Post It Note Reviews by The Teen: November Edition

So I have allowed each teen reviewer here at TLT to come up with their own review style and my daughter, The Teen, is going with the Post It Note Review. This is how it came about: She steals my ARCs and I tell her that if she does, she has to write a review. So she started leaving the books with a post it note on them with her thoughts. She likes it, thinks it’s creative, so we’re going with it. She, apparently, is the complete opposite of me: I am super wordy and she is succinct and to the point. So without further auedio here is her latest round of Post It Note Reviews.

Publisher’s Book Description: Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked…until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.

Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.

With starry Texas nights, red candy suckers, Dolly Parton songs, and a wildly unforgettable heroine—Dumplin’ is guaranteed to steal your heart.

The Teen’s Post It Review: Go Julie Murphy! Adores this book, it couldn’t have been better it was so perfect. Thank you for this intringuing take. By the way Julie, You are so amazing I adore you even more than your books.

Karen’s Note: This is 1 of The Teen’s Top 5 Books of 2015

Publisher’s Book Description: Devon Tennyson wouldn’t change a thing. She’s happy watching Friday night games from the bleachers, silently crushing on best friend Cas, and blissfully ignoring the future after high school. But the universe has other plans. It delivers Devon’s cousin Foster, an unrepentant social outlier with a surprising talent for football, and the obnoxiously superior and maddeningly attractive star running back, Ezra, right where she doesn’t want them first into her P.E. class and then into every other aspect of her life.

Pride and Prejudice meets Friday Night Lights in this contemporary novel about falling in love with the unexpected boy, with a new brother, and with yourself.

The Teen’s Post It Review: This book was amazing. I love how it captures so many emotions in just 266 pages. Perfect for anybody.

Karen’s Note: This book is also on The Teen’s Top 5 of 2015

Publisher’s Book Description: My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.

But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly.

Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.Devon Tennyson wouldn’t change a thing. She’s happy watching Friday night games from the bleachers, silently crushing on best friend Cas, and blissfully ignoring the future after high school. But the universe has other plans. It delivers Devon’s cousin Foster, an unrepentant social outlier with a surprising talent for football, and the obnoxiously superior and maddeningly attractive star running back, Ezra, right where she doesn’t want them first into her P.E. class and then into every other aspect of her life.

The Teen’s Post It Review: I can’t describe this because it was so good, but I read it over and over again. BTW Olly is super awesome.

Karen’s Note: This book is also on The Teen’s Top 5 of 2015

Publisher’s Book Description: Artist Beatrix Adams knows exactly how she’s spending the summer before her senior year. Determined to follow in Leonardo da Vinci’s footsteps, she’s ready to tackle the one thing that will give her an advantage in a museum-sponsored scholarship contest: drawing actual cadavers. But when she tries to sneak her way into the hospital’s Willed Body program and misses the last metro train home, she meets a boy who turns her summer plans upside down.

Jack is charming, wildly attractive . . . and possibly one of San Francisco’s most notorious graffiti artists. On midnight buses and city rooftops, Beatrix begins to see who Jack really is—and tries to uncover what he’s hiding that leaves him so wounded. But will these secrets come back to haunt him? Or will the skeletons in Beatrix’s own family’s closet tear them apart?

The Teen’s Post It Review: Loved this book; it showed longing and beauty in everything good and bad. I’ve read it many time.

Karen’s Note: This book is also on The Teen’s Top 5 Books of 2015. She says she loves the beginning.

Publisher’s Book Description: Stella Cross’s heart is poisoned.

After years on the transplant waiting list, she’s running out of hope that she’ll ever see her eighteenth birthday. Then, miraculously, Stella receives the transplant she needs to survive.

Determined to embrace everything she came so close to losing, Stella throws herself into her new life. But her recovery is marred by strange side effects: Nightmares. Hallucinations. A recurring pain that flares every day at the exact same moment. Then Stella meets Levi Zin, the new boy on everyone’s radar at her Seattle prep school. Stella has never felt more drawn to anyone in her life, and soon she and Levi are inseparable.

Stella is convinced that Levi is her soul mate. Why else would she literally ache for him when they are apart?

