THE LIST by Siobhan Vivian - REVIEW

Nobody knows who writes "The List" each year. The Tradition has been passed on for years. The week before Homecoming "The List" appears with the names of the ugliest and the prettiest girls in each grade. Nobody has ever claimed to have written "The List." Years before the seal of the school was stolen and is used to officially emboss "The List." Each year it is passed on to someone else in secret. That person doesn't know who was the list maker before them, but then it is their turn to make "The List."

For the 8 girls on The List life changes dramatically during the week before Homecoming. This year Bridget Honeycutt is chosen as The Prettiest for the junior class. Immediately the pressure is on Bridget to look her best. This manifests in an eating disorder that she thought had been put behind her over the summer. But she is determined to fit into that smaller dress size by the end of the week. Jennifer Briggis becomes the first four-peat girl as ugliest. Her former best friend Margo was chosen as prettiest which puts her in the top running for Homecoming Queen. When Sarah finds her name on the ugliest list she is determined to fight back. She decides to not bathe for the entire week much to the disgust of the student body that have to be in classes with her. Each girl handles their fame or rejection in her own way, unfortunately letting The List change them whether for positive or negative. With one girl determined that this will be the last List EVER.

My Thoughts:

There were a few things that I disliked about this story. The cursing, the sexual situations, and the drinking/smoking. BUT, I think the story brought out a lot of how fragile young adult self-image can be. And then to have their flaws or assets brought out in public like "The List," how damaging it can be even to the most put-together teen. This was not a "feel-good" story, it didn't end with everyone experiencing their "happily ever after." High school is messy, egos and self-image are fragile and the author was able to show that in this story. And there were moments when friendships and relationships weathered the storm which made the story more palatable for me.


Sexual Content=Some sexual situations, but not graphic
Language Content=There were quite a few swear words peppered throughout including use of the "f" word
Other Content=Teens using alcohol and smoking cigarettes, partying

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS by Heather Vogel Frederick-REVIEW

Emma, Jess, Cassidy, Megan, Becca and their mothers are all back for a new season of the Mother-Daughter book club. This season the girls and their mothers will be reading the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. Since they will all be in different places for the Holidays they decide that they will celebrate together on New Year's Eve.

The girls have picked names among themselves to be Secret Santa to. As each girl opens their gifts each day they are disappointed in their Secret Santa. It seems that their Secret Santa does not know them at all. When the "big reveal" on New Year's Eve comes around tempers are right under the surface.

Becca and her family spend Christmas on a cruise with Megan and her family. Becca's family has a secret that they do not want to share with anyone until after the Holidays. Becca can only think of how this secret affects her.

Megan's boyfriend has just broken up with her over email. She is heart-broken, but when she meets Phillipe the captains son she thinks that maybe life will go on.

Jess is disappointed as she was going to spend the holidays in Switzerland. An unfortunate accident keeps her in the States. When her aunt and uncle invite her family to come to their hotel in New Hampshire they decide to go there.

Emma is invited to go with Jess and her family. Her parents let her go, but she finds that it is not as fun as she thought it would be to be away from her family during The Holiday.

Cassidy and her family go out to California. Her step-father Stanley has a job offer that could take them back to California(where they lived before moving to Concord). Cassidy had longed to go back to California, but now she has established her home in Concord and is not sure that she want to move again.

Through all of the bumps and trials the girls' family and friendships stand the tests of time. I absolutely love The Mother-Daughter book Club series and recommend it as a great read for young girls. My daughter is 19 and when we got this new book in the mail she was so excited! She wanted to read it before I got to it, but was gracious enough to allow me first dibs! This 5th book was just as good as the 1st and I'm looking forward to future books in the series.

This is a totally Edifying book!

LOVE BITES(Vampire Kisses #7) by Ellen Schreiber-Review #4

Alexander’s best friend Sebastian shows up in Dullsville. Raven is happy that Alexander has someone his own kind to be with until Sebastian meets her best friend Becky. Sebastian is instantly infatuated and thinks himself in love. Becky is flattered but very much in love with her boyfriend Matt. Raven and Alexander decide to throw a party for Sebastian so that he can meet someone else to be the love of his life. What they don’t count on is the party being crashed by Trevor and his followers. What started out to be a small party turns into quite a blowout.


