Book Review: Honey

How far would you go for the perfect body? What if there was a miracle drug that let you achieve rapid weight loss without exercise or dietary changes? People taking it are happier than ever...but the drug is harvested from unsuspecting endurance athletes whose lives are shattered as a result.

The plot of Honey is told through a courthouse setting with the details emerging in trial-like fashion. I was intrigued by the moral and ethical dilemma presented, as well as the concept of a miracle drug that lets ordinary people become extraordinary athletes. A thriller, mystery, and science fiction all rolled into one, Honey kept me interested from beginning to end. I can see Honey appealing to a broad audience - young and old, male and female. I look forward to reading more stories from Daniel Erwin.

**Full Disclosure: My brother-in-law wrote the book, my sister is on the cover, and I just re-used the review that I posted on Amazon. That being said, I honestly think this is a terrific read that would appeal to the young adult crowd. Plus, it is only $2.99 in the Kindle store!**

All Good Children

Title: All Good Children

Author: Catherine Austen

Rating: B+/A-

Set in a dystopian future (can you imagine anything else from a YA novel?), All Good Children follows the story of a teenage boy named Alex. At first, he enjoys a relatively privileged lifestyle among the country's wealthiest residents; however, everything changes when the government starts injecting students with a mind-controlling serum that changes the entire student body to well-behaved "zombies". Fortunately, Max and his friend are able to escape the injections - thanks to some help from Max's mother (who is a nurse.) Now, Max and his family must hide among the zombies while formulating an escape from the watchful eye of Big Brother.

The Good: Although this book is difficult to get into (I really have to force myself to read the first 100 pages!), the second half more than made up for the slow start. I found this to be an interesting story - and it's nice to see a YA author that can actually tell a story in one single volume!

The Bad: As I mentioned above, the only real negative aspect of this book was the slow start. I also found the references to 1984 and "pod people" a little too obvious. However, overall, this was a very enjoyable novel.

Beta

Title: Beta

Author: Rachel Cohn

Rating: B+

Set in the future on idyllic island for the world's wealthiest people, Beta centers around a newly "born" clone, who is the first in a new class of "beta" teen clones. Due to the relaxing nature of the island's atmosphere, human workers are deemed inappropriate for servitude; fortunately, science have solved the problem by creating a race of working clones from the bodies of the recently deceased. Elysia, the newly "born" teen, is an attempt to perfect the teenage model - something that has given scientists trouble in the past (apparently puberty does not agree with the cloning process.)

Elysia is purchased by a wealthy family to serve as a plaything for a bored mother and her children. However, problems start to occur when Elysia realizes she still has memories of her "first" life, before the cloning processes. She must now guard this secret to prevent from being destroy as a "Defect" clone. She soon discovers that she is not the sole "Defect", but that there are many more out there campaigning for clone rights. In the middle of all this, Elysia develops two romances: one with another clone, and one with her "first's" true love.

The Good: The story is a fast-paced, easy read that kept my attention from beginning to end. Although I'm not usually a big fan of series books that aren't read as stand-alones, this is actually a fairly good start to a series. The dramatic plot twist at the end definitely left me wanting book #2.

The Bad: I really only have one "major" complain (and one minor issue.) First, I didn't really like the amount of drug usage in the book. At first it seems a little gratuitous, but I'm hoping it somehow serves a point in the plot of book #2. As for the minor complaint, I didn't care for some aspects of the "clones." Apparently, clones are basically robots that have been programmed with a very specific set of instructions. I might be dating myself (and proving myself to be a big ol' nerd) with this reference, but the clone's speech reminded me a lot of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Their inability to understand humor or slang became annoy after the first couple chapters.

The Death Cure

Title: The Death Cure
Author: James Dashner
Rating: D

Although I was somewhat disappointed with the first book (The Maze Runner) in this series, I was pleasantly surprised by the second book (The Scorch Trials) and had hoped that this series would end on a high-note. Sadly, this book failed to meet those expectations.

After the first two books' long drawn-out series of adventures with few explanations for the mysteries surrounding the Maze, the Flare, WICKED (the list of unanswered questions in the series could continue for quite some time), I was hoping this last book would magically take all these random puzzle pieces and create some amazing unforeseen conclusion. Instead, the novel wandered aimlessly while neither answering the questions raised in the previous books nor creating a solid conclusion to the story-line.