After all, the heart never lies…does it?

The Teen’s Post It Review: Mysterious and romantic; was interesting but the sudden darkness was surprising.

Karen’s Note: This is one of several YA lit titles released this year that seems to deal with heart transplants.

Publisher’s Book Description: “I used to be one of those girls. The kind who loved to deliver bad news. When I colored my hair, I imagined it seeping into my scalp, black dye pooling into my veins.

But that was the old Lacy. Now, when I cast spells, they are always for good.”

16-year-old Lacy believes that magic and science can work side by side. She’s a botanist who knows how to harness the healing power of plants. So when her father dies, Lacy tries to stay with her step-mother in Chico, where her magic is good and healing. She fears the darkness that her real mother, Cheyenne, brings out, stripping away everything that is light and kind.

Yet Cheyenne never stays away for long. Beautiful, bewitching, unstable Cheyenne who will stop at nothing, not even black magic, to keep control of her daughter’s heart. She forces Lacy to accompany her to Sacramento, and before long, the “old” Lacy starts to resurface.

But when Lacy survives a traumatic encounter, she finds herself faced with a choice. Will she use her powers to exact revenge and spiral into the darkness forever? Or will she find the strength to embrace the light?

The Teen’s Post It Review: Dark and intriguing. Also, shows you how to find yourself.

Karen’s Note: Okay, here’s a story about The Teen reading this book. She just started solidly reading YA this year and this was like the 2nd or 3rd YA title she read. So we’re driving in the car and she says to me, “Mom, I think this boy is raping this girl.” So we talk about it for a moment. Then she says, “Do I have to keep reading it?”, to which I reply, “No, you never have to keep reading something that makes you feel uncomfortable or you don’t like.” But she did in fact keep reading it. She finished the book and she really liked it. We talked a lot about several aspects of the book, including the rape. I was glad that because I have spent her life talking to her about bodily autonomy and increasingly about healthy relationships that she had the vocabulary she needed to recognize what was happening in the book and to come and talk to me about it.

Publisher’s Book Description: In a stunning literary debut, two boys on opposite ends of the world begin an unlikely friendship that will change their lives forever.

Ollie and Moritz are best friends, but they can never meet. Ollie is allergic to electricity. Contact with it causes debilitating seizures. Moritz’s weak heart is kept pumping by an electronic pacemaker. If they ever did meet, Ollie would seize. But Moritz would die without his pacemaker. Both hermits from society, the boys develop a fierce bond through letters that become a lifeline during dark times—as Ollie loses his only friend, Liz, to the normalcy of high school and Moritz deals with a bully set on destroying him.

A story of impossible friendship and hope under strange circumstances, this debut is powerful, dark and humorous in equal measure. These extraordinary voices bring readers into the hearts and minds of two special boys who, like many teens, are just waiting for their moment to shine.

The Teen’s Post It Review: Didn’t finish (I got sidetracked) but from what I read I found it simply beautiful and eye-opening.

Karen’s Note: This is an epistolary novel with an intriguing premise.

Publisher’s Book Description: Black Swan meets Pretty Little Liars in this soapy, drama-packed novel featuring diverse characters who will do anything to be the prima at their elite ballet school.

Gigi, Bette, and June, three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet school, have seen their fair share of drama. Free-spirited new girl Gigi just wants to dance—but the very act might kill her. Privileged New Yorker Bette’s desire to escape the shadow of her ballet star sister brings out a dangerous edge in her. And perfectionist June needs to land a lead role this year or her controlling mother will put an end to her dancing dreams forever. When every dancer is both friend and foe, the girls will sacrifice, manipulate, and backstab to be the best of the best.

The Teen’s Post It Review: Also didn’t finish – it’s not my kind of book genre. But if I enjoyed this genre this would be my top pick.

Karen’s Note: I did read and finish this book and thought it was an excellent – and diverse – addition to the ballet genre. It’s told in several POVs and discusses topics like eating disorders, drug use, competition, self-esteem, sabotage and revenge.

For those of you wondering what the remaining 2 titles on The Teen’s Top 5 of 2015 are . . .

The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough

Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

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