Fiction Archives - Page 2 of 32 - Brooke's Reviews and Sweeps

Books I Want to Read Again

By Brookelorren on December 1, 2020November 30, 202024 Comments

You know the saddest thing about having so many great books to choose from? Sometimes you don’t take the time to reread some of them. At least, that’s what I think. Today is Tuesday, and that’s what Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is talking about today. I actually do reread books, and often have a reread and a new book going on at the same time. These are some books I plan to reread. Some of them soon, some of them in the far off… distant future.

All That Glitters – Gita Trealease. This book will always be Enchantée to me, I’m afraid. I temporarily stopped rereads for NaNoWriMo, but this is the book I plan to reread in December. J’adore this book! I was fortunate enough to be approved for the ARC of Everything that Burns, the sequel, and I’m so looking forward to it! I really think the first book needs a reread first though.

Chain of Gold – Cassandra Clare. There’s something about the Shadowhunters books that give them rereadability. I’ve already reread Chain of Gold once, last summer but I hope to reread this again in January before Chain of Iron comes out. I absolutely adore Jordelia! I love the variety of characters, and how there’s a ship for everybody. I may end up rereading more Shadowhunters books next year, but I haven’t decided yet.

Legend Tetralogy + Short Stories – Marie Lu. I haven’t reread the complete Legend Tetralogy since Rebel came out. I’ve learned, in my enthusiasm for certain books, that sometimes there’s too much of a good thing. So I’ve started limiting the rereads of my favorites to every other year (generally after I reread them multiple times in a year). Anyway, I still have some fanfiction in the Luniverse to write, and I do have to do the occasional reread in this series to do a good job. Plus I love the story.

On a related note, someone left a comment Sunday on my Legend fanfic “Republican Phenoms” saying they were disappointed that there wasn’t more to the story. They said they had read it a year before and were rereading it. It is such a good feeling to know someone liked your story enough to reread it! I want to do a sequel, but haven’t yet because of how difficult it would be to plan.

Carve the Mark – Veronica Roth. I love this duology! I learned from Divergent not to reread a book too often; I didn’t reread this book in 2020, so I figure I’m safe to read this book again in 2021. I have no definite plans to reread it next year, but I do know that this duology and I have another appointment in the future. I’m sure I’ll read Roth’s Divergent too, just not next year. I reread them this year.

Alex, Approximately – Jenn Bennett. Some books leave me with a happy feeling and a strong urge to reread it. I think Alex, Approximately falls into that category. It has such summery vibes to it. I don’t know if I’ll get to it next summer, but we’ll see.

The Immortal Nicholas – Glenn Beck. I probably won’t reread this book this year, but I do plan to someday. This is supposed to be a realistic story of Santa Claus that brings Jesus into the picture, and it delivered. It also has Krampus as a sympathetic but misunderstood character. The first time I read the book I read this book I ugly cried so much during the last part of the book. The second time I didn’t, but I had read it the previous Christmas. So I’ll probably give it another year before reading it again so it has more emotional impact.

The Discoverers – Daniel J. Boorstin. I don’t know what it is about The Discoverers that makes me love it so much. It’s over 1000 pages and covers history from ancient to recent times. Maybe it’s the way the author describes things, maybe it’s the topics he chooses to zero in on; I’ll probably read this again someday.

The Cruel Prince – Holly Black. I have the entire trilogy to this series (not the prequel). I purchased the hardback to The Cruel Prince after borrowing it from the library, so I’ve never actually read my copy. But this book is one that needs a reread at some point.

Into the Hollow – Lynn Vroman. I loved this book, and find it a little sad that after two years, it still only has 47 ratings on Goodreads. I guess it just shows you that there are some undiscovered gems out there that just don’t get enough marketing dollars. Whenever I think of this book it makes me want to smile, so I suppose I’ll reread it at some point.

My True Love Gave to Me – Various. This is a book of Christmas stories that I loved. They weren’t all my favorites, but overall, this anthology put a smile on my face. One of my favorite stories from this anthology was Rainbow Rowell’s “Midnights.” I probably won’t reread it this Christmas either, but this will get a Christmas reread at some point in the future.