The basic plot is that a portion of the "maze" group from WICKED's research project managed to escape and return to the outside world (to Denver of all places.) The remainder of the book is largely a back and forth asking, "Is WICKED good or evil?" Although the teens (or subjects as WICKED would call them) never really learn the true answer to that question, they eventually have to pick a side during the final battle between WICKED and a resistance group.

The Good: Perhaps the best part of the book is the fact that it finally ends The Maze Runner series (I really wish I had just stood with my original decision not to read the last two books - dang you Overdrive for your limited collection of YA downloads!) The book does at least answer a few of the questions from the first books (though surprisingly most of the real questions weren't even answered until the epilogue, and only then with merely sentence or two in passing...)

The Bad: While I have obviously not been a huge fan of this series, the first two books were at least fairly well-written, fast-paced adventure stories; this book was all the more disappointing in the fact that is lacked both the pacing and organization. (At the halfway point, I was really asking myself, "Isn't something more going to happen in this book?") This book failed to address many of the questions raised throughout the series, while only providing a quick (and seemingly poorly thought-out) ending to the overall storyline.

The Scorch Trials

Title: The Scorch Trials
Author: James Dashner
Rating: B

When I first read started this series a couple years ago, I was so disappointed with the first book that I swore I wasn't going to read the rest of the series. However, with my lack of reading options, I got desperate and decided to give Dashner another chance.

Fortunately, I did enjoy the second book in this series. The series continues right were the last book left off (which is not surprising since the last book had a little in the way of conclusion.) For the second book, the children of the maze find themselves forced to face another mysterious challenge designed by WICKED. Set in the future, the world has been ravaged by two different disasters: first, a massive sun flare radically changed the climate of Earth (making the the majority of a the planet uninhabitable.) Then, to make matters worse, a new deadly disease, which causes people to lose their humanity and go crazy, breaks out.

For the second trial, the children are released into the quarantine zone for the infected people and given just two weeks to fight their way across to safety. As with the first book, there are many questions posed about the mysteriousness of WICKED and these trails; however, Dashner again offered very few answers. In addition to the workings of the trial, Thomas (the main character) now finds himself in a love triangle with Teresa (from the first book) and Brenda, an infected girl who helps them cross the quarantine zone.

The Good: The book is a fast-paced read and generally an enjoyable read. It definitely has several key elements that all YA books seem to require nowadays (a dystopian society, a love triangle...the only thing missing is a little wizardry!)

The Bad: Again, I really wish that these books would function more as stand alone novels. I don't like how the storyline seems to run continuous throughout the three novels with very little division. I think this would have been a perfect single novel, but as three separate works it just annoys me.

Saving Nikki by Joyce Pierce

It has been a few months since we have done a book review here on ATR. Cody is off teaching English in Korea, Sheryl is busy building her dream house, and I have been caught up in preparing my students for their state mandated tests. However, I recently read a book that I enjoyed so much that I felt it warranted a review on our poor, neglected blog.

Saving Nikki by Joyce Mosley Pierce is story of a young girl with a troubled life. Abandoned by her mother, ignored by her father, and treated cruelly by her stepmother, Nikki is just looking for someone to love her. She meets the seemingly perfect guy whom she hopes will give her the love and attention she so desperately craves.

This book hooked me with the first chapter. Nikki is a likable character and the I was really rooting for her. It is a quick read and I stayed interested the entire time. The story is all about choices and the consequences of those choices...something I think many teenagers would benefit from reading!

Full disclosure: I do know the author personally (and I think she is fabulous), but that only prompted me to read the book. I enjoyed it fully on its own merits!

Switched (Trylle Trilogy#1)

I received a Kindle for my birthday this past weekend. I love being able to fit so many books in my purse. My husband loves that he doesn't have to deal with all my books sliding off the dash during road trips. However, as a former librarian, I don't love having to pay for books. So, I have mostly been downloading the free or very cheap books off Amazon. One book in particular caught my eye. Switched by Amanda Hocking. It had a lot of great reviews and I couldn't beat the price (.99). I am so glad I purchased it!

Switched is the first book in the Trylle Trilogy. Trylle are trolls...which is what the book is about. The Trylle take their children and switch them out with human children at birth. Then, when their powers began to develop, they bring them back home to their little Trylle community. When I think of trolls, I think of ugly, squatty things, but in this series, the Trylle are beautiful if not a little cold. Switched has a lot of action, suspense, and even romance (including one hot and heavy make-out scene). I found the story to be completely fascinating and I was really surprised that our public library system does not carry any of Amanda Hocking's books. Which means I now have to pay for the second part in the series and it isn't as cheap! I also plan on downloading Ms. Hocking's other series, My Blood Approves, even though I am getting a little burnt out on vampires. If the writing is as entertaining as Switched, then I am sure it will be worth it!

