SHIP BREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi

I recently finished Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. This dystopian fiction is one of the best I have read in a while. If you are looking for an action pact page turner or just an awesome book, this should be your first choice.

            Ship Breaker is set in America’s Gulf Coast region. The main character, Nailer, is a ship breaker. A ship breaker is someone who breaks down beached oil tankers for scrap metal. After a giant hurricane, Nailer and his friend find a clipper ship. A clipper ship is a ship that only the richest of the rich own. Nailer finds the owner of the clipper, who happens to be a girl about the same age. He can either kill her and take all the loot for himself or help her get to her dad. The choice he makes soon turns into a deadly adventure.

            One of the best things about this book is the character development

“Richard Lopez wouldn’t hesitate. He’d slash the rich girl’s throat and take the rings and shake the blood off them and laugh. A week ago, Nailer knew for a fact that he could have done the same. This swank girl wasn’t crew. He didn’t owe her anything. But now, after his time in the oil room, all he could think of is how much he’d wanted Sloth to believe that his life was just as important as hers.”

            That passage is an excellent example of how Nailer developed over the course of the book. He turned from a stone cold kid that didn’t take anything from anyone to someone who valued other’s lives.

            The plot development is absolutely one of the best out of the dystopian fiction genre. Everything somehow leads to the next in this novel. It starts out a little slow, then it turns into a heart pounding thrill ride that doesn’t make you want to let go until the very end. The pages almost turn themselves in this book.

            I give this book a 9 because of the awesome character and plot development. It was medium pace at first, and then it started to pick up. If you liked this book then you should get The Roar. Although they aren’t alike I still loved both of them.

Reviewed by Jacob Duncan

8th Grade

WISH by Alexandra Bullen

I recently finished the book Wish by Alexandra Bullen. Wish is a very touching book that will keep you reading till the end. Wish is about a girl, named Olivia, who moves to a new town after her sister, Violet, dies. While having to deal with her family falling apart and her parents fighting at all times, she also has to deal with liking and going out with her friends ex-boyfriend. She gets a dress and while wearing it wishes that her sister was back. What she doesn’t know is that the dress is magical and her sister does come back. Her whole world is changing can she keep it together?

I love the style of this book. Bullen uses great imagery. She describes things very thoroughly it is as if you are there looking at the people and places she is describing.

“Olivia kept staring at her sister’s profile. Violet. Violet was back. Violet was sitting right beside her. She looked a little paler, maybe, and a little thinner, too—Olivia noticed a trail of blue veins crisscrossing the insides of her sister’s wrists, veins she didn’t remember ever seeing before. But other than that, it was the same Violet. The same wild, copper-colored hair; the same sparkling, impish eyes.”

She describes Violet so thoroughly that I can almost see her. She uses imagery like this throughout the whole book.

I also like how Bullen used third person and first person point of view. She tells it from the outside looking in, but she still has the thoughts of both sisters so you can understand what they are going through and what they are feeling. She has more of Olivia’s thoughts than Violets, but she describes what is going on in such great detail that you can conclude what they are feeling. The plot is complicated, but she makes it easy to read. Anyone and everyone can and should read this amazing novel.

If I had to rate this book I would give it a 10 out of 10. I love how she describes everything and makes it seem real. She took a topic that could be childish and cookie cutter, but she ran with it and made it a teen fiction and not a fairytale for little kids. I love the romance and family conflicts and how she tells a tragic story without it being depressing. She shows that Olivia is sad, but she also shows that she is trying to get over the loss of her sister and have her parents forgive her for her sister’s death.

Reviewed by Reagan Smith

8th Grade

THE LYING GAME by Sara Shepard

In The Lying Game by Sara Shepard, there were many outstanding features. Things such as detail and character development made the book a success. When I began the story, I had high expectations due to another of her series, Pretty Little Liars, because it had an amazing plot and brilliant suspense-filled chapters. I fell for Shepard’s writing and just had to try her first in the series The Lying Game.

“Sutton had a life anyone would kill for. Then someone did.” Emma Paxton has been from foster home to foster home her whole life. When she discovers she has a long lost identical twin, Sutton Mercer, she hops on a train ASAP to meet her. When Emma arrives at Sutton’s hometown, everybody assumes Emma IS Sutton. Emma soon gets a death-threat note from a mysterious mastermind informing her that Sutton is dead and Emma is being forced to masquerade as Sutton or she’s next on the list. When Emma finds out about the Lying Game, a game Sutton and her friends play consisting of hard core pranks, she realizes that Sutton and her friends are more devious than she thought. Once the first prank of the Lying Game is played, Emma realizes that how her sister died could be a prank gone terribly wrong. Let the Lying Games begin.