So what about you? Do you ever get an irresistable tug towards a certain book you’ve read in the past that you absolutely MUST reread again (and again)? Or do you figure that life is too short to reread books? Next week we’re going to talk about the holidays! I don’t know if any of these books will show up again, but we’ll see. There’s a couple I’m excited to talk about, and I’m looking to see your favorite wintry books!

My “A Sky Beyond the Storm” Prediction

By Brookelorren on November 30, 2020November 30, 2020Leave a Comment

Is anybody else excited about A Sky Beyond the Storm like I am? I’m so glad I buy my books with Amazon gift cards, because nobody in our house has worked since April, and I wouldn’t be able to afford it now.

Anyway, the Kindle edition drops in a little less than 1 hour and 40 minutes. I’m getting the hardback, so I’ll have to wait a bit. It was shipped via Amazon, so it could arrive any time between morning and afternoon. I teach until 3 tomorrow, and then I have a class planning meeting for next semester after that, so I won’t get to dive in until early afternoon anyway.

I reread the books this fall, and came up with a theory of how it will end, based on my reread and the cover to this book. Or at least one aspect of the ending. I don’t know if I’m right or not, but I’m going to put it here. I’m going to make the text color the same as the background in the unlikely event that I’m right. I’ll update this after I read the book with whether I was right or not. You can highlight it to see my thoughts.

So here’s my theory about Laia and Elias:

You know how in the past, there was more than one Soul Catcher? My theory is that Laia will become a Soul Catcher and she will live with Elias as an additional Soul Catcher and live happily ever after.

I’m guessing lots of other people will die (including Helene, based on something Cain said to her), and there may be other Soul Catchers, but after much death and tears, the good people will win the war.

The book is 528 pages, so it might take a few days to find out whether I’m right or not, but whether I am or not, I’m sure it’s going to be an amazing–and heartbreaking–book.

What I’ve Learned From Six NaNoWriMos

By Brookelorren on November 30, 2020November 30, 2020Leave a Comment

It’s November 30th again, and if you’re like me and participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), hopefully you’re finishing up your 50,000 words you need for the win. If not, you’re still a winner in a way, because you tried! This was my sixth NaNoWriMo, and each year, I learned something new. So if you didn’t get to 50k, that’s okay! Here’s what I learned in six years of NaNoWriMos (and four wins).

2014

I won my first NaNoWriMo! It was my second fanfiction novel and fourth longer work overall (the first three I think are technically novellas). Even though it’s published on Archive of Our Own to this day, it’s probably terrible. But you know what? I finished. After wanting to write since elementary school, I had never written a story of this length before.

2015 – First “Failure”

This year, I attempted to write original fiction (as opposed to fanfiction). I didn’t have a plan, only got past the magical 1,666 words on three days, only wrote 7,652 words total, and stopped writing on day 8. Even though I didn’t win, that’s okay! I’m not really a pantser.

2016 – Second “Failure”

This year, I made it a whole seven days before giving up, but I wrote more on each typical day. Writing the story was like pulling teeth though. I wrote a little over 10,000 words though.

That January, I had started writing a fanfic called Like Normal People. I wrote 13 chapters, stopped when we moved, and then forgot about it. I didn’t write for nearly the entire year.

2017

I didn’t even attempt NaNoWriMo. I don’t think I wrote any fiction that entire year. I’m not 100% sure though, but at this point I didn’t know if I was capable of writing an actual full-length novel. My dreams of being a writer shriveled up.

It’s funny though, because even though I didn’t write fiction, that didn’t mean I didn’t write. I wrote journal entries (lots of these). Blog posts. At some point very early in 2018, I realized that I was writing, even though I wasn’t writing for publication. If I was going to write anyway, why not write towards my dream?

2018

2018 was a very productive year, even though I was working “part time,” which often amounted to between 30 and 36 hours a week. Way more than I wanted to be writing. A very lovely person commented on Like Normal People, hoping I’d finish it. This was at the same time that I felt compelled to write Saving Adelinetta, which is still only 2/3rds done but is partially published on AO3. I wrote five short stories, one of them which was “Happy Birthday,” and two novellas.

