The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry is an exciting roller coaster ride from start to finish.  Sixteen year old Cady wakes up in a cabin not knowing her name or where she is.  She hears a man say "Take her out back and finish her off."  As she is being dragged off into the woods, Cady unleashes power she didn't know she had and knocks the man unconscious, finds the keys to his car and drives away.  As she's driving, she takes inventory:  she is sore, swollen, has a loose tooth and two of her fingernails have been pulled out. 


Who are the men chasing her?  Why are they framing her for a man's murder?  Where is her family?  Who is she???  With the help of a 17 year old McDonald's employee, Cady learns who she is, bit by bit until it all comes crashing down on her in an exciting ending!

Available on Audio CD at the Berryville Public Library.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Cath and Wren are twin sisters heading off to college and for the first time in life beginning separate adventures.  In high school the sisters had done everything together, shared a room, shared clothes and they wrote fan fiction* together. But Wren decides she’s ready for a change and tells her sister she doesn't want to share a dorm room and is ready to develop an identity as an individual.

Upon arriving at college Cath’s social circle begins to expand. Reagan, her roommate, who would have preferred a private room. Reagan’s friend, Levi, who keeps popping up everywhere! And then there’s Nick, from her Fiction-Writing class, who she meets for late night writing sessions in the library. Meanwhile Cath continues to dedicate the majority of her free time to writing fan fiction without the help of her sister. On top of that, Cath’s faced with a host of family issues.

Cath’s freshman year challenges her to reevaluate her priorities and embrace a reality where she can’t control the ending.

Rowell’s writing is delightful. I loved this book. One look at the cover and I had already decided this has to be the cutest book ever. I was not disappointed. After finishing Fangirl, I was excited to read Rowell’s other books: Eleanor & Park and Attachments (which is available at Berryville Public Library).  Both are great books, which I also recommend. Rowell’s characters are endearing and real. I look forward to reading all her future works.

*Fan fiction, or fanfiction (often abbreviated as fan fic, fanfic, or simply fic), is a broadly defined fan labor term for stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator. From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction). 

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Counting by 7s will make you feel good. It is a heartwarming story of triumph over tragedy.

Willow Chance, is twelve years old and lives with her adoptive parents. She has difficulty making friends and navigating social situations. Willow’s parents are tragically killed in an accident and her world is turned upside down.

An unexpected group of people, including a taxi driver, a Vietnamese family and a counselor, come together to care for Willow. The characters’ lives are transformed throughout their journey to save Willow.

I could not put it down. I read it in a few hours; it is so well written and I had to know how the story would end!

"God is Dead" by Ron Currie Jr.

God comes to Earth in the fragile form of an emaciated Dinka woman wandering the wasted African wilderness hoping to help out at a Sudanese refugee camp.  After the American diplomats put in the necessary photo-ops and take off in a blur of helicopter rotors, the Sudanese government moves in and massacres every living thing in the camp, God included.

Ron Currie Jr.'s provocative novel God is Dead makes quick work of establishing the title incident, and spends the rest of its brief length detailing what happens in the world after the word of God's death becomes widely known.

Told in a series of vignettes, the novel takes the form of short stories that share a common theme.  The effect is a series of vividly rendered strokes from Currie's authorial paintbrush that render a picture of haunting beauty.

Things begin gently enough, with characters musing how much the world after God's death resembles the world before.  As the novel progresses, though, things begin slowly to unravel.  By the final chapters, although Currie never loses sight of the moments of human tenderness, things have pitched themselves over into the realm of horror.  The horror of a gentle apocalypse that slides in slowly like a knife between the ribs of mankind.

Currie's voice is well-defined in this, his first novel.  At turns sad, funny, and scary, God is Dead is vibrantly, sparingly written.  A bold, brief book that isn't afraid to ask questions and posit nightmare scenarios, Currie's novel shines a light in brief flashes onto the darkest sides of human nature while managing to strike a series of universal chords. 

"Zombie Blondes" by Brian James

Honestly, the best thing about "Zombie Blondes" is probably its title.  But I'm an ecstatic, huge, major league fan of the title, so the book has lots of room to breathe for me and still be a good read. 