Shepard made the plot of this novel so complex and intense that is was hard to put it down. It had a lot of sub-plots and description throughout the book. Those are qualities I find essential to having a decent storyline. That being said, I think The Lying Game has too much resemblance to Pretty Little Liars.The plot of The Lying Game has a very close resemblance to Wanted, the last in the Pretty Little Liars series. Although Shepard does write both books very well, I was looking forward to something different. Both novels had the murder-mystery plot to them.  I loved the novel regardless. The narrative voice of The Lying Game was a little hard to follow since Sutton, the dead twin, is the narrator. The way this book was written was foreign to me. I have never read a book that was written like The Lying Game was, so I had some trouble following the story at first. This passage gives an example of how Shepard wrote the novel in Sutton’s perspective.

“I watched Emma as she floated toward sleep, her face untroubled and unsuspecting. I wished we could have had one day together, one hour. I wished I could whisper in her ear and tell her what I knew for sure: Always sleep with one eye open. Never take anything for granted. Your best friends might just be your enemies. Most important, she shouldn’t trust a single thing she knew about me yet. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but something deep inside, something I couldn’t quite comprehend, told me I was the trickiest member of the Lying Game by far.”

Sutton can get into Emma’s head and tell her thoughts. In parts of the novel its a little hard to keep up with what Sutton is talking about: her own situation or Emma’s. To some people, it can be as challenging to follow as it was for me. Once I got into the book and got used to the way Shepard wrote, it was an amazing read. I enjoyed how easy it was to put myself into Emma’s shoes. Since I have never had any experience in Emma’s situation, it was a big part of the book to me.

             I would rate this book a 7 out of 10 because even though it had an outstanding plot, it lacked originality. I loved the book, but I wish it didn’t have such a close relation to her other series. When I finished, I felt like even though it is the first in a four-book series, the end was too abrupt. Shepard knows how to get the reader hooked, but it’s going to be hard to wait for the next book, Never Have I Ever, with so many unanswered questions.

Reviewed by Jenny McCrummen

8th Grade

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

I just read a great book called Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.  It is a nonfiction survival book and probably one of the best in this genre.  This book is filled with life-or-death situations, survival stories, and controversy.  After you read this book you will be hooked on the survival genre.

            This book is set in 1992 when a young man named Chris McCandless decided he would give up on “regular” life and drift around the Western United Sates.  After he finished college, he donated his $25,000 in savings to charity, got rid of most of his possessions, and started his epic journey.  He traveled with literally nothing for a couple of years before heading to the Alaskan Bush.  He lived off the land in Alaska for a few months before he was found dead by some hunters.  This short summary is just the tip of the iceberg. This book explains what happens on McCandless’s journeys in vivid details that make this book a rapid page turner.

            The way Krakauer uses character development in this book is almost unbelievable.  Krakauer does an excellent job of describing McCandless’s life through interviews with his family and friends.  After reading this book I felt as though I knew Chris McCandless.  I think this passage from the book shows excellent character development:

“Chris was fearless even when he was little. He didn’t think the odds applied to him.  We were always trying to pull him back from the edge.”

            This is a quote that Krakauer used in the book from an interview with McCandless’s dad.  I think it shows good character development because it describes McCandless’s driven and fearless mindset.

            The structure of this book is also very interesting.  It is written almost like a report or magazine article.  It includes many of McCandless’s journal entries and a good amount of interviews with the people that knew him.  This structure helps you understand the story better and also helps you know what opinions other people have about Chris Mccandless.  In some cases this structure might make a book boring but in this case it makes it more interesting.

            I definitely rate this book a 10 out of 10.  It is probably the most interesting book I have ever read.  It is well written and will keep you turning the pages.  Into the Wild is an emotional story that will make you think about subjects you haven’t ever thought about before.  Even if you aren’t a serious outdoorsman or you usually don’t read books about survival, I suggest you give this book a try.  Into the Wild is definitely worth your reading time!

Reviewed by Ryan Bowman

8th Grade