Back Creek by Leslie Goetsch

Back Creek is set in 1975. The main character, Grace, is about to go to college for the first time. However, many events unfold that summer that cause her to question who she is and how she views those around her. When I say many events, I’m not kidding. She witnesses a suicide, her mom leaves, her long-lost sister shows up, and, oh yeah, a hurricane hits the area. Not to mention she has to take care of her alcoholic father. Quite a few plot events for a relatively short novel.

This story is being marketed to young adults, but I think it would be a better fit with an adult audience. The first thing I noticed was the cover. It is kind of bland and boring. Having done many a YA book display in my time, I know that the catchy covers are the ones that teens gravitate toward. Also, the setting…1975. I think most teens like extremely current or set way back in time.

That being said, the story itself was interesting and I really liked Grace, the main character. She is the peacemaker, the one who tries to hold her family together. I enjoyed following along as she discovered her place in life. This story is one that I would most likely recommend to my friends or sisters, but probably not to my students.

Book Review: The Maze Runner by James Dashner

EDIT: Cody and I have not posted a review in FOREVER! What are the chances that we will both review the same book just days of each other. I typed this whole review and posted it before catching up on my ATR reading and realizing Cody had beat me to it.

Having recently given birth and returned to work full time, I don’t have much time for reading these days. However, when I walked into my school’s library and the librarian thrust The Maze Runner on me, declaring that it was “like The Hunger Games, only better,” I decided to make a little time for reading.

The main character, Thomas, wakes up in an elevator with no memory other than his names. When the doors open, he finds himself surrounded by other teenage boys in the same predicament. They are in an enclosed environment and forced to eek out their own survival. There is a maze in the enclosure that a few “Runners” try to navigate daily in the hopes of finding an escape. Unfortunately for them, the walls move around every day and they cannot go in the maze at night because of strange, dangerous beasts (aka “Grievers”).

The Maze Runner isn’t as deep or thought-provoking as The Hunger Games, but it is still a fast, compelling read. I liked the relationship dynamic between the boys…a little like The Lord of the Flies. Also, the main character is this great guy…a realistic hero, if you will. A few things I didn’t like: the one girl in the story is supposed to be this super smart girl who is key to solving the maze, her character just wasn’t consistent. Sometimes she would be all brave and tough, but other times, like when put in solitary, she gets all teary-eyed and timid. Also, the last part of the book kind of loses momentum. Overall, although I didn’t LOVE The Maze Runner, I still really enjoyed it and I am definitely looking forward to the sequel.

The Maze Runner

Title: The Maze Runner
Author: James Dashner
Rating: C+

Ok, let me begin by explaining something to the YA authors that may stumble upon this; a good book requires a beginning, middle, and END! Just because you've been offered a multiple-book deal, doesn't mean you can just drop your story with the hopes of picking it up in the next volume! We, the readers, will not blindly follow you!!!

The Maze Runner begins in the mysterious world of the maze, where a group of teenage boys have had their memories erased and must attempt to solve the complex puzzle. Although there are many hazards in their new world, life is fairly structured - that is, until the new boy, Thomas, is thrown in the mix! Thomas proves to be the key needed to help solve the puzzle and escape back to their former lives; however, what are they escaping to??? (You'll apparently have to wait until the second book to discover this fact...though I suspect you won't care enough to continue reading by this point.)


The Good: The Maze Runner is a fairly typical work of dystopian literature and would serve as a good recommendations for fans of The City of Ember and/or The Hunger Game series (however, The Maze Runner is nowhere near as good as The Hunger Games!) The story also focuses primarily on male characters trying to survive - a characteristic that might also make it appeal to boys.

The Bad: Honestly, The Maze Runner isn't really that great of book. The story was slow-paced, and (as I mentioned above) the ending left something to be desired. Although I might recommend this book if I was desperate, I don't think I would make this my first suggestion.

