Fluttering Butterflies

The Dragon's Price by Bethany Wiggins This book is a good choice for anyone out there who are fans of Julie Kagawa  and her novels. This book starts off sounding like your typical, every-day "I don't want to be forced into marriage so I'm going to do whatever I can to save my individuality" quest-type story. The main character comes from royal blood (also a common book character trait) and has a long-standing peace treaty with another kingdom (again, as per usual). This, however, is where the similarities end. For one, this novel has DRAGONS. I love dragons (as I suspect some of you do as well). Dragons are something that has an allure to readers- if a book is about dragons, I will pick it up. If there is a dragon on the cover, I will pick it up. There is some kind of special draw to the magic of them, to their mystery and mythology. However, in The Dragon's Price , the first book in the new Transference  trilogy, there is a bit of a twist. When you kill a dra...

Empress of a Thousand Skies Written by Rhoda Belleza Published by Razorbill It had been a long time since I had found a decent book to read. There had been many new authors attempting to write amazing stories, but some ended up, in my opinion, with unrealistic romances, weak plot lines, and characters that just weren't believable. As someone who enjoys writing, I know that it is hard build the characters and plot into a complex, great story. Just when I had realized that I couldn't find I good book, I had stumbled across Empress of a Thousand Skies. I started it, not really expecting to like it, but soon, I couldn't stop reading the book. Empress of a Thousand Skies was an interesting and enjoyable book. While the plot was not entirely unique, the story was not as predictable as one might expect. Yes, there were some obvious clichés and it seemed to have been written for a certain age group, rather than being universal. However, the characters were intriguing and the settin...

The Baby by Lisa Drakeford The Baby by Lisa Drakeford is a well-written piece about a high school girl and her four friends. She did not know that she was pregnant, and has to give birth in the middle of her best friend's house party. This book gives teens a good glimpse into what their future would look like if anything were to happen to them regarding high school pregnancy. This book uses multiple voices in a shifting point of view in five different sections. The five sections are titled by the characters names to let you know which life you are going to get a peek into. This book, while it has it's crazy baby plot, the other plots are super cute such as the pursuit for friendship, the pursuit for a partner, and, in some ways, the pursuit for truth. This book could be viewed as a health video in some ways, but compared to it, it's SO much BETTER. Depending on a video, the book is not corny or cheesy, and when it get too intense, you can put it down and pick it up later, a...

Ensnared and the Splintered Trilogy by A.G. Howard Ensnared is the conclusion to the Splintered series, a series that is, essentially, a spinoff of Alice in Wonderland. I started following this series right after it came out, and it is honestly one of my favorite book series- ever. Alyssa is a descendant of Alice, and is afflicted by a strange issue- she heard the plants and insects talk to her. Her mom had the same thing, and everyone thinks that she is crazy- but Alyssa finds out differently. On her journey(s), she has to fix Alice's mistakes, defeat an evil queen, and a lot more. This series is packed with adventure, romance, and an incredible plot. This book, Ensnared , is the conclusion to this series. I, personally, was worried that this series would fall flat on the second book and the third (like so many others have done in the past). However, it surprised me by continuing to be amazing all of the way through; a very rare thing for a trilogy to do. This book was a fantastic...

By: Eunsun Kim At eleven years old, Eunsun Kim wrote her will.  She thought we was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it.  Her mother and older sister had left to find food and didn't come back for days.  When she was finally giving up her mother and sister returned -- without a single bite to eat.  The famine in North Korea had already claimed Eunsun's grandparents and father.  Despite the overwhelming belief in their eternal president, Kim Il-Sung, and dear leader, Kim Jong-il, Eunsun's mom decided there was nothing left for them in their North Korean town and they had no choice to but leave.  This started Eunsun's nine year journey to South Korea, despite the risks: imprisonment in a labor camp or death.  Throughout her journey Eunsun and her family live homeless, get caught by North Korean police, fall into the hands of Chinese human traffickers, and eventually make it to South Korea.  However, A Thousand Miles to Freedom , ...

By Kerry Wilkinson Despite the extreme popularity of the Hunger Games trilogy there were some serious flaws.  This book, Renegade , played into several of them.  One of my biggest problems wight his book was the extraordinary resemblance to Catching Fire , the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy.  In order to fully explain my problems with this book I will be giving away part of the ending.  So there will be SPOILERS. Ok, I'll start at the beginning.   Renegade is the second book in the trilogy.  I read the first one, Reckoning , probably over a year ago.  I found it extremely similar to the Hunger Games when I read it for these reasons.  There is something called the Reckoning where everyone takes basically an aptitude test that nobody really understands how it works.  They get a status as a result of this test: Elite, Member, Inter, or Trog.  That's not the important part though.  Then, there is the Choosing.  It is basi...

by Jennifer Richard Jacobson Normally when books are about elementary school children, they show how stupid some people think these children are.  Even when these characters are supposed to be "smart" the book portrays them as stupid and overly proud of dumb achievements.  This book was different.  Ari, the main character, is a smart, thoughtful fifth grader.  Ari's brother, Gage, is 19 years old and he doesn't get along with their guardian Janna.  Gage decides to move out and Ari moves with him.  Janna was their mother's friend from high school and when both of their mom dies four years previously, their last living parent, they had to move in with Janna.  Gage tells Janna that he has an apartment set up for him and Ari, but it isn't until after they leave that Ari finds out this isn't true.  Ari's mom's dying wish was that Gage and Ari stay together always and that Ari go to Carter Middle School, a competitive school to get into.  Ari is ju...

