Book reviews

Pushing the limits By Katie McGarry

No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with "freaky" scars on her arms. Even Echo can't remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal.

But when Noah Hutchins, the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo's world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.

Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she'll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again.

I’m not sure what I think about this book. It was really different from what I was expecting it to be about. Overall as a story I liked it but as characters go they kind of bugged me. For instance, Echo’s father, the guy drove me crazy. I can understand that going through a traumatic experience can change a person, but to take away what Echo loved doing before and to control her life so that she can’t remember what happened, isn’t right and really bugged me. Also the fact that everyone in Echo’s family treated her scars like it’s the worst thing ever, well anyone who knows me knows I have little sympathy for that. A scar is just a scar and is part of life and makes you who you are no matter the cause of the scar.

            It was nice to see the main characters Echo and Noah not described as ‘perfect’ as many books do, they are flawed have issues and are not always mature in making the decisions they make. They do grow and help support each other out through their difficulties and family drama.

This book is defiantly an emotional drama and really touches just how bad uncontrolled mental illness can be. I would recommend this book to read because like I said overall it was a pretty good story. Katie McGarry has three other books two of them are about characters that were mentioned in this book, I will most likely pick them up and read them sometime.

Challenge:

Female author

Book set in High school

Before I fall By Lauren Oliver

What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all: the world's most crush-worthy boyfriend, three amazing best friends, and first pick of everything at Thomas Jefferson High—from the best table in the cafeteria to the choicest parking spot. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last. Then she gets a second chance. Seven chances, in fact. Reliving her last day during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death - and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.

*SPOLIERS IF YOU PLAIN ON READING THIS BOOK MY REVIEW WILL HAVE SPOILERS IN IT*

This book as awful to me. I hated it and didn’t know why I kept reading but a small part of me liked it. I did not love it that is for sure. It had a high reviews and said to be a very emotional touching book. Emotional, at times yes overall maybe just the emotion of anger. I can admit, the book does have a valid point in the end, life is short our actions can and will effect another person’s life.

To me this book is partly what is wrong with society it glorifies drinking, drugs, sex and bullying. It tells us that if you want to succeed at life and get to the top then you do what you have to do even if it means you hurt others. Sadly that thinking doesn’t end in high school either.

What bugged me about this book is the lowness these girls went to just to make sure they stayed popular. They had the whole school scared of even looking at them especially if they were only sophomores or juniors. They treated everyone badly including their own friends. The ringleader of this group was the worst of them all she decided that if she didn’t like someone then no one else should and make sure she did what needed to be done so no one would.

The part that pushed me over the edge of hating this book was that these girls pushed another girl into suicide. In the seven times Sam had to relive this day over it took her until the last time to realize that to save this girl she had to sacrifice herself.  

Overall I can sum this book up saying: mean popular girl dies in car accident wakes up reliving the day over and over trying to fix things that went wrong, finally fixes them , dies anyway after it all, and the books ends without knowing what became of the other characters. I would like to think they changed for the better but who knows.

I don’t recommend this book to read, however I have read others by the same author and they were much better.

Challenge:

Set in high school

Female author

NYPD Red by James Patterson and Marshall Karp

It's the start of Hollywood on Hudson, and New York City is swept up in the glamour. Every night, the red carpet rolls out for movie stars arriving at premieres in limos; the most exclusive restaurants close for private parties for wealthy producers and preeminent directors; and thousands of fans gather with the paparazzi, hoping to catch a glimpse of the most famous and beautiful faces in the world. With this many celebrities in town, special task force NYPD Red is on high alert - and they can't afford to make a single mistake.

Then a world-renowned producer fatally collapses at his power breakfast, and top NYPD Red Detective Zach Jordan is the first one on the scene. Zach works with his beautiful new partner, Detective Kylie MacDonald - who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend - to discover who the murderer might be. But this is only the beginning: the most brutal, public, and horrifyingly spectacular crimes they've ever encountered are about to send all of New York into chaos, putting NYPD Red on the ropes.

Zach and Kylie know there's no way of telling what a killer this deranged will do next. With the whole world watching, they have to find a way to stop a psychopath who has scripted his finale down to the last explosive detail.

I always enjoy a good action book and this book was pretty good and entertaining. Not much to say about it. It’s another cop and robber mystery book. What makes it different than most, is it tells you up front who the bad guy is and also tells a lot of the story through his point of view. Also it’s written almost as a movie script. The bad guy is writing out his script then going and living it trying to kill as many Hollywood A-listers as possible.

Pretty fast read and entertaining the whole time. If you’re a fan of mystery and cop books then this one will be a good one to read.

Challenge:

Title with a color in it

Mystery

Ghostman by Roger Hobbs

When a casino robbery in Atlantic City goes horribly awry, the man who orchestrated it is obliged to call in a favor from someone who's occasionally called Jack. While it's doubtful that anyone knows his actual name or anything at all about his true identity, or even if he's still alive, he's in his mid-30s and lives completely off the grid, a criminal's criminal who does entirely as he pleases and is almost impossible to get in touch with. But within hours a private jet is flying this exceptionally experienced fixer and cleaner-upper from Seattle to New Jersey and right into a spectacular mess: one heister dead in the parking lot, another winged but on the run, the shooter a complete mystery, the $1.2 million in freshly printed bills god knows where and the FBI already waiting for Jack at the airport, to be joined shortly by other extremely interested and elusive parties. He has only 48 hours until the twice-stolen cash literally explodes, taking with it the wider, byzantine ambitions behind the theft. To contend with all this will require every gram of his skill, ingenuity and self-protective instincts, especially when offense and defense soon become meaningless terms. And as he maneuvers these exceedingly slippery slopes, he relives the botched bank robbery in Kuala Lumpur five years earlier that has now landed him this unwanted new assignment.

From its riveting opening, Ghostman effortlessly pulls the listener into Jack's refined and peculiar world - and the sophisticated shadowboxing grows ever more intense as he moves, hour by hour, toward a constantly reimprovised solution. With a quicksilver plot, gripping prose and masterly expertise, Roger Hobbs has given us a novel that will immediately place him in the company of our most esteemed crime writers.

            This book took a different turn then I thought it would. I enjoyed reading it. Kind of reminded me of the movie Oceans 11, but instead of thieves vs hotel owners it was drug lord vs drug lord.  It did take a little while to really get into it, but once I did I wanted to keep reading until I finished it. At first I kept getting confused because he kept switching from chapter to chapter about which time period he was in and that would be my only complaint for this book. He had two stories going on at once. I think if he would have taken the past story about how Jack became a Ghostman it would have made for a pretty good book on its own. The way the book ended it was set up to have more books written and I would probably read them and see if they were as good as this one.

Challenge:

Book written by someone under 30