Teen and Staff Reviews

The Secret Life of Bees is a domestic fiction novel set in 1964. Here we follow Lilly Owens and

her life in an unstable environment. Secrets kept from her since an early age has led Lilly

through life changing events that bring her farm from home. She starts on a path of growth and

healing that leads her to find family and hope in a world full of fear and prejudice.

Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi, is a fantasy book with a gripping plot. Zélie is a

young girl living in Orïsha, a fictional country where magic exists. Zélie is a maji, a group of

outlawed people born with magic. All magic was destroyed when Zélie was just a child. For her

entire life, she has faced discrimination due to her magic. However, when runaway princess

Amari finds a magical scroll, Zélie unlocks her powers for the first time in years. Together, the

Chain of Gold, by Cassandra Clare, follows a group of shadowhunters,

descendants of angels whose main goal is to kill demons, in 1903 London. Cordelia

Carstairs is a young shadowhunter moving to England with her family. While there she

reunites with her childhood love, James Herondale, his sister and Cordelia’s best friend,

Lucie, and a host of new characters. While Cordelia gets acclimated to her new home, a

Taylor Greer has spent her entire life in her small town in rural Kentucky. Wanting

desperately to get out of her repetitive, lonely life, she leaves her mother to make a trek across

the country. As she searches for a place to call home, she comes into possession of a little girl

named Turtle. The two form an unlikely bond as they find themselves in Tucson, Arizona. While

meeting new people, such as single mother Lou Ann and her disaster prone son, Dwayne Ray,

Summary: Amelia Griffin became best friends with Jenna Williams after her father left and her

family fell apart. They bonded over their love of books their favorite ones being a series called

the Orman Chronicles. They are very excited to be able to meet the author at a book festival the

summer before college. However, not everything goes as planned. While Amelia is in the

bathroom, Jenna gets to meet the author, N. E. Endsley, who is having a panic attack. Jenna is

Summary: This book is about a girl who sneaks off to her grandparent's house with a dead

phone for a while. She then realizes that the town has been evacuated and she has been left

behind in a ghost town. Now she has to stay alive surviving off of canned food and her only

company, a dog.

Summary: This book takes place in a world where magic exists. Common magic is available to

anyone who can buy spellrings however, you can only use high magic if your family wins a

tournament that fights to the death. Every 20 years, each of the 7 families names one champion

that will fight for them in that tournament. When someone mysterious writes a book exposing

the tournament, the fight is now public to everyone after being a secret for centuries. Now the

The Ballad of Never After picks up right where the first book, Once Upon a Broken Heart, left off.

Apollo is still under a curse and Evangeline is determined to cure him on her own. However,

after he unexpectedly wakes up, she realizes he is now under two other curses: a curse where

he will continuously hunt her against his will, as well as a curse where he and Evangeline are

Stephanie Garber’s Once Upon a Broken Heart stars Evangeline Fox, a young, optimistic,

hopeless romantic girl with rose gold hair. After learning of her step sister’s engagement to her

first and only love, Evangeline seeks out the assistance of the notorious Prince of Hearts, Jacks,

known for killing people with a single kiss. In exchange for stopping the wedding, she will owe

him three kisses of which he will choose the time, place, and person. After her plans go south,

Secret Service is about a boy named Ben Ripley who is an undercover agent trying to

find out who is trying to assassinate the president. When things take a turn and Ben has to go on

the run, he must rely on his most loyal friends to gather evidence and avoid his enemies. I liked

this book because it had a crazy turn of events and lots of laughs. My favorite part is when Ben

walks in on the president’s daughter while she is going to the bathroom. I would recommend this