The Wishing Spell is a book about twins that travel to an unexpected location, a fairytale world. They have fun at first meeting their childhood heroes, but soon they wanted to go home. To do this, they must adventure around this unfamiliar world to collect magical items. They run into friends, but they also run into some unpleasant people.
R.J. Palacio’s Wonder is a story about 10-year-old August Pullman with a genetically different facial appearance. He goes to a public school for the first time and encounters many conflicts. As soon as Auggie walks in on his first day he is flooded with many stares. People try to stay away from him, which makes Auggie feel not accepted by his peers. Two students named Jack and Summer do become friends with Auggie. The book follows Auggie’s journey through school and the ups and downs of his life.
The Counselors by Jessica Goodman Goldie Easton attends a prestigious summer camp, not because she’s rich, but because she gets free tuition due to the benefit that her parents work there. However, Camp Alpine Lake has been dubbed as a summer camp for spoiled brats and rich kids by the local “townies” at Roxwood. When Goldie’s best friends, Ava and Imogen, arrive at summer camp, Goldie gets the feeling that they are both keeping secrets from her.
Icebreaker, by Hannah Grace is a college romance about a figure skater named Anastasia Allen and the hockey captain Nathan Hawkins. As both main characters strive for success and to do the best for their future, an incident results in the two teams sharing the same ice rink.
Madeleine L'Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time is a story about a teenage girl named Meg who had a hard time fitting in at school and also had a father who was missing. Meg’s curiousness about her father led her to go on a quest to rescue him. Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O’Keefe went off on a magical adventure to another dimension in the hope to rescue their father. The book follows their journey of traveling through time and space and encountering many difficulties along the way.
The Maze Runner by James Dashner is a thrilling dystopian novel that follows the story of Thomas, a young boy who wakes up in a mysterious glade surrounded by a massive ever-changing maze with no memory of his past. He joins a group of boys who have been trapped in the Glade, trying to survive and find a way out. As they navigate the deadly maze, they face terrifying mechanical creatures known as Grievers and uncover unsettling secrets about their existence.
After just surviving their first game of Caraval, the Dragna sisters planned on traveling with the Caravel crew and taking their positions as spectators for the next game. Donatella had other plans. Turns out, she’s been secretly in contact with an anonymous thief who can track down their long-lost mother. The catch: she’s going to have to win the next game.
Taking place post-apocalyptic, this story follows a father and son’s journey to the sea, in an attempt to find something or someone who could help them. This was an interesting read, as McCarthy has a unique writing style with this book: no chapters, no parts, just ill-grammar words. Although those very aspects made it not my favorite read, it was vital in defining the story’s atmosphere.
Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns is a tale of two Afghanistani women named Laila and Mariam who got married to the same man. Maraiam a teenager from Herat was forced to marry Rasheed after her mother passed away. Laila was born almost a generation after Mariam and had to marry Rasheed after he rescued her when her home was rocketed and her family was killed. It follows the story of the two women living through the wars in Afghanistan.