Cadence is part of the group of Liars. Her family gets together each summer on their family's exclusive island and Cadence hangs out with the other Liars, her two cousins and one of their friends of a same age. When she was fifteen, Cady had a horrible accident and hit her head while she was out swimming. She can't remember anything so can't explain why she was in the ocean by herself and where her clothes were. Her mother keeps her away from the island the next summer but Cady wants to remember. The second summer Cady returns to the island hoping to find answers.
The family are rich and entitled. They have their own island with four cottages to spend the summer and the grandfather with all the money is getting old. All the sisters are fighting each other for the money and using their grandchildren to try and manipulate the father. Reading it makes you feel dirty and sad knowing that this shit is happening somewhere for real. The drama was a bit over the top for me though. I don't mind good family drama, I've read my share of Jodi Picoult books and enjoyed them, but this was on a whole other level. There wasn't really a character to ground the drama either. Cady was whiny and ridiculous and the other Liars weren't in the book enough for us to understand who they really were.
Plus, we never found out why there were called the "Liars"?
First Line: "Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family."
Rating:
(3.5/5)
Joe is a boy of 11 who has lived in a hospital room since he was 2 months old because he has no immune system to stop himself from getting sick. Joe only has a few things to keep him entertained: tv and video games, his laptop where he in touch with another boy in the States with the same disease, his sister, and his nurses. His sister, Beth, struggles with the decision to move away for school because their parents died a few years ago. That's right. This poor kid is stuck in a bubble and his parents have both died in a car crash. His favourite nurse is Greg and he gets a new on Amir who is a bit of an odd character. He always looks out the window, supposedly looking for UFOs. But maybe Amir can help Joe experience a little more of life?
It's Leonard's birthday and he wants to kill his ex-best friend and then himself. When he wakes up, he takes the Nazi gun his grandfather left for him, eats breakfast by himself because his dad hasn't been in his life for his while and his mom is too busy with her fashion career, and packs four presents he wants to deliver before he kills himself and Asher. Then Leonard sets out to deliver these presents.
The world is split in to two classes: reds who are the workers and silvers who have special abilities and are the upper class. Mare and her family are red. All of her brothers have been sent to war and Mare is expected to get the same summons when she runs in to a mysterious stranger. Trying to pick-pocket him, he catches her but instead of getting her in trouble, offers her more money. The next day, Mare is wisked away to the summer palace and expected to work as a servant. This is a big change from going to war. Soon, Mare finds out that the person that saved her is the prince. As he tries to find a wife, all the silvers represent their abilities to him: moving metal, creating fire, shifting water. When the last girl causes part of the arena to be destroyed and Mare to fall towards her, Mare realizes she has a power too: harnessing electricity. The royalty puts her in a position representing her as a silver raised as reds even though she is red through and through.
The third book in this series shows the four girls, Carmen, Tibby, Lena, and Bridget, as they have just finished high school and are in the summer before going to university. Carmen finds out that her mom is having a baby with David, her recently married husband, and questions her decision to leave home for school. Tibby's younger sister falls out a window which makes Tibby question how good of a sister she is. Hanging around the hospital so much, she meets a cute intern. Lena is taking art classes when her dad learns that she's drawing nudes in class and pulls his financial support for art school. This forces Lena to figure out how to win a scholarship to still be able to go to art school. And finally Bridget is back at soccer camp where Eric is also a coach. Everything comes full circle for her in this third summer.
It's 2044 and the world is a mess. Oil prices are so high no one can afford to run cars, world politics are in shambles, and all citizens are using an online utopia OASIS like a drug to escape. When the creator of OASIS dies, his will is broadcast to every user and he tells all that there are three keys hidden in the online world that those worthy can find. Once the finder has all three keys and passes three gates, they will receive the creator's inheritance, which is in the multi-billions of dollars. Not surprisingly, many people set off to try and hunt these easter eggs, including one Wade Watts, a teenage boy who lives in the stacks with his aunt. There's also a large corporation hunting the eggs and everyone knows that if they find them, they will take over OASIS and change it forever. This hunt isn't as easy as it seems though, with many different worlds to work through, it's hard to pin point where exactly these eggs could be. Over five years go by until Wade, avatar Parzival, finds one. Then the hunt is really on.
Georgia Nicolson and the Ace gang are back for the 7th book in the series. Not much has changed, the girls are still boy-obsessed, Georgia still can't decide between Masimo and Dave the Laugh, and school is still as horrible as ever.
The travelling pants are back for another summer, passing between four friends: Bridget, Carmen, Lena, and Tibby. Two of them are in town this year, but Tibby heads up to New York for film school and Bridget heads down south to her grandmother and to try and find herself again. Each of the girls has a bit of a meltdown and for the most part it involves their moms. Carmen doesn't like that her mom is dating, Lena knows her mom is hiding something from her, and Tibby is tired of being ignored. As the pants travel around, they seem to get less usage than last time because each of the girls is in poor spirits. But eventually things look up and the pants provide their magic.
Chris meets Jenny while he's working a party, after she runs away from some guys because they found out she crashed the party. It's love at first sight for Chris and Jenny agrees to meet him again. The two get closer, though Chris loses touch when Jenny's home is raided for drugs and she can't return. At the same time, Chris' boss is having Chris help him fix up a remote cabin. The reason he gives is that there's a bad guy looking for him after he helped put his brother behind bars. Chris isn't sure if it's true but helps him out anyways.
The second book in the Maze Runner series sees Thomas and his buddies in a safe-haven, having just escaped the maze. Thomas wakes up to screaming and Teresa in his head, saying that something is wrong. Then he can't hear Teresa anymore, her voice replaced with screams of Cranks trying to enter the building. The boys run from the windows, into a room filled with bodies of the people that saved them. Going around the bodies to Teresa's room, they instead find a single boy, who was a member of a different maze trial but with girls. Soon, a man appears telling them they are about to embark on the next phase, the scorch trials, where they have to travel 100 miles north. It is said to be even more difficult than the maze trial and the boys can only imagine what that means.
Spoilers from the first two books in the series