So I’ll try to review as soon as possible.

This is a novel by Jo Whittemore.  I thought it would suck because the cover is all cartoony but the book was actually fairly good.

Delilah is like the head reporter at her school.  When Ben, the editor of the paper who used to be crushing on her, comes back from France all tanned and gorgeous looking, she’s ready to snap him up and make him hers.  Only problem?  He’s brought back his new French girlfriend, Ava, as a foreign exchange student and gave her the same position on the paper that Delilah has.

Delilah decides to accept an invitation to try and join the Debutantes (AKA the Little Debbies) in order to get all the gossip on people for articles-particularly Ava.  She and Ava both go to great measures to take eachother down-but is it worth it?

I like how another love interest is added to the mix when Marcus,  a guy who she wrote an expose article on, comes back to school and she works with him to get his side of the story out in the open.  And I like how the story is about much more than I have time to summarize.  This book was really pretty good and I’ll give it a solid six stars.

I have no clue why, but keep ‘em coming, loves!

So Ruby lives in Kansas, see.  And she’s like a little hick who’s never been outside of her town and has no clue what iTunes or MTV is.  (This part is unrealistic to me…but then again I’ve never been a small town Kansas girl.)  But then her grandma who lives in Florida, her husband dies, so Ruby and her mom leave Kansas and go to Florida.  Everyone at the new school hates Ruby because she’s completely oblivious to modern day society and is off in Oz.  Especially Miz Bitch herself, Ava Grand, she really hates Ruby.   But then Ruby’s stuck in the mandatory talent show in a dance crew with Ava Grand.  And of course she outshines everyone else because she tries her best.  Oh, and she gets the guy, too.

This book was okay.  Ruby’s mom was no Lorelai Gilmore-she kind of annoyed me.  Ruby herself was alright, even though she was raised thinking the internet was like the devil or something.  (It’s better than being like Jessi Slaughter, I suppose.)

This post is going to be really short.  Oh well.  I like cheesecake.

Three stars because it was fairly decent I guess.  Nighty night.

Lizzie and Hope are sisters.  Lizzie, the oldest, has always looked out for Hope and vice versa.  They live with their mother, who is a prostitute, and know they have to have eachother’s backs.  When Liz begins crying each night and, finally, Hope walks in on Liz with a gun at her head, Lizzie has to go to the hospital.  Hope spends the rest of the novel remembering how Liz used to be and trying to determine what, exactly, changed her sister and best friend so much.

It is painstakingly obvious what happened to Lizzie as soon as the reader finds out that their mother is a hooker, but I hoped with all of me as I read it that I was wrong.  This book is haunting and sad and yet necessary.  It’s told in verse as well, which only adds to the beauty of the writing.

Carol Lynch Williams made these characters come alive.  Mari, Hope’s best friend, is the greatest friend someone could ask for.  She made me glad because I realized, if I were ever in Hope’s situation, I have a few Mari’s of my own I could go to.  And Hope’s mother.  My God.  I was terrified as Hope lay in the grass, praying her mom wouldn’t find her.  She was legitimitely scary, more so than a monster in a closet ever could be.

You have to read this book.  Ten stars, without a doubt.

At the end of eighth grade, Helen’s life and hopes for high school were destroyed by her best friend, Lauren Wood.  Helen moved and somewhat carried on with her life-but she never forgot what Lauren did to her.  Now it’s senior year, and she has to move back to her old town and deal with the completely popular Lauren.  Helen creates a new identity, for one purpose: revenge on Lauren Wood.

Eileen Cook did a good job of making Helen focused on her revenge plan but not completely consumed.  I liked Brenda and was glad that she ended up friends with Helen in the end.  I also liked the whole old movie thing-it really added to the character of Helen.

What I didn’t like was that the principal didn’t believe Helen when she told him she had planted the drugs in Lauren’s purse.  He should’ve investigated even if he thought she was  lying-because, after all, what if she was telling the truth?  I doubted this would happen in real life.  I don’t know, maybe I just have too much faith in the public school system.

This book was a solid six stars for me.  It was a pretty good read. 

In Remember Me, Shari Cooper falls-or is pushed-from a balcony at a friend’s party.  She dies and is forced to see how everyone thinks it’s a suicide.  She tries to find her killer from beyond the grave, with the help of Peter, her friend who died a year ago and is a ghost, too.  In The Return, Shari and Peter have crossed over into the light.  Shari wants to return to Earth one last time to tell people what really happens after you die.  Shari takes over the body of Jean Rodrigues, who is tired of life, and Peter takes over the body of Jean’s boyfriend, Lenny.  In The Last Story, Shari and Peter go through troubles as Jean and Lenny.

Remember Me was entertaining.  I wish it had been the only book, without the other two added on.  It was a good mystery, and it simply told a story without speculating too much about after-death concepts.  The other two books were unnecessary, to me. 

The Return spent waaaay too much time on life after death and karma and stuff.   It was pretty boring.  And the parts about Jean and Lenny didn’t really interest me.  The ending was pretty good, though.

The Last Story was annoying and compelling to me at the same time.  It was kind of like, “really?  Another one?” but it didn’t bore me.  This one excessively discussed karma and other like topics as well.  And it pissed me off that Shari was cheating on Peter.  That was stupid.  But it wasn’t written badly or anything.  It was kind of engaging.  Sort of.

There shouldn’t have been a sequel to Remember Me, let alone two.  The three books combined gets four stars.  Remember Me by itself would’ve gotten more like seven.

Sage wants to be skinny, popular and normal.  Like Mona Simms.  She doesn’t want people to know about her crazy mom or the fact that she’s on the cusp of being poor.  She just wants to date the handsome and popular Roger. Her best friend (who’s also crushing on her) Vern watches in agony as Sage begins to date the controlling Roger and distances herself slowly from her old life.

I like Vern, and I like Wal-Mart.  I didn’t like Sage or Mona or Roger.  This book is sort of…bizarre at times.  Almost like the author made the characters cliche versions of themselves where they always say something awkwardly stupid yet honest.  The book reads more like Sage is twelve or something, not seventeen.  The whole thing just confused me.

Another thing that bothered me-the format.  It was like a diary, sort of, but it’s not a diary.  There are no descriptions of people or places.  It’s just what the characters are thinking and events that occur.  It was weird to me-and not in a quirky good way.

Vern is too good for Sage.  That’s basically what I got out of this novel.

Maybe other people will like it, but I really didn’t.  Two stars.

Poppy is new in Pleasant Acres and formerly a sort of emo type.  When the two most popular girls in school, Mary Jane and Whitney, decide she’s their new best friend she quickly shifts her attitude to fit in with their preppy southern-ness.  Their friendship seems foolproof, even when she learns they shoplift.  Because she joins them.  Soon, she’s addicted and has to figure out who her true friends are-and everything isn’t exactly black and white.

Lately, books I’ve been reading have been pretty good until the ending which alway sucks.  This one was good all the way through, and the ending was the best.  The ending was totally unexpected and I lovedlovedloved how the love interest and the main character didn’t have a falling out and then reunite, as is typical in YA books.  They got together, stayed together for a little while to show the relationship was good, and then the book ended.  PERFECT. 

The whole addiction aspect was excellent.  People normally only consider alcoholism and drug addictions to be “real” addictions but Poppy’s hooked on shoplifting and you can tell. 

The characters were great too.  David’s cute.  Mary Jane is sweet and real.  Whitney’s a legit person.  You kind of wish you actually knew all of them.  And when Poppy is figuring out her true friends, there’s a twist I didn’t see coming which made the resolution completely different from the one I suspected all along.

10 stars. Read it.  Oh, and the cover’s cool, too.