The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks

I feel like I have read one too many vampire books lately. After Stephenie Meyer's success with the Twilight series, it seemed like everyone was trying to cash in with a young adult vampire series of their own (I mean, I know there were YA vampire series before Meyer's, but they really seemed to flourish afterwards). Anyway, I had pretty much sworn off vampire fiction, but then my school librarian handed me a copy of The Reformed Vampire Support Group that she picked up a TLA. I loved it! It was such a refreshing change from the vampire lit where everyone is beautiful and strong and amazing. Catherine Jinks' vampires aren't even all that likable and they sure whine a lot. It was hilarious. Plus, there is even a little murder mystery and romance action going on to give the story a bit more kick. I am not sure if the cover art will be appealing to the average teen, but the story itself will.

Being Nikki by Meg Cabot

Awhile back, I received a review copy of Being Nikki by Meg Cabot. Being Nikki continues on where Airhead left off with Emerson still in the body of a supermodel (how terrible, right?). For Emerson, it is, because she is still in love with her old best friend from high school, but is prohibited from telling him her true identity.

I found Being Nikki to be much more suspenseful than Airhead. And towards the end, the book takes a turn that caught me completely off guard. I love Meg Cabot, but let's be honest, her books are usually predictable. Not this one. I won't spoil it for you, but it is really intriguing. The only thing that frustrated me is that it totally leaves you hanging at the end. I am so tired of reading books and then having to wait impatiently for the next one in the series!

Coffeehouse Angel by Suzanne Selfors

Katrina gives some day-old pastries and coffee to a homeless guy asleep in the alley behind her grandmother's coffee shop. What she doesn't realize is that the homeless guy is actually (a) cute and (b) an angel. He's a messenger who must deliver a message to someone in her hometown. Because she did a completely unselfish thing for him, he must grant her her greatest desire. It would help is she knew what that is. Mixed in with all this, her grandmother's coffee house is in danger of being put out of business by the new, hip coffee house next door, and Katrina's best friend, Vincent, starts dating the too perky and perfect daughter of her grandmother's ruthless coffeehouse competitor.

This isn't going to win the Printz and I doubt it's going to be a best-seller, but it's cute and enjoyable. I liked the ending a lot more than I expected to. It's appropriate for both middle and high school. I plan to buy a copy for my library, and I think it will appeal to readers who liked The Opposite of Invisible or The Possibilities of Sainthood.

Beautiful Creatures

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl doesn't come out until 2010, so I kind of hate to write about it now so far in advance. However, if I don't write about it now, I know I'll never do it. When I got the ARC from Little, Brown at TLA, the rep told me something like, "We're hoping this will appeal to Twilight fans." To be honest, that kind of turned me off of wanting to read it. Do you know how many books I went through trying to recreate my Twilight experience (at least from the first two books)? And now it seems every book is just trying to get Twilight fans by being derivative or getting a Stephenie Meyer endorsement. But the cover is great and the summary didn't sound too much like Twilight, so I gave it a chance. And I'm so glad I did because I really liked it.

Ethan Wate lives in the small, very Southern (definitely capital S "southern") town of Gatlin, South Carolina. He can't wait to leave. His mother died, his father is now a recluse confined to writing in his study all day in his pajamas, and the town is very insular, where everyone knows everyone else and doesn't want anyone to be different. The one person who is different is Old Man Ravenswood who owns the oldest plantation house in town and who never leaves his house. When his neice, Lena Duchannes, arrives in town, things start changing. And the people of Gatlin don't like change. Lena is pretty much the opposite of the very Southern and superficial girls who are popular cheerleaders at Gatlin HS. They resent her and mock her, and Ethan's defense of Lena only makes things worse. When the ring-leader of these girls, Emily, keeps pushing Lena one day in English class, the classroom window suddenly breaks. This is a pivotal moment when everyone at Gatlin decides Lena is not just different but dangerous, and by befriending her, Ethan is making a conscious decision to break with all of his other friends and neighbors in Gatlin (except his great best friend, Link). As Ethan spends more time with Lena, he comes to understand how and why the window broke, why Old Man Ravenswood is such a recluse, why Lena is marking her hand with numbers (counting down each day), how his housekeeper/caretaker is involved with Ravenswood, why the town librarian stays there when she could be in a bigger city, and many other historical secrets of the town that he never even suspected. Not to mention why he's been dreaming of Lena even before she arrived.