This installment of the Vampire Kisses series wasn’t my favorite. With the way this book ended with a cliffhanger hopefully the next installment will be more exciting.
This series is fairly clean. Very little language and just a bit of kissing.

THE MAZE RUNNER by James Dashner-REVIEW #3

Thomas arrives in the Glade with no memory of his former life. He doesn’t remember who his parents were or what he did to deserve to be sent to this strange place. He is the new “Greenie” that is sent to the Glade once a month. A new boy has arrived in the Glade each month for the past 2 years. Thomas is frustrated because he wants to know everything about the Glade, but nobody is willing to tell him anything on his first day.


The next day the box arrives again with another new arrival. This is an unheard of event. And even more unheard of is that the occupant of the box is a girl. She arrives in some kind of coma with a message crushed in her hand stating that she is the last ever to arrive in the Glade. She arouses enough to whisper that “Everything is going to change.”

Thomas is soon told about the Maze that runners go into each day before the walls close on the Glade. They have gone into the Maze each day for the past 2 years looking for a way out. The only problem is that each night when the walls close to the Glade the pattern of the Maze changes. So it is never the same. Each runner must return before the walls close because creatures that the boys call Grievers come out at night. Nobody has ever survived the Grievers after being locked out at night.

Thomas soon realizes that for some reason he feels that he needs to be a runner. There is something that seems to be familiar about that job to him. When their weekly supplies are cut off and a Griever is found dead in the Maze the boys realize that things definitely are changing. When Thomas sees 2 boys coming back from checking on the dead Griever just as the walls are closing he goes out to save them. They spend a frightening night outside the walls fighting off the Grievers. They are the first boys that manage to survive until the walls are opened once again. This gains Thomas respect and the right to run the Maze. His first day out in the Maze seems so familiar to him. He wishes he remembered why.

When Theresa comes out of her coma her and Thomas realize that they have a gift of communicating with each other through telepathy. The more that things change in the Glade the more they all realize that they must find a way to escape and get revenge on the Creators. Theresa remembers that she and Thomas helped in the creating of the Maze but as she comes out of the coma her memory starts to disappear. Thomas must venture one desperate attempt in order to bring back his memory to save them all.

The Maze Runner was a fast-paced exciting read. It definitely leaves you hanging at the end so I must get my hands on the sequel!

The Maze Runner does have some "made-up" swear words that the boys use. I say this is Edifying because of the self-sacrificing that Thomas and some of the other boys exhibit.

WINTERGIRLS by Laurie Halse Anderson - REVIEW

Lia fights a war every day.

A war with herself.

A war with food.

At 95 pounds she still feels fat. When she looks in the mirror she sees the pockets of fat hanging on her body. Everyone else is just blind. Two stays in a treatment facility hasn’t cured her; it just forced her to develop techniques to survive in a world of food. She picks the bruised apples at lunch so she has an excuse to cut some of it off, she sews quarters in the lining of her robe to add weight when she has to stand on the scale in front of her stepmother, and she cuts herself – just little cuts in order to let the pain leak out of her body.

When Lia learns that Cassie, her best friend, has been found dead in a motel room, maintaining any healthy habit is extremely difficult. Not only does she have to listen to her own voice obsessing about every calorie of food she consumes; now she has to deal with Cassie making her ghostly appearances and cheering her on and encouraging her to get skinnier so Lia can join Cassie on the “other side.”

Lia must decide where she wants to be – in the world with the living or stuck in the frozen world where she has trapped herself.

Laurie Halse Anderson has done it again. With this being the tenth anniversary of the release of SPEAK, it is a wonderful time for WINTERGIRLS to debut. It is an extremely powerful and honest look at the life of an anorexic girl. You will be choked up and at a loss for words by the time you get to the final page.