Of course, they don't see the one detail th

Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep. He’ll follow you home, and he won’t let you sleep. Who are the Sawkill Girls? Marion: the new girl. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find. Zoey: the pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is. Val: the queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives, a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies. Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight… until now. Discussion:                                                              

Albertalli and Silvera's  What If It's Us  showcases the love story of two boys Arthur and Ben and their many dates and adventures located in New York. An enthusiastic and nerdy Georgia-native, Arthur is head over heels over the bustle of the city and its many attractions, particularly Broadway's musicals and this new guy Ben. Although Yale-bound Arthur was initially focused on gaining experience from his internship at his mother's law firm, he cannot help but become entranced by the Ben from the post office.  Cutest boy ever. Maybe it's the hair or the freckles or the pinkness of his cheeks. And I say this as someone who's never noticed another person's cheeks in my life. But his cheeks are worth noticing. So, that's our first description of Ben, a boy from Puerto-Rican descent who is grieving his recent break up with his ex Hudson. Left with a box of gifts and previous stuff from this relationship, Ben visits the post office to deliver and finally remo

Jason has a problem.  He doesn’t remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. Apparently she’s his girlfriend Piper, his best friend is a kid named Leo, and they’re all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for “bad kids.” What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea―except that everything seems very wrong. Piper has a secret.  Her father has been missing for three days, and her vivid nightmares reveal that he’s in terrible danger. Now her boyfriend doesn’t recognize her, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, she, Jason, and Leo are whisked away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood. What is going on? Leo has a way with tools.  His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Seriously, the place beats Wilderness School hands down, with its weapons training, monsters, and fine-looking girls. What’s troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper’s gone missing. Weirdest

Hello, and back again! Long time no write, but I also didn't read that many books while I was completing my Bachelor's. Now, as a graduate (woohoo!) and a new adult (wah!), I thought it was the perfect to revamp the blog - especially when my brother read more than me. This blog should really be his by now, then! 😎 Anyway, it's no secret that I am a fan of Rick Riordan's written conquests of "Percy Jackson and friends". Stories of the great Greek Olympians and Roman Gods have been told via spoken and written word for eons, so it's only right that I interrogate my brother based on the interesting renditions of these classic tales! I read The Hidden Oracle and The Dark Prophecy , or respectively Books 1 and 2 of The Trials of Apollo series, four or five years ago. I have yet to read the third book, The Burning Maze , which brings me great tears when I look at my (newly and) gloriously organized shelf. School was... difficult...in my time management departme

Being recruited by the CIA to join a top-secret intelligence program should be the opportunity of a lifetime. For Issa, it's a shot at creating a new and better life for herself and her siblings. For clever con artist Harper, it's a chance to bury the secrets of her troubled past and make sure that those secrets  stay  buried. But for Owen--honor student, star quarterback, and computer-hacking genius--it sounds like a trap. He's right.  Owen discovers that instead of auditioning for the CIA, they've all been tricked by a multibillion-dollar tech company into creating the ultimate computer virus. It's called Phantom Wheel, and it's capable of hacking anyone on Earth, anywhere, at any time. And thanks to six teenagers, it's virtually unstoppable.  Horrified by what they've done, the hackers must team up to stop the virus before the world descends into chaos. But working together is easier said than done, especially as the lines start to blur between tea

Tiger is a very lucky kid: she has a monster living under her bed. Every night, Tiger and Monster play games until it’s time for lights out. Of course, Monster would never try to scare Tiger—that’s not what best friends do. But Monster needs to scare someone…it’s a monster, after all. So while Tiger sleeps, Monster scares all of her nightmares away. Thanks to her friend, Tiger has nothing but good dreams. But waiting in the darkness is a nightmare so big and mean that Monster can’t fight it alone. Only teamwork and a lot of bravery can chase this nightmare away. In this charming graphic novel for young readers, cartoonist Emily Tetri proves that unlikely best friends can be an unbeatable team, even against  the scariest monsters. Discussion: 5/5 stars Everyone experiences nightmares throughout one's life. Even when you are little, you can have a nightmare that causes you to wake up with cold sweats and screaming bloody murder. I have always endured nightmares about college

When a letter that was never meant to be seen by anyone draws high school senior Evan Hansen into a family's grief over the loss of their son, he is given the chance of a lifetime: to belong. He just has to stick to a lie he never meant to tell, that the notoriously troubled Connor Murphy was his secret best friend. Suddenly, Evan isn't invisible anymore--even to the girl of his dreams. And Connor Murphy's parents, with their beautiful home on the other side of town, have taken him in like he was their own, desperate to know more about their enigmatic son from his closest friend. As Evan gets pulled deeper into their swirl of anger, regret, and confusion, he knows that what he's doing can't be right, but if he's helping people, how wrong can it be? No longer tangled in his once-incapacitating anxiety, this new Evan has a purpose. And a website. He's confident. He's a viral phenomenon. Every day is amazing. Until everything is in danger of unraveling and

It's 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado--until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan. Haruko and Margot meet at the high school in Crystal City, a "family internment camp" for those accused of colluding with the enemy. The teens discover that they are polar opposites in so many ways, except for one that seems to override all the others: the camp is changing them, day by day and piece by piece. Haruko finds herself consumed by fear for her soldier brother and distrust of her father, who she knows is keeping something from her. And Margot is doing everything she can to keep her family whole as her mother's health deteriorates and her rational, patriotic father becomes a man who distrusts America and fraternizes with Nazis. With everything around them falling apart, Margot and Haruko find solace in their