The setting was really well depicted and incorporated into the plot. Although I love my hip urban faery tales (Marr, Clare, etc.), I like this change of p(l)ace. The setting melds well with the mystical elements of the plot and makes it even more believable. It also makes this book different from all those urban faery tales, while at the same time, I think it will probably appeal to a lot of the same readers. There were quite a few characters, but they were all very well-developed. I didn't predict the end, but it seemed like an appropriate end, not contrived to be "something you didn't see coming." Naturally, a sequel appears imminent. The only aspects I didn't completely love were with some of the ending, but I will wait until it comes out to discuss that (if I can even remember by then). And the superficiality of the "popular girls" made for good conflict and humor, but they were definitely stereotypes and one-dimensional. They weren't the focus, though, so it's forgivable/understandable. I did love the depiction of their shirts (you'll understand when you read it).

I was intrigued by the title, but I have to say its meaning was nothing at all that I suspected. Now that I understand its meaning, I like the meaning but I am not completely sure how I feel about it for the title of this book. I also love the cover, but I had it on my cart of ARCs I've been sharing with students and no one took it the entire two weeks it was there. So what do I know?

* Margie looks like E. Lockhart to me in the photo on their website.

Why Post Reviews?

This is an extremely interesting article from The Economist called "Fair Comment: The internet: Books and other products sold by online retailers can attract thousands of reviews. Why are they worth reading—or writing?" Although the whole article is really worth reading, the bottom line of the article is that more reviews on sites like Amazon equate to more purchases, even if there are bad reviews. Once you get into the double digits of number of reviews, people are more willing to buy the product. And even when there are hundreds of reviews for a book, such as Harry Potter, people continue to post reviews and they apparently tend to have some effect (by sheer number, if nothing else) on the book being purchased. Actually, the study claims, a small number of poor reviews makes it more likely that an item will be purchased if there are a good number of reviews.

I have to wonder if people are more likely to buy a product with a lot of reviews because that product is just popular (thus the reason so many people have reviewed it, because it's popular and been read by a lot of people). It also makes me think about my book reviews on this blog. I often don't review books I read because I think, "This has been out so long and other people have already reviewed it." Although blogs are different from the attached product reviews the article discusses, I think it is relevant and makes me rethink my mindset some. I know there are books that I might not have thought too much about, but after I see many people have liked it and talked about it, it makes me want to read it and/or buy it. And I like to read reviews by people who tend to like the same books I do (at least when it comes to choosing my own books to read).

Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles

Brittany Ellis appears to have the perfect life. She is co-captain of the cheerleading squad and is dating the captain of the school's football team. She's beautiful, rich, and popular. Little does anyone know, this is all a carefully crafted and protected facade that she works hard to maintain because, in reality, her home life is far from perfect. Her older sister has cerebal palsy, and Brittany's parents would like nothing better than to send her sister away to a school rather than take care of her at home. Her father is hardly ever at home, and when he is, he is distant and absent from any meaninfgul involvement with his family. Her mom is hyper-critical, and Brittany feels she has to be perfect to make up for her sister's "imperfections."

Alex Fuentes is a member of the Latino Bloods in Chicago. He's pretty smart, but he doesn't see a future for himself that involves anything other than being in the gang because he sees it as the only way to protect his younger brothers from joining. His father was killed in drug/gang-related activity when he was young, and Alex seems to get in trouble at school all the time, even when he's not doing anything wrong. Alex and Brittany get paired as chemistry partners for a year-long assignment to make hand-warmers. They dislike each other a lot at first, but eventually they come to realize that the other is not who they appear on the surface. Actually, they discover, they have a lot in common and are very attracted to each other. They develop a romance, despite the objections of pretty much everyone else in their lives.

I'd recommend this to fans of Sarah Dessen and Sara Zarr. However, although the romance appeals to me, it's probably not going to be one that I recommend to a lot of readers. The voices of the characters seemed very inauthentic to me. They seemed like something an adult writer would create for a teen book rather than voices of real teens. I also felt that Alex was too "good." He did almost everything bad under duress, and he didn't do any of the bad things he was accused of by the school adminsitrators. The basic plot device is one that has been done a lot, and in my opinion, this doesn't add much new to the story: uptown girl with seemingly perfect life attracted to the bad boy "from (literally) the wrong side of the tracks" with a heart of gold. And while they insisted throughout the book that Brittany and Alex discovered how much they had in common, I just didn't see it. Plus, Brittany's boyfriend was almost completely unlikeable. I would have liked to see a more nuanced, complex character (like the jilted boyfriends in Sweethearts or Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac). The ending [SPOILER ALERT!] was probably the thing that I liked least about the book. A different ending could have made these other criticisms less significant in my mind. I'm always one to want a happy ending, but this was too neat and unlikely, even for me. I mean, not only did Alex get out of the gang, but he moved to Colorado to go to college with Brittany and then they ended up having a child they named after Alex's dead friend, and then their son was in chemistry class with their same teacher. It's super cute, but just too much for me. This is the ending I wanted for Zarr's Sweethearts, but that novel worked better because the ending was so much more realistic and a necessary outcome of the characters and circumstances. But if you want to read something that has the feel of Sweethearts with the ending you always wanted for Cameron and Jenna, this might be the book for you.

