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In: Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA)
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Fueled by fury and fixated on revenge against the recklessness of humanity, the Queen of Blood and Rage—the Unseelie ruler of the fae courts—desires redemption for her lost daughter and for the toxic environment humans have created.  Hoping to destroy humanity from within, she creates a Sleeper cell of half fae, half human beings, and with intense pressure, converts them into weapons.  She calls these jewels in her arsenal the Seven Black Diamonds.  Several of the seven willingly and loyally serve her, but a few resist. Lily Abernathy, the daughter of Iana and Nicolas Abernathy, is one of the resistant ones.   Born into aRead More →

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In: Realistic Fiction (YA), Sports (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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Staying determined, disciplined, and driven, Harper Scott and her best friend, Kate Grey have been working since before preschool on their goal—to dance with the San Francisco Ballet Company. Thinking that motivation, sacrifices, dedication, passion, and effort will ensure success, Harper doesn’t believe in luck.  Full of love and hard work, she is chasing fulfillment. Because Harper is also a descendant of Robert Falcon Scott, the Englishman who is best known for his legendary and fatal attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole, she has adopted a motto: “Succeed, or die in the attempt” (13).  With Scott in her blood, Roald AmundsenRead More →

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In: Young Adult Book Reviews
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I recall growing up and jumping rope to the rhyme:  “Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother 40 whacks.  When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”  I never questioned the veracity of the rhyme, and after reading the narrative nonfiction account, The Borden Murders by Sarah Miller, I am intrigued anew by the susceptibility of public opinion to be shaped by sensationalized media messages and swayed by rumors. While Miller’s book serves mostly to recount a series of suppositions and scandal-mongering newspaper accounts of the unsolved mystery of Abby Borden and Andrew Jackson Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts, onRead More →