Review: Break to You - Neal Shusterman , Debra Young, Michelle Knowlden - July 2024 There are books you finish and quietly set aside, and then there are books that stay lodged somewhere in your chest long after the final page. This is one of the latter. At its heart, this is an intense yet tender story of two teens, trapped in impossible circumstances and unjust systems, willing to risk everything for love, no matter the consequences. And honestly? It wrecked me in the best possible way. Adriana is simply trying to survive. Seven months at the Compass juvenile detention center - her plan is to keep her head down, do her time, get out. Her journal is her lifeline, the one place where her feelings can spill out without consequence. Until they aren't private anymore. Someone has read her words. And written back. That someone is Jon, a boy living on the other side of the gender-divided facility, and from that first stolen exchange, something quietly electric begins to build between t...

Review: Dance or Die - A.E Murphy and Xela Knight - December 2019 After reading and loving Naked or Dead, I just knew I had to read this book Dance or Die. I have to admit though I was hoping it would be just as good,   it, however, didn't quite hit the craziness of the first book. In saying that though it was still a very good read as we meet Mallory Newman aka Scandal Oaks. She has been shipped from home to juvie to a mental ward etc after she was convicted wrongfully of her cousin's murder. He was a victim of the School Sigil whom we knew of in the first book Naked or Dead. Scandal moves to the small town to live with Stanley and his wife Lane. It is the first time that Scandal has ever felt true love as they really care about her. Or is that just a show as Scandal learns in the second part of the book her connection to the smalltown? At the beginning, we also read as Scandal clashes with Presley and Carter - two of the school's hottest guys but by th...

Review: Bullied by the Baseball Captain - Book #1 Strathmore Reform - Jenni Sloane - July 2019 Our book Bullied by the Baseball Captain starts off with our main female character Amma Reiter out trick or treating with her friend, while out they come across Cole Heller and his thug gang wreaking havoc on the Baker's property. The police are then called and somehow Cole gets away and Amma is left looking like the troublemaker even though she is a good girl. We later learn that Amma's family are highly religious, trailer trash and her older brother Mason is in prison for a crime he didn't commit. They don't want Amma going down the same path as her brother so they apply for a scholarship for Amma to attend Strathmore Reform School. Amma receives the scholarship and hopes to keep her head down till graduation. Life at the school won't be easy as Cole Heller and Bennett Baker also attend Strathmore Reform and both have bully tendencies towards Amma. Late...

  Review: The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly - Stephanie Oakes - June 2015 Do you enjoy cult reads? I hadn't read a good one for a while, and this is a book that has been sitting on my kindle at least three years. Minnow Bly grew up in a cult under a prophet named Kevin. As Minnow got older, she discovered more about the outside world and started to question what she was being taught. When she is called up for being too curious, the prophet says that the Lord has spoken to them and that she is to become his latest wife. For Minnow, this is the worst outcome, and she disobeys his word. Her punishment results in her father chopping her hands off, and she is left with stubs. The book then jumps to Minnow being placed in Juvie as someone has burned down the cult and killed their leader and since she was found with blood on her, she is a suspect. Though the blood belongs to Jude - the outsider she fell in love with . He also grew up off the grid. This book fol...