Teen and Staff Reviews

Staff Review

Drift & Dagger

By Kendall Kulper
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Chris K.
Jun 17, 2016

"I've always been a monster," begins the jacket flap of Drift & Dagger. Mal keeps that a secret, though. More openly, he's something of a cross between a pirate, thief, smuggler, archeologist, and bounty hunter. He is a world-traveling adventurer who specializes in acquiring and selling magical artifacts, often through underhanded means. He frequents ports and bazaars, black markets and bars, dense slums and dense jungles and everything in between.

Teen Review

Every Day

By David Levithan

Rated by
Olivia from Leawood Pioneer Library YAAC
Jun 13, 2016

Every day, A wakes up in a different body and a different life. One day he wakes up in the body of Justin and meets his girlfriend, Rhiannon. He has finally found someone that he wants to be with, day in, day out. Can he make it work when every day he is in love with the same girl but a different body?

Teen Review

Delirium

By Lauren Oliver

Rated by
Olivia from Leawood Pioneer Library YAAC
Jun 10, 2016

Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing.



They didn’t understand that once love -- the deliria -- blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the government demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.



Teen Review

The Dark Days Club

By Alison Goodman

Rated by
Olivia from Leawood Pioneer Library YAAC
Jun 8, 2016

London, April 1812. On the eve of eighteen-year-old Lady Helen Wrexhall’s presentation to the queen, one of her family’s housemaids disappears-and Helen is drawn into the shadows of Regency London. There, she meets Lord Carlston, one of the few who can stop the perpetrators: a cabal of demons infiltrating every level of society. Dare she ask for his help, when his reputation is almost as black as his lingering eyes? And will her intelligence and headstrong curiosity wind up leading them into a death trap?

Staff Review

Calvin

By Martine Leavitt
Star Rating
★★★★★

Rated by Chris K.
Jun 6, 2016

It's been a long time since a book has transported me so completely. Has taken me so deeply into myself that I become oblivious to the world around me and my head spins with disconnection when I try to regain awareness. Just me and the book, and nothing else. I started reading and was supposed to stop because life was still going on around me, but I didn't. I couldn't find my way back. So life moved on without me until I finished the book. Now I must figure out how to catch up, but that's okay. It was worth stopping at a special place for a while.

Staff Review

The Glittering Court

By Richelle Mead
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Octavia V.
Jun 4, 2016

Richelle Mead, well-known for the Vampire Academy series has written a new book, The Glittering Court. While there are no vampires or werewolves in this new fantasy series, there is instead, Adelaide, Countess of Rothford.  Adelaide lives with her grandmother and has no source of income, leaving marriage her only choice.

Teen Review

Navigating Early

By Clare Vanderpool

Rated by
Olivia from Leawood Pioneer Library YAAC
Jun 1, 2016

After the death of Jack’s mother, he is suddenly uprooted from his home and placed in a military boarding school. There, he befriends Early, a boy who reads pi as a story and collects newspaper clippings of a great black bear in the mountains nearby. When they unexpectedly find themselves alone at school, they embark on a journey on the Appalachian Trail in search of the bear. Along the way, they meet people who figure into the pi story Early tells. They both discover things about themselves and others in their lives on this great adventure.

Staff Review

The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963

By Christopher Paul Curtis
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Becky C.
May 31, 2016

Told from the point-of-view of 10-year-old Kenny, it's really his big brother Byron who's the hero of this funny, emotional sucker-punch of a novel. Byron, thirteen, is a juvenile delinquent--a black sheep--according to Kenny, and pretty much everyone else in the so-called "Weird Watsons" family. But in the end it's Kenny who helps Byron overcome his depression over witnessing tragic events during a trip to visit their grandmother in Birmingham, Alabama during the height of the struggle for Civil Rights. 

Teen Review

When We Wake

By Karen Healey

Rated by
Olivia from Leawood Pioneer Library YAAC
May 26, 2016

When Tegan decides to donate her body to science, she never expected to wake up 100 years later locked in a top-secret facility with no idea how she got there, or what happened on the day that was supposed to be the best of her life. The future isn’t at all what she had hoped, and when she learns the terrible secrets of the government that saved her, she must decide whether to keep her head down and try to survive, or fight for what she knows is right.

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