I wrote the fanfic “Happy Birthday” on April 22. That summer, I was planning on writing a story for NaNoWriMo again. It was going to be based on the English civil war, but with a Russian feel to it. In August, I had a vision to change the characters from my story “Happy Birthday,” add elves and magic, and turn it into a full length novel. This became my second NaNoWriMo win. I ended up incorporating the original story I was going to write into the backstory for what is now THE BRIGHTNESS OF SHADOW, which I’m going to start querying tomorrow.

2019

After the previous year, I knew to plan more thoroughly for NaNoWriMo. I wrote a fanfic novel earlier in the year and then won NaNoWriMo with my… still untitled book. Yes, I wrote the 50,000 words I needed for my 3rd win, but the story seemed to go off the rails. I love the characters and the idea of this story, it just wasn’t well thought out enough. But you know what? I learned that I could write another original novel this year. And someday, I hope to go back and rewrite this story, with more planning.

2020

I started planning THE BALLAD OF COCONUTS AND SNAKES in the summer of 2019. This was the first book I wrote a query to before starting the book. I had no idea how I was going to write the book at the time, because the original query had amorphous ideas of a guy being held by a god on a desert island and being rescued by a girl (I had to edit this to avoid spoilers), but I had a general idea of how this would turn out before the month began. And this became my fourth NaNoWriMo win.

I’m not sure if this will be a single book or a duology. It has a natural breaking point in the middle, but I’m an underwriter and at this point, I’m not sure it will be long enough to make two books. Since I know the basics of the entire twoish-book story, I’m going to go ahead and write the first draft of both halves of the book and then just edit what I think will be book 1 before querying. And I think this one will reach the query stage too.

So that’s been my NaNoWriMo journey so far. If you’ve won this year, wonderful! But if you gave up, or didn’t make it to 50k, that’s okay too. We’re all growing in our writing journey and if you didn’t do it this year, or aren’t happy with your story, try again next year! The more you write, the more confidence you have that you’ll be able to do it again. At one point, I never thought I’d be able to write a novel at all, even though I desperately wanted to.

Books I Read Because Someone Recommended them to Me

By Brookelorren on October 20, 2020October 19, 202026 Comments

Hello! Welcome again to Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). Today we’re talking about book recommendations. We seem to get them every week on Top Ten Tuesday. Some books I know exactly where I got the recommendations from. Most books, however, I get recommended from you fine folks. So today I’ll start with the ones I know where they were recommended, and I’ll finish off with some that I heard about from blogging.

After my grandma died, I went to her memorial “party.” It’s kind of weird to have a party, but that’s what she wanted. My former German teacher, Herr Taylor, was there. He was a good guy, and was more than just my German teacher; he was a friend of the family. We were talking, and he recommended The World is Flat to me. One of the things that stood out to me about that evening was I realized I probably was never going to see Herr Taylor again because my grandma was the main tie between us (he’s no longer with us, so I was right). The book turned out to be good.

Who says that libraries don’t sell books? I loved Divergent. One day at the library, I told that to the librarian, who recommended Legend to me. I have since purchased seven copies of this book (English, Spanish, German on Kindle, paperback, 1st printing hardback, and 2 as gifts). Not to mention I’ve purchased all of Marie Lu’s books since then (most of them in both hardback and Kindle versions).

When I was at the Penguin Teen Tour this March, Marie Lu said she had been reading Fallen Glory and thought it was really good. The day before the library shut down, I remembered the book and checked it out. It turns out, it was really good.

Back when I was working at Walmart, one of my coworkers was Lydia. When I discovered that she was a reader, well, that gave us a lot to talk about. She really loved The Vampire Academy, but I still haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. Her favorite author was P.C. Cast, so when I saw The Dysasters over on Netgalley, I had to request it.

Rebel by Beverly Jenkins was recommended by Bee on Twitter. I don’t know what happened to her–I haven’t seen her in a while, and when I searched for her, I couldn’t find her. I hope she’s okay. But she did recommend this book, which was one of two amazing books with the title Rebel that I read in 2019.

Back when I was listening to Underground Wellness, Sean Croxton, the host, always had different authors come on and talk about their books. One of the books that I read as a result of his recommendation was Deep Nutrition.

The Raven Boys is one of those books that I saw all the time in the book blogging world before I actually got around to reading it. And then of course, since I liked it, I have to go around and recommend it to other people.