Test

Title: Test

Author: William Sleator

Rating: A-

Set in the near future, Test follows a group of students in a large American city were pollution is over-powering; traffic is a nightmare; class-ism is at an extreme; and standardize testing is the sole judge of academic merit. (Doesn't sound too distant, does it?!?)

In this environment, a local high school student, Ann, mysteriously finds herself enveloped in the plots of one of America's richest business-men, who just happens to be the publisher of the notorious test.

Ann soon discovers vast corruption behind the test and No Child Left Behind. With the help of a renegade substitute teacher, Ann and her friends boycott the test and use their evidence to create a national scandal...and some long needed educational reform!

The Good: I thought Mr. Sleator's setting was quite ingenious. Although there is significant evident placing this in a futurist realm, the direct links to so many modern issues make the setting almost current!

The Bad: Honestly, there really isn't anything I can state as being truly negative about this book. If force to list something, I would perhaps complain that the plot was wrapped up a little too quickly; I would have liked to see the ending extended a little more. However, I'm sure it's much more adolescent-appropriate as is.

Little Brother

I picked up Little Brother by Cory Doctorow at the library today. I started reading it as soon as I arrived home and did not put it down until I finished. Honestly, it is the most fascinating book I have read in a long time. It is like a modern day Nineteen Eighty-Four. The setting is San Francisco, right after a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge. Much of the book deals with security measures, hacking, and high tech computer lingo, but you don't have to be a techie to get it. Overall, it was the message of the story that I really loved. I think Andre "bunnie" Huang explains it best in the Afterword, "Little Brother is a reminder that no matter how predictable the future may be, we don't win freedom through security systems, cryptography, interrogations and spot searches. We win freedom by having the courage and conviction to live every day freely and to act as a free society, no matter how great the threats are on the horizon."

The Otherworldlies

Thanks to Hurricane Ike, I had plenty of spare time to catch up on my reading. One book I especially enjoyed was The Otherworldlies by Jennifer Kogler. The Otherworldlies is about a teen girl who just doesn't fit in with her family or her friends. Weird things are always happening to her. She hears voices, she can predict the weather accurately, and she can even talk to her dog. Although this book was a little slow getting started, I enjoyed the plot. Much like Twilight, this book is a vampire read without being too vampire-y, if that makes any sense. There isn't any romance, but there is a lot of suspense and action. I think this book will really appeal to the younger teen readers who are Stephenie Meyer fans.

Tyrell

Title: Tyrell
Author: Coe Booth
Rating: C+

This month, School Library Journal did a cover story on Street Lit; since I had never really read anything in this genre, I scanned their recommended list and decided to read Coe Booth's Tyrell.

Tyrell is the story of a teenage boy growing up homeless with this mother and younger brother on the streets of New York. With his father in prison, Tyrell must step up and be the man of the family. Although his mother wants him to sell drugs to earn money for the family, Tyrell, instead, decided to DJ a massive party. While Tyrell works to organize this party (mostly through illegal doings), he must also work to balance his love interests and family needs.


The Good: I'm sure many urban teens would have an easy time relating to Tyrell's situation; I'm also sure that many non-urban teens would love this story merely for the "coolness" factor (probably in the same way that gangsta' rap is so popular in suburban American.) I also liked the fact that the author made the main character rather strong; although he has definite flaws, his continued effort to support his younger brother and his complete refusal to partake in drug dealing served to make him a somewhat unlikely hero.

The Bad: Anyone in a library where harsh language, poor grammar, and/or graphic situations could be a problem will probably want to stay away from this book. I also had a little bit of a problem with the book's portrayal of domestic abuse; although brief, it's almost as though the main character thinks it's a husband's responsibility to keep his wife in her place. Finally, although the book does provide an good view into the mind of young urban American, for the most part the actual plot is extremely weak.