By Courtney Alameda Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat, she can see ghosts, and she uses her abilities to hunt ghosts with her friends Oliver, Jude, and Ryder. Micheline is the only heir to the Helsing corporation, a business that goes after the different kinds of ghosts and hunts them down before they can kill anyone. When a ghost hunt goes wrong, Micheline and her friends are infected with a soulchain, a ghostly disease that is slowly killing them from the inside. Now Micheline has to go against her father's wishes in order to save herself and her friends before they all die. The way this book was written was not what I expected. There was a lot of detail and description and while it did show instead of tell the amount of descriptive words really threw me off of the actual plot that was going on. For instance: "I followed Damian out into the anemic, waning night. Spindly trees lined the wide avenue, shedding the gangrenous leaves of fall." (p 62). Read that sentence. T...

By Delilah s. Dawson Patsy is an indentured servant of the United States government, which has turned into the Valor National government. Valor National was a bank that got the United States out of debt by adding a clause in a credit card application which allows them to demand all the money owed on the spot, have them be killed, or have them be turned into a hit man. Patsy's mother had taken out a huge loan and now Patsy has to either kill ten people in five days or her mother dies. This book had a good idea, but the way it was executed was a little boring. The entire book focused on Patsy and Wyatt, the son a man she just killed, riding around in a van and killing people. Their relationship was very implausible, considering Patsy killed her father and they met when he was about to get revenge by killing her, and a chapter later they were making out. Overall their relationship was not very fleshed out, and the pretense the book was set in was a little implausible. On one hand, wha...

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes      Vance is a quetzal shapeshifter who lives with the vampires of Midnight in the 19th century.  He has had everything he could want, but when a man visits the vampires and speaks with Vance, his dreamlike life starts to crack as Vance begins to question the actions of his beloved guardians and rulers of Midnight.      Vance has good conflicts, and even when he starts doubting, the vampires don’t change their characters.  The consistency is nice because it makes it harder for Vance and easier for the reader to understand him.  I did not like Vance as a character, though, and I felt that a lot of his thoughts and doubts were forced.  He would arrive at a state of mind suddenly and then sit there for a while instead of gradually coming to realizations, and, given what happened to him throughout the book, I’m not sure Vance really would have gotten to where he ended up mentally at the end.      Th...

by Vicky Alvear Shecter    Set in Pompeii just before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Lucia is about to be married off to a much older man so her father can get money for his gladiator school.  Just weeks before the impending marriage, however, Tag, one of her father’s slaves, returns from Rome where he had been studying medicine so he could heal hurt gladiators, and an old friendship rekindles between them.  The relationship blossoms into something more, but both Lucia and Tag know it wouldn’t be able to cross their class difference even if Lucia weren’t already engaged to someone else.      I liked the story and found that I was engaged in the characters and the story and wanted to know what would happen even without the element of Mt. Vesuvius adding the sense of impending doom.  Although I’m not an expert in Ancient Rome, from what I’ve read of other reviews, the book is historically accurate and should appeal to those interested in historical ...

by Terence Blacker      Efren is a rat living in the rat kingdom in the sewers.  When the king dies and new leaders are selected, they decide that humans are a bigger threat than they had previously believed and they decide to wage war.  Meanwhile, a human doctor who has been studying the rats decides that they are one of the biggest threats to humans, and he rallies the people of the city to attack the rats.  Then Efren and some human children meet, and both types of animals have to decide which side deserves their victory.      Efren was a likable character.  He noticed that he had differences, but he accepted them and still tried to serve his kingdom as best he could.  The children, Dogboy and Caz, both have interesting back stories and conflicts that they have to deal with.  Out of all the characters, only Efren, Dogboy, Caz, and two others really try to understand anything about the other species.  This helps flesh th...

by Chris Stuyk-Bonn       Whisper has lived in the woods ever since she was abandoned as an infant because of a disfigured mouth.   In her society, disfigurations are frowned upon, so she instead lives with a few others who were also abandoned and taken in by a man named Nathaniel.   The beginning is very expository because Whisper doesn’t talk much, and when she does, she whispers - hence her name - and the book takes a while for the book to get going.       After Whisper is taken away by the father who abandoned her then moved again to the city and forced to work to give her father money, the story picks up.   Whisper meets other characters who also have disfigurations and learns how to live with her own and use the talents she has to make a living.   I enjoyed the middle when Whisper was growing as a character and learning new things and the story was developing.   However, partway through, a doctor offered to fix Whisper’s disfi...