And that’s all of the book recommendations I can say who I got the recommendation from. I heard about The Last Year of the War from one of my blogging friends. It was a beautiful book that I highly recommend to other people.

Fangirl is another one of those books that I ended up reading because everybody seemed to be raving about it. Although I checked this book out of the library, book bloggers deserve a lot of credit for spreading the word about all these amazing books that are out there.

The Grishaverse books are another set of books that were recommended by many of you fine people in the book blogging world. At the time I started reading these books, the Six of Crows duology was huge, but I decided to start at the very beginning, which I thought turned out to be a good choice.

So those are ten books that were either recommended to me personally, were recommended by someone who talked about books they liked, or were recommended by book bloggers. What books were recommended to you? Do you get a lot of personal recommendations from friends and librarians, or are you more like me, finding many of your books from bloggers that gush about their favorites, and then you just have to read them too?

Next week is a Halloween Freebie. I don’t celebrate that holiday, but I’ll try to find something to write about in the ballpark.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

By Brookelorren on October 10, 2020October 10, 20202 Comments

VE Schwab is one of those authors whom I own several books from, but I haven’t read many (before Addie LaRue, I had only read This Savage Song). The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is one of those books that you hear about long before you get the chance to read it. Ms. Schwab has been talking about this book on social media for a long time. It came out this week, and I highly recommend it.

What’s the Book About?

Addie was born in 1691 in the small village of Villon, France. She reminds me a lot of Belle from Beauty and the Beast, except instead of being a reader, she’s an artist. She wants more from life than that of a simple life being a wife and mother, never leaving her village, and dying without ever seeing or doing much else. The only trouble is, everyone expects her to carry out this role. This is how she finds herself in a wedding dress, being practically forced to marry someone she’s not in love with.

This is when she makes her “deal with the devil.” She asks to be free. Although she prayed and prayed and prayed to all the gods she can think of, the only one that answers is a god that answers after dark. She had been warned not to pray to them, but she’s out of options. He agrees to her deal, and she unwittingly agrees to a deal where she never dies or ages, but nobody ever remembers her.

Until one day–someone does remember her.

My Thoughts

This book is great. The story masterfully weaves the two timelines together: one that takes place in 2014, when she meets the man that remembers her, and the other starting in 1714, when she makes the deal with the devil. We learn about how she made the deal, how she survived, how she felt. Some things are hinted at, but we don’t learn the details of until well into the book. I didn’t find one timeline any more compelling than the other. They were both great.

As someone who enjoys history, I found it very interesting to see Addie live through three hundred years of it. Don’t worry, although the book is 448 pages, you don’t have to watch Addie live through all 300 years of her history; it only touches on the highlights. She lives through the French Revolution, World War II, and attends a speakeasy during the Roaring 20s. It’s not a history book, but you get to see a scene or two during these time periods, which I found interesting.

Addie as a person is great. She’s strong-willed like Belle, and I found her to be a likeable character. The man she meets in 2014 is also likeable, but does have some character development that he needs to work on. We do get to see that in the book, however.

This book made me cry because I missed my grandma, and call my mom. It must be difficult to live for so long and lose the people that are closest to you. In Addie’s case, since nobody could remember her, it was difficult to become close to anyone after she made her deal.

There’s a twist at the end which I’m not going to spoil. I don’t think it’s meant to be shocking–you see hints of what the twist is as the story progresses. As I read the very last section, I thought it was amazingly clever how the story was pieced together.

“Happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”
The Invisible life of Addie LaRue (ARC), loc. 5257

Conclusion

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was a great book, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up on my list of best books from 2020. Not only was it a very clever book, it kept me wanting to read more. Even though my reading has been way down this year, I’m super happy that I read this book. This is one of Ms. Schwab’s adult books, so I wouldn’t recommend it to her middle grade readers or her younger young adult readers, but if you’re 16 and up and looking for a story about time and what it’s like to go through a long life where nobody remembers you, I definitely recommend it.

New Skyhunter Trailer!

By Brookelorren on September 14, 2020September 14, 2020Leave a Comment

Hello! I’m so excited to be part of Marie Lu’s Skyhunter Street Team! I’ve been waiting for this book for two years now–I remember sitting in the break room at Walmart, where I used to work, reading about the new book series (and at the time, the plan to release Rebel). I was so psyched I was telling all my customers about it for the rest of the night. Well… the trailer is here, and I get to bring it to you!

