Scorpia Rising by Anthony Horowitz

I've 'rode' these books from the beginning to the end, starting in sixth grade. (You see what I did there, don't you?) In my honest opinion, they kept getting better as each one came. Alex grew, and with him, the threats grew as well.

Although Alex had many enemies, his biggest enemy was Scorpia, which stood for Sabotage, Corruption, Intelligence, and Assassination. He's forced them down before, but they won't stay down for long. The first part of the book is written through Scorpia's point of view, and, I won't lie, it was written so well that I actually wanted them to succeed. The second half, of course, is Alex. He is sent by M16 to live and attend school in Cairo. They tell him that all he must do is check out a school in Cairo. He finds out that his mission is much bigger than that.
Horowitz did something new with this one! Jack Starbright and Mr. Smithers joined Alex on his mission, because, honestly, all he was doing was going to school, right? I love how Horowitz incorporates the two characters and makes you meet them in a new way.
The end of this book will have you wondering: Who is REALLY the enemy?

Wanna do me a favor?

Hey, loyal blog readers. If you wanna do something super nice, you could check out my writing on inkpop, and if you like it, add it to your picks.

http://www.inkpop.com/projects/99605/through-his-eyes/

It's called Through His Eyes and it is a novel in verse.

It's about a girl living in the aftermath of her brother's suicide. If you want to know more, read the description posted on inkpop, it's much lengthier.

So please, I beg you, check it out!

Burned by Ellen Hopkins

So here's the deal: I love books in free verse, and Hopkins is by far the best.

That said, let's look at her book BURNED.

Burned is more of a romance than any of her other books.

It follows the story of Pattyn Von Stratten, a girl in a strict Mormon family who begins questioning her faith after an innocent sex dream. She wonders if she is held accountable for her dreams, if she can ever make it into heaven.

Well, after being caught in a questionable position with a boy, her life begins to spiral out of control. And her mother, about to have her first boy, shouldn't have to handle the stress, should she? So her parents send her to live with her Aunt Jeannette, or Aunt J as she calls her. Aunt J is nice and loving, but she has also been scarred emotionally by Pattyn's father. She helps Pattyn to find love, happiness, and herself.

This book has the best ending of any romance novel I have ever read before. Read it, and all of Hopkins' other books.

Thanks for reading!

I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

For the month of March, the Teen Reader's Book Club over at Goodreads is reading two books: I Am Number Four and Delirium. Being the overachiever that I am, I finished IANF yesterday. It's a great book, I must say.

The book is mostly about planets being raided for resources. Of course, the big part is being chased by Mogadorian aliens, but it's really about that. Basically, 'John Smith's' planet was destroyed and he had to come to earth. There's this Loric charm on him and these nine other kids.

The charm's really cool. They can't be killed out of order. Why? Because that'd make the story more interesting, of course. There's some other nifty things about the charm, but I won't go too deep.

Another thing about this book is that it's a love story. It's about his love for Sarah, and, if you ask me, his love for Henri, his guardian.

The Mogadorians are some pretty freaky dudes. They are pretty vicious. They want to kill the Loric people on Earth. They're trying.

The book begins with Number Three's death, and the scar that means somebody died carves into John's leg. He has to move, so Henri and him go to a place called Paradise, where his life sort of changes.

The movie's really good as well, but there are some parts that are very different.



Check back later, sorry for the sort of scattered review. I'm really tired but I wanted to review it tonight.

Teen Angst? Naaah... by Ned Vizzini

First things first: if you haven't read anything by Ned Vizzini, get off my blog. Like now. This way, you can speed to the nearest bookstore and buy up all three of his books.

This is Ned:

One of the major reasons that I think Ned is so cool is that I messaged him and he answered me a couple of weeks better, answering everything in detail. That's pretty cool for an author to do, because they are so busy. Anyways, Teen Angst? Naaah... is his autobiograpy.

It's pretty cool because there are little mini-stories in the book. Each of them are interesting. I loved every one, but I have to say that my favorite story was Cable Access Says No. It's pretty funny because I was like, did he REALLY do that? It made me laugh so hard. But what's really cool about the book isn't just how funny it is, but that it is from when he was in high school--like me. I guess it's just pretty neat to see that even your favorite authors had to suffer through high school.

Anyways, reviewing an autobiography is kind of tough for me because I hardly ever read them. If I were you, though, I would invest in this one. It's so good I want two copies. It's so good I want to punch a sheep, for no apparant reason except for how good this book is. It's so good that I want to end this blog post so that I can go read it.



Beastly by Alex Flinn

With the Teen Readers Book Club over at Goodreads.com, we are reading Beastly throughout February. I finished it a little early so that I could read more books on my personal list. There were things I loved, things I didn't like so much, and things I hated.

Kyle Kingsbury is not a good guy. He lives for himself and nobody else, treating women like objects. When he is nominated for Homecoming King (was it homecoming? Correct me if I'm wrong--it's been a while), a girl calls him out on it. When he fakes an appology later, he asks the girl to go to the dance with him. But it's all a lie. When some people realize how he is, somebody turns him into what his inner self is--a beast.

Positives: Pretty good story, interesting enough characters, and something small yet unexpected at the ending.
Negatives: TypeOhs (maybe it was just the version I read, but there were lots of them.), unrealistic situations (Of course, it IS a fantasy, but come on...), and a few others that would give stuff away.

Read Beastly at your own risk. The typohs and other negatives made the book seem a little bit unprofessional to me. But that's just me.

The Scorch Trials

Sorry I haven't been updating as much as I'd like, I've got stuff to do. I've recently read The Scorch Trials by James Dashner.

While I was entertained by the book and I thoroughly enjoyed it, I didn't think that the book was nearly as strong as The Maze Runer. Especially the beginning, the book was sort of dull. I didn't feel that it was really interesting until it was nearly 3/4 over, and I got bored with it often.

Dashner's writing is good, don't get me wrong, but the story he is writing in this book was just a little uninteresting at first. You can see how that would be a letdown when The Maze Runner was very eventful.

Overal, I would give this book about a 7 out of 10, because it's still really good. I just am judging it based on The Maze Runner, and I feel that the series got a bit worse with this one.