Young Hannah Sanders has spent the past several years fleeing from town to town with her father, a down-on-his-luck ex-cop who spends his waking life devising ways to outrun bill collectors and his past in general.  It's a sad, hopeless tactic, and it never works for long.  Eventually, your past always has a way of catching up with you. 

As soon as Hannah sees Maplecrest, the latest town on her shared journey with her father, she finds it even bleaker than most towns she has seen.  It seems more houses are for sale, with dark windows and overgrown lawns, than are occupied.  Add to the mix a fast friend with wild theories about the town's dwindling supply of residents, and Hannah begins counting down the days until her dad decides to run yet again, and she can put the town behind her forever. 

However, things start to look up for Hannah.  The popular girls are paying positive attention to her.  A studly jock football player begins to warm to her.  Hannah may just stand a chance of fitting in, after all.  But the closer she gets to "them," the more dire her friend's warnings become.  Is there really anything to the warnings?  Could the popular kids at Maplecrest High REALLY be the living dead?  They seem so perfect...

There are a number of things that are less than stellar about "Zombie Blondes" - one-dimensional characters (including main character Hannah, who seems almost impossibly passive), and plot points that seem far-fetched and almost too convenient to be true (Hannah's dad leaves town for two weeks to pursue work just as things in the story really start to pick up).

But there are plenty of things that make "Zombie Blondes" worth reading - some very fun plot twists and a central mystery that grows more mysterious as the novel progresses, then comes into focus spectacularly in a fiery final act.  There is so little zombie action in the book that I began to wonder if "zombie" was just another way of referring to a member of the popular cliques in every high school that are willing to do whatever it takes to conform and be "perfect."  This doesn't prove to be the case (or maybe, at least partly, it does), but the book carries a few interesting subtexts throughout.  A surprise, twist ending fits well into the classic horror tradition, and leaves the door open for a sequel.

"Zombie Blondes" isn't going to revolutionize the world.  Heck, it's not even great literature.  But it's a lot of fun - especially past the half-way point when things really begin to click with the story. 

"Lost Empire" by Clive Cussler (with Grant Blackwood)

If you want to sit on the edge of your seat of jump from under those blankets this book is a must read.

From the opening pages in their scuba suits Sam and Remi Fargo, archaeologists by trade, adventurers by misfortune, head into adventure at the sight of an age old ship wreck.  With clues from the interior of the bell they uncover and help from their intrepid staff of "good natured nerds" the mystery spreads from Tanzania, Zanzibar, into rainforests and to Indonesia.  Sam and Remi face death many times as other searchers pursue them into jungles, to the ocean floor and into hidden caves to recover the "treasure" before they do.  At one point a large boulder hovers over Sam as he lays in a pit put there by a surprising adversary.

To quote the book: "Failure is death."

Put on your seat belt and take the ride to find the LOST EMPIRE!

Submitted by a Berryville Library patron as part of the library's Adult Summer Reading program.

American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood by Marie Arana

In American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood, Marisi builds a bridge between Peru and North America, between her artistic American mother and her Peruvian father, an engineer.  She grew up in Peru, surrounded by her father's family, learning of ghosts, spirits, and traditions.  She sees everything that happens around her, making acute observations about politics and society.  She is a child of Peru, educated by her American mother.  A visit to Montana to meet her mother's people solidifies her identity as a gringa, like her mother.  She is now two whole people living in one body.  A move to the United States a few years later challenges that self-image, since she is promptly labeled a "Spic," the only Latina in a New Jersey suburb.  Marisi-turned-Marie is a child of two cultures, rich in both Spanish and American heritage, but at the same time neither one nor the other.

Marie Arana, the editor for The Washington Post's Book World, tells her story in a way that made this reader forget she was reading nonfiction.  The family history she uncovers in the reserach for the book challenges who she thought she was, but at the same time confirms who she is: a bridge.

Submitted by a Berryville Library patron as part of the library's Adult Summer Reading Program.