I hope you get the chance to read it. It comes out on September 29th, which means it’s almost here. Haha, I’ve declared it a school holiday (even though I have to teach two classes on that day).

Books for My Younger Self

By Brookelorren on September 8, 2020September 2, 202014 Comments

Hello! It’s Tuesday again, so it’s time again for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl)! Today we’re going to talk about “Books for My Younger Self.” What were books you would have liked to have seen when you were much younger? I don’t really think about this one a lot, so this one might be a challenge. But I’m going to try anyway.

My boy loves Lauren Magaziner. She’s his favorite author; in fact, he likes Marie Lu books too, and calls her “the Lauren Magaziner of YA.” I think I would have loved her Case Closed books. We just convinced our library to buy Case Closed 3: Haunting at the Hotel, so I’m sure he’s going to be happy to read that.

P Is for Pterodactyl is a picture book, but I find it amusing even now. I probably would have liked it when I was younger also.

My daughter was a huge Percy Jackson reader when she was younger. I think she read all of this first series. I have never read them, however. I think I would have liked them though, because I like mythology and enjoyed reading myths in middle school.

Spirit Animals is another series I haven’t read, but my boy likes a lot. Okay, I did read the last book in the series because Marie Lu wrote it, but I haven’t read any of the other books. I’ve thought about reading the whole series, but there’s a lot of other books that take priority.

I worked at a day care for a couple years when my daughter was little, and I thought Click, Clack, Moo was a cute book. I’m sure that I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had been closer to 4 years old.

I haven’t read The Bridge yet (although I’d like to). This is one of those books that would be good for someone going through a dark time. It tells the story of two people who intend on jumping off the George Washington bridge. What happens if either one of them jumps, what happens if they both jump, what happens if neither jump. Assuming that the world doesn’t become a better place when they both jump (that would be pretty toxic), I’m guessing that this book will be a great read.

I can’t think of any other books that I would send to my younger self (as soon as I see all the other posts I’ll probably come up with more), however, if we’re going to actually send books back in time to our younger selves, I’d send back The Complete Book of the Olympics (2012 Edition). I’d take my butt down to Vegas and make some money. Olympics betting was made illegal in 2001, even in Vegas, but I’d have a small window to make some money.

And while we’re at it, I’ll make a killing off the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.

That’s all I have for today! This week was harder than I thought it would be. What did you come up with? Hopefully you had some better ideas than I did.

Next week is a freebie week having something to do with book covers. I don’t know what I’m going to write about yet, but I’m sure I can come up with 10 next time. See you then!

The Opposite of Always

By Brookelorren on September 2, 2020September 1, 20204 Comments

Oh why can’t there be a book like Love and Basketball? A story which doesn’t revolve around black people’s pain and people live fairly normal lives? This is a question I’ve asked myself so many times. Not that there isn’t a place for those books too, but my biracial kids living in the suburbs really can’t relate. The Opposite of Always does have that vibe though (as does Conquest, which I read and have yet to review). I can’t tell you whether it has a happy ending or not (the ending actually surprised me) but it was a great book.

Jack King has a thing for one of his two best friends, Jillian. Until he meets Kate at a party. Which is a good thing, because Jillian is in love with his other best friend, Franny. Kate and Jake hit it off right away, but Kate is secretive. She gets sick and ends up dying (we later find out what it is; it just happens to be something my husband has, but I’ll refrain from saying what she has here). When Kate dies, Jack gets sucked back in time to the moment he met her, sitting on the stairs at a party.

It takes Jack several attempts to try to help Kate. Each time, he messes something up, but each time it’s in a different way. Each time, Kate ends up dying. Often, he messes something else up in his life. Eventually, Jack begins to wonder whether they belong together or not. I won’t tell you the ending, but he goes back one final time… and the story reaches a satisfying conclusion.

My Thoughts

I love Jack’s voice in this story. He seemed like a real person, and his friendship dilemmas seemed realistic as well. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Kate-Jack ship at first (I thought perhaps he should be with Jillian) but they kind of grew on me. The whole repeating time thing was great too. It’s not a unique concept, but The Opposite of Always brings a nice twist to the trope.

