Reviews by Category: Fiction

A Separate Peace is the coming-of-age chronicle of young Gene Forrester, a studious

and introverted student of Devon, an elite boys’ boarding school. His roommate is a popular,

adventurous, risk-taking athlete: Finny. With their participation in World War II just around the

corner, they savor these last days of boyhood, climbing trees and going to beaches and having

snowball fights. But in the background of their friendship a dark rivalry and jealousy lurks, and

Poems by Elizabeth Bishop is a culmination of some of her greatest works. The poems in this

book begin as an outward analysis of the world and move more internally, into the self, as the

book continues. Bishop is a poet who can display her meaning directly while also having a

deeper meaning that requires searching. She explores humanity and all of the effects that come

with it. With the themes, she talks about and her vivid descriptions her poems are an experience

Starr Carter, our sixteen year old protagonist who lives in garden heights, a poor town that is a

predominantly black, crime ridden neighborhood. Completely contradicting to the small town she

lives in, Starr attends Williamson Prep, a fancy, mostly white Prep School. Starrs world comes

crashing down when she witnesses her best friend Khalid die from the hands of a white police

officer. As Starr struggles to balance both of her worlds she has to figure out who she really is.

And to do that she has to confront her tragic past.

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, is a children's story told from the point of view of a sled dog.

The readers get to experience Buck's (the sled dog) journey as he travels across North America.

Buck is stolen from his owners bedside to be sold to miners traveling across freezing Alaska. The

readers learn about the mistreatment Buck faces, his own rivalries with the other sled dogs, and his

search for his owner.

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, is a must read.

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green, is a dramatic teenage-romance book that spawned several

others in the genre.

Flannery Culp, high school student and murderess, is going into her senior

year, and she’s got a huge crush on the student choir leader, Adam State.

She writes him letter after letter, but never knows how he truly feels.

Other than Adam, Flannery is also dealing with other unwanted attention.

Meanwhile, her endearingly pretensious group of friends are having

troubles of their own, and Flannery gets entangled in quite a few of them.

I didn’t love the book at first. The beginning is kind of slow, and it

The Hive by Barry Lyga and Morgan Baden

Spy School Revolution by Stuart Gibbs. Genre: Fiction

Read previous books in the Spy School series before reading this review.

If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang