Book Review: Wilder Girls / Rory Power

Can you imagine living in quarantine? You can? LOL

Hetty, Reese and Byatt live at an all-girls boarding school on an island in Maine. Strange things have been happening to the crabs and the flowers near the school and then to the girls themselves. Many don't live and those that do have growths, bruises, hands that go silver, eyes that fuse shut, a second spine or heart. The island is placed under quarantine and the girls lives become sparse as there is not enough food or supplies to go around. And the girls keep becoming sicker.

If you like horror stories, this story might be the right book for you. It isn't so much BOO! scary but it does leave one's stomach churning as events roll along. There is a missing girls, and a race to find her. Good and evil - and who know what is what.

This is a Flume nominee for 2020/2021
 

Book Review: Dry / Neal Shusterman, Jarrod Shusterman

 

Imagine running out of water. Imagine how it would impact your life.  No showers. No toilet. No drinks of water. Stores are being emptied out of anything liquid (not unlike the great toilet paper rush of 2020). And you are thirsty. 

What would you do? There is a drought and the rivers have dried up. Some of the little bits of water left are not safe to drink. How would people behave in this scenario? What WOULD you do?

Follow the lives of several teens and a child that find themselves in this world in Dry. 

Want more of a preview? Watch the trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogTSCB5V0ME

Book Review: Saint Death / Marcus Sedgwick

 

Before I say anything else about this book - I love this cover art. Just check out the "face" of Saint Death here. So much to look at.

This book is hard to read - not that the words are hard, or the sentence structure is difficult, but that Arturo's life is so difficult. Imagine moving tires all day, then with aching muscles, coming home to a shack made up of crates and tin. The dirt is your floor and crates are your bed. This is the life of Arturo. He keeps his head down, stays invisible because that is how one lives in the city of Juarez just south of the Mexican/American border. And then one day a friend asks him for a favor, a favor that makes Arturo visible. 

This is a harsh story, but one that offers the reader a chance to stand in someone else's shoes for a bit and get a taste of someone else's world.