Conclusion

Do I recommend The Opposite of Always? Absolutely! I’m sure I’ll recommend it to my boy, although probably when he’s older: the relationship between Kate and Jack is pretty prominent, and Kate has the same thing my husband has. Although I don’t think it would scare my son (my dh is only mildly affected whereas Kate is in the hospital frequently), it might be something for him to read later (he’s 13). But if you’re looking for a story featuring time travel and black people living happy lives finding love and getting ready for college, this might be a book to add to your TBR.

P.S.: I just noticed that the Kindle version of this book is free to read for Amazon Prime members. I paid $1.99 for it (also not a bad price) but free is great too!

The Damned

By Brookelorren on August 15, 2020October 6, 2020Leave a Comment

I recently read Renée Ahdieh’s The Damned on audiobook. I always try to have one audiobook going, and when I saw this was available at my library, I was surprised.

The Damned is the second book in The Beautiful duology. This review contains spoilers, but you can read my review of The Beautiful instead, if you haven’t read the first book.

Celine has no memories of Sébastien Saint Germain, but she feels like something is wrong. Everyone tells her that Michael saved her from a brutal attack, and he’s been spending a lot of time with her. He’s interested in more than friendship with Celine, but she doesn’t really feel a passion for him. Should she settle?

Meanwhile, Sébastien is learning how to be a vampire, and we learn more secrets about him and the fey creatures he hangs around.

With the way The Beautiful ended, of course Celine and Sébastien meet up again. There are surprises in store for them, however. I was surprised at some of the things that were revealed in this book. I certainly did not expect this series to take the turn that it did. But I enjoyed it nevertheless.

While I enjoyed most of this book, I thought it ended quite abruptly. There were things revealed in this book that I thought should have been explored more thoroughly. I don’t think a third book is planned for this series, but it really should have one.

Update: It IS getting a third book so the ending is fine.

Conclusion

The Damned was a good continuation of The Beautiful duology; however, there were several twists that were introduced in this book that should have had further exploration. (Edit: It IS getting a third book!) I think this series should have been a trilogy. Otherwise, I did enjoy reading this book.

The Crow Rider

By Brookelorren on August 13, 2020August 13, 2020Leave a Comment

I recently read The Crow Rider by Kalyn Josephson (thank you Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the Advanced Reader Copy, sorry I’m late with this because–pandemic). It is the second book in The Storm Crow duology; as a result, there are spoilers. If you haven’t read the first book, you can read my review of The Storm Crow instead. This book wraps up the duology nicely.

Thia has left Illucia; the queen is dead-set on waging a war against her people and she needs allies. Meanwhile, she is also conflicted in her feelings about Ericen. Can he be trusted? Does she care about him?

The Crow Rider does an outstanding job of covering the emotions one might go through in a traumatic situation (or even a ::cough cough:: pandemic). Thia went through a deep depression in the last book; now, she’s dealing with feelings of inadequacy in the face of insurmountable odds. She’s not the only person in this book to deal with trauma. Even Res, the crow, goes through a period of difficulty. The villain’s past, and how she became the horrible person she turned out to be, is explained here (but not in an infodumpy type of way).

Another thing I loved about this book were the battle scenes. They were well-done and I could imagine them in my head. There were no guarantees either. In a couple places, I thought that perhaps all was lost.

The Crow Rider answers questions and adds new magical depth to the world. Where did the crow magic come from in the first place? Why can only certain people hatch eggs? If you’ve been wondering this and other questions, they’re answered here.

The only downside to this book that I can think of is that it has a huge cast. If you haven’t started the series yet, I would recommend you read The Storm Crow and The Crow Rider in a short time span. There were some characters I had forgotten about that get re-introduced later in the book and it was a little confusing. Ms. Josephson does do a good job at explaining who they are, but still–the cast seemed a little large.

Conclusion

If you liked The Storm Crow, I recommend you finish reading the duology with this great book. I don’t recommend The Crow Rider if you haven’t read the first book; a lot of things in this book are dependent on events from the first book. It captures emotion well, has a realistic teen protagonist, and wraps up everything nicely.