Posts Categorized: walker

Book Review- Between

26 Jan, 2012 by in walker 1 comment

Between
by Jessica Warman
Hardcover, 464 pages
Publication Date: August 2nd 2011
by Walker & Company
ISBN   0802721826
Book Source: BEA
3 Stars


Elizabeth Valchar-pretty, popular, and perfect-wakes up the morning after her eighteenth birthday party on her family’s yacht, where she’d been celebrating with her six closest friends. A persistent thumping noise has roused her. When she goes to investigate, what she finds will change everything she thought she knew about her life, her friends, and everything in between. As Liz begins to unravel the circumstances surrounding her birthday night, she will find that no one around her, least of all Liz herself, was perfect-or innocent. Critically acclaimed author Jessica Warman brings readers along on a roller-coaster ride of a mystery, one that is also a heartbreaking character study, a touching romance, and ultimately a hopeful tale of redemption, love, and letting go.

Review by ephrielle:
A lie is a powerful thing.  An in depth look into why you should tell the truth.  Guilt destroys all it touches.

An extremely intense story.  There were several times I just wanted to put this book down and walk away.  Everything seems so harmless and normal at first look.  But as the truth starts to leak out one fragment at a time what once appeared normal takes on a decidedly darker aspect.  This poor girl shouldn’t have had to face what she did.  We can’t pick those things that will happen to us, only what we will do about them.  I feel like this book perfectly illustrates almost worst case scenario what could happen if you tell a lie to cover something up.  I could hear my mother’s voice of warning.  “Be careful the friends you pick since they will have great influence over you.” “Don’t drink.”  But most of all this book illustrates how we teach our children.  When you do something wrong don’t tell.  You don’t want to get in trouble.  It should be more along the lines of fess up so you can get the consequences over with.  If not it could get way worse.  And it seemed that every time she tried to reach out for help no one was there or willing. The communication barriers between adults and teenagers are far more vast than they should be.  It causes such trial to the younger generation that we aren’t there for them when we need to be.

Content: intense swearing, nudity, underage drinking, anorexia, and exploitation of minors including pornography


About the author: Jessica Warman is the author of Breathless, which received three starred reviews and was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and Where the Truth Lies. The idea for Between came from an incident in her childhood, when a local boy went missing after a party on a yacht (he was eventually found, alive).


Find more about author Jessica Warman on Goodreads/ Twitter/ Website

Book Review- Fracture

07 Jan, 2012 by in megan miranda, walker, YA fiction 3 comments

Fracture
by Megan Miranda
Hardcover, 272 pages
Expected Publication Date: January 17th 2012
by Walker and Company
ISBN 0802723098
Book Source: BEA
5 Stars

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine

-despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she’s far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can’t control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she’s reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy’s motives aren’t quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

For fans of best-sellers like Before I Fall and If I Stay, this is a fascinating and heart-rending story about love and friendship and the fine line between life and death.

 (This is really intense.  It helps set the mood for the book.)

Review by ephrielle:
A book that really delves into what is life and why are we living it?  Who is to define it?  And most importantly don’t assume you are always right as their are two sides to any coin.  Who should live and who should die isn’t such an easy question.  Delaney is a miracle by all standards.  She cheated death, or did she?  In the days following her ordeal she will have to discover life all over again and decide what to do about it.

Phenomenal!  I love that this is so completely real.  That reality helps make this so much more tragic.  I can feel the emotions and completely understand them.  For instance, the relationship problems between Delaney and her best friend make complete sense.  In reality we “ruin” relationships all the time by saying or doing the wrong things.  It really does seem like something permanent.  When Delaney plunges head long into the deeper darker parts of her experience I felt as if I was in the same boat.  It is just written so convincingly.  I love that the author has taken something so real that I would normally balk at reading and softened the edges by adding something “other”, as she would put it.  It made it so much easier for me to put down my barriers and fully take in the many messages contained among the pages.  By far my favorite is how it ends.  When I first read the ending I accidentally skipped the second and third pages from the end.  I guess they were sticking.  I felt a bit let down.  On turning back I discovered two very crucial and perfect pages that made the book complete.  As with reality, there aren’t any concrete promises of happy endings.  Simply the author prescribes a strong dose of hope that leaves life feeling worth living. 

Content: some swearing, sexual tension and underage drinking

About the author: Megan is a scientist – turned – teacher – turned – stay-at-home-mom – turned – writer. She is not nearly as indecisive as she sounds. She lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, where she volunteers as an MIT Educational Counselor, does the mom thing by day, and writes by night. 


Find more about author Megan Miranda on Goodreads/ Twitter/ Website/ Facebook

Happy Release Day Giveaway- Between

02 Aug, 2011 by in book giveaway, walker 13 comments

Between
by Jessica Warman
447 pages
Published August 2nd 2011
by Walker Childrens
ISBN 0802721826

Elizabeth Valchar — pretty, popular and rich — wakes up the morning after her 18th birthday on the yacht where she’d been celebrating with her closest friends. A persistent thumping noise has roused her. When she goes to investigate, she finds her own drowned body is hitting the side of the boat. Liz is dead. She has no memory of what happened to her, and can only observe in horror the fallout of her death.

She’s also soon joined by Alex Berg, a quiet boy from her high school who was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The two keep each other company, floating in and out of memories and trying to piece together the details of what happened to each of them.

In her regular life, Liz was a runner. It wasn’t abnormal for her to run 8-10 miles per day. But as memories from closer to her death begin to surface, Liz finds that she’d been running much more than normal, and that she’d all but stopped eating. Liz’s mother, who died when Liz was nine, had battled with anorexia as well, and those around her worried that Liz was following in her mother’s footsteps. But something more sinister was consuming Liz from the inside out…

JESSICA WARMAN is also the author of Breathless, which received three starred reviews and was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and Where the Truth Lies. The idea for Between came from an incident in her childhood, when a local boy went missing after a party on a yacht (he was eventually found, alive). Visit her online at www.jessicawarman.com

To celebrate the book birthday of Between Fire and Ice is giving away one advanced reading copy to our readers. Fill out this form to enter. Must be 16 or older with a US mailing address.