by Jessica Brody      This is the second book in the Unremembered trilogy, although I have not read the first one.  I still felt like I knew what was going on, though, and Unforgotten stands pretty well on its own.  It started out strongly, with Seraphina and Zen living in 1609.  Due to a technological advancement in the nearish future, both Seraphina and Zen have a gene that allows them to travel through time.  Seraphina was created by a company called Diotech, so she has enhanced physical abilities.  In the previous book, she had escaped from Diotech, and they now desperately want her back, so she is careful not leave any trace of her identity that Diotech would be able to use to find her.      The time travel aspect was done well, although I wish some parts of it had been explored a little more.  I also liked the main plot.  It was engaging, interesting, and gave you enough information without giving too much away....

by Laurie Gray      Myrto is the second wife of Socrates.  Historians disagree on whether or not Myrto existed because Plato never mentioned her, although others from that time period did, but this book assumes she did.  Myrto has no dowry, so she is married to Socrates, who takes her gladly.  At first, Myrto is hesitant about the relationship.  Socrates is much older than her, and his first wife, Xanthippe, is quick to anger and terrifies Myrto.  In order to avoid Xanthippe, Myrto goes into town everyday with Socrates and learns with his pupils.  Through these lessons, Myrto’s relationship with Socrates and his son grows.      This was a peaceful book.  Nothing much happened as Myrto discovered herself and found her place in the world.  The way she questioned everything did begin to grate on me, but I think that style of thinking was part of the point of the book.  The writing was clear, but the characters were ...

by Lucy Christopher      One day, Emily Shepherd’s father, an ex-soldier suffering from PTSD, stumbles out of the woods carrying the dead body of Ashlee Parker, a girl from Emily’s school.  Emily’s father pleads guilty of manslaughter, saying he was enacting one of his flashbacks from battle, but Emily is convinced that he didn’t murder Ashlee.  The story is told in the alternate viewpoints of Emily and Damon, Ashlee’s boyfriend.    Sadly, there wasn’t much I liked about this book.  I didn’t really like the writing style, especially Damon’s voice.  I didn’t like Damon much at all.  He thinks like he’s trying to be a tough guy in his head, and his attitude changed significantly as a character depending on whether the reader was in his head or viewing him as Emily.  Emily was fairly decent as a character, and she had reasonable doubts about her father and dealt with the difficulties of being viewed as the daughter of a murderer in a r...

By: Charles Benoit Three teenagers get mysterious phone calls.  There is no phone number and no trace of the call.  The call requires that each Eric, Shelly, and Fatima bully a specific person in a specific way on a specific day.  They are all supposed to call each victim names, bump into them in the hallway, and finish it off by pouring mac and cheese onto the victim's head, video it, and post it on Youtube.  If Eric, Shelly, and Fatima don't do what the caller demands then the caller will reveal a big secret about each one of them to everyone they know.  At first, these high schoolers don't know each other, but they meet when they are all sent to the same bullying program.  For the remainder of the book Eric, Shelly, and Fatima work together to find out who the mysterious caller is and how to get the caller to stop. I was surprised by this book.  To me, the plot seemed sort of dumb.  Why would I want to read a book about some teenagers that are ...

by Ryan Gebhart    Tyson is thirteen, and he is going through something of a social crisis when the book starts.  His best friend, Bright, is gravitating towards a new group, and Tyson is struggling in several of his classes.  Instead, he spends time with his grandfather, who has promised to take him hunting, and Tyson can’t wait.      Tyson loves bears.  A lot.  It’s almost all he thinks about and most of what he talks about, which got pretty tiresome.  There was basically nothing else to Tyson’s character except his crush on a girl from Texas, who also happens to really like hunting.  Tyson barely tells her a single true thing in all of his conversation with her.  His desire to go hunting led him down a questionable decision making path.  When his parents decided he couldn’t go hunting with his grandfather because his grandfather was sick and needed special care most days, he decided to sneak his grandfather out of the ...

by Joe Shine      Ren Sharpe is living a normal life.  She just started high school and she’s working hard to fit in with the other kids.  Then she gets kidnapped in the middle of the night and taken to a secret facility owned by F.A.T.E. that trains bodyguards.  There’s a satellite that takes pictures fifty years in the future, and it took a picture of her gravestone, indicating she only lived to be fourteen, so they took her for their program.  They also know who is important in fifty years, and it’s their job to protect the world changers.  This is an interesting idea, but I didn’t understand why it was necessary.  If they know the future, wouldn’t they know the world changers aren’t going to be dead?      After four years of intense training, Ren is assigned to Gareth Young, a student at the University of Texas.  She’s not allowed to actually contact him, but she does.  After all, she’s a student there too, as cov...

by Corinne Demas      This is a story about a girl whose mother just got married for the third time, so she is sent to spend the summer with her father while her mother is on her honeymoon.  Her father lives on a small island along Cape Cod and is determined to save a local species of turtles.  Although at first Clare is hesitant and slightly uncomfortable around her father, who she hasn’t seen since she was very small, they grow to like each other by the end.      Though not particularly fast paced, Clare manages to have enough activity to keep the reader engaged.  It’s a fairly short book, so I didn’t really expect much to happen.  Clare herself is a pretty realistic character.  Her emotions and reactions were fleshed out and they were what I would expect a girl in her situation to feel.  The other characters, however, were lacking.  They were there more for Clare to react to and seemed very flat and more like names flo...