By Marlow Tracy (no spoilers) I recently finished reading And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, which I found to have too many murders and not enough clues. Despite the questionable amount of death, I liked the writing style of the book, so I picked up another well-known novel by the same author: Murder on the Orient Express . The story begins with the famous detective Hercule Poirot, whose journey on the Orient Express takes an unfortunate turn when one of the passengers is found stabbed to death with his compartment locked from the inside. With the train stranded on a snowdrift, Poirot must work quickly to find out which of his cabin-mates is the murderer using a series of obscure clues. Before starting the novel, the concept of a story taking place on a train intrigued me. The confined setting creates character interactions that otherwise might never take place, and the lack of need for description forces the author to focus on advancing the plot and includin...

The 19th century was one of the most paramount time periods in Western literature. Russian literature from this time period produced world-renowned classic authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, and, the center of today's review, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Book 1 of The Idiot  is a classic that I had a meaningful time reading and slowly understanding. Someone who recommended me this book told me that the thing with books of the same genre as The Idiot is that embedded within the story are such deep comments of philosophical nature and such accurate representations of society that you feel like a completely different person after finally coming to terms with what the author is actually saying.  The Idiot follows Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young, good-hearted yet slightly dull and gullible Russian prince who, at the start of the story, is returning from a Swiss clinic that the book suggests he has spent the last few years at for curing his idiocy and epilepsy. He arrive...

    For the past couple of weeks, I have been reading Partials by Dan Wells. This is my review.     Partials is a book that follows sixteen-year-old Kira, who is a medic. She lives in a world that takes place in the distant future, after the human population has been reduced to thousands. This is because of the Partials, genetically engineered human beings who were made to serve in the military, but then turned on the humans. The humans and the Partials went to war, and during the war, the Partials created a virus called RM, to which they are immune, that affects humans. The only humans remaining also have immunity.   Because all of the babies die of RM shortly after birth, the government is desperately trying to find a cure, by making people have as many babies they can, starting at sixteen years old. Kira works in maternity and runs tests on the babies until they eventually die. She is contempt with her job until her friend Madison becomes pregnant. After ...

By Marlow Tracy                Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith is a wholesome, quick read that is well worth picking up. It is set in Botswana and follows the daily life of Mma Ramotswe as she works for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, solving crimes and righting wrongs with the help of her skilled assistant Mma Makutsi.                Something that struck me about the book right away was its style of writing. The author takes the perspective of one character at a time, detailing their reactions to events and providing an insight into their thought process following each action instead of just providing reactions and forcing the reader to make inferences regarding their feelings. These tangents (of sorts) are not boring or off-topic, but rather give the reader an amusing interpretation of events in the novel and help develop each character’s perso...

 By Kate A.      Stephen King's dystopian novel, The Long Walk, is about an annual competition where 100 teenage boys must walk at a steady pace of 4 mph until only one of them remains. In the Long Walk, each boy is given three warnings, and after all their warnings have been used, they are "ticketed." Readers learn early on in the book that buying a ticket means you are shot by one of the soldiers riding alongside the walkers in half-tracks. The last boy standing at the end of the Walk wins "The Prize", which is anything they want for the rest of their lives. The story is narrated by Ray Garraty, one of the participants in the Long Walk. Ray is from Maine, where the Walk starts and most of the story takes place.      I have read a few of Stephen King's novels and short stories before The Long Walk , but this book was different. Unlike many of his stories, this book didn't involve anything supernatural, but there was an element of psychologic...

Perhaps the main thing I remember about my experience with  Masterminds  is that I started the entire series on a summer weekend, and I ended it on the same weekend. Gordon Korman is known for his children's literature, never falling short of delivering a short but captivating novel. The  Masterminds  series, or for the sake of this post, book one of the series,  Masterminds , is no stranger to this. There is not much philosophy to take away from  Masterminds , but everything from the action and the plot twists to the characters and world-building is unexpectedly beguiling. I read the first book, the focus for today,  Masterminds , then after closing that opened the second book,  Criminal Destiny , and then the final book,  Payback .  The book opens with Eli Frieden, the main protagonist, playing with his best friend, Randy. At this point, the reader assumes that the setting is some rural neighborhood like any other. However, the re...

      Adventurers Wanted: Albrek's Tomb, the third book in the Adventurers wanted series follows Alexander Taylor (goes by Alex) as he is requested by one of his old company members to find Albrek, a dwarf who went missing searching for new mines in the village of Thraxon.  Alex and his company have to go through many dangerous places to get to Thraxon in search of Albrek, and run into trouble along the way.        I really liked the first two books in the Adventurers Wanted series, Slagboth's gold , and The Horn of Moran. Slagboth's gold  and The Horn of Moran  were Alex's first two adventures, which introduced me to the fantasy world of magic and adventures, all throughout the book. It was fun to see Alex adapt from being a normal sixteen year old kid, to an adventurer on a quest to find gold, having to slay dragons in the process. I was able to experience getting to know magic in the world for the first time with Alex, and it was f...

By Marlow Tracy        I picked up My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix in the library thinking it would be a pretty bad book but fun to read nonetheless. It turned out to be an awesome, eccentric horror novel full of detail and creepy descriptions. Bizarre things start to happen to the main character, Abigail Rivers, when her best friend Gretchen jumps into shallow water and disappears for a night. Abby already has her hands full managing her school, social, and family life, but when Gretchen starts acting strange, she knows she has to find a way to put a stop to her friend’s erratic and eventually dangerous behavior before it’s too late. My Best Friend’s Exorcism is the weirdest book I’ve picked up in a while, but it was totally worth the read.        The story takes place in the 1980s town of Charleston, South Carolina, and it is jam-packed with detailed world building, well-written characters, and lots of references to...

To say the least, reading, thinking about, and understanding   The Old Man and the Sea  is... a unique experience.  I have been recommended this book multiple times but never really took it upon myself to read it. From what I had heard about the novel, it sounded like a very linear and stodgy read. I finally decided to give it a try and confirmed my hunches: "This book is just an old man fishing, but I guess it's a little sad in the end," I thought. I knew something with my claim was wrong. After all,  The Old Man and the Sea  is one of the best-known books of a man who won the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for his writing.  The Old Man and the Sea  is a short read, about 130 pages. I decided to reread the novel, and  this  time, I understood things that were invisible to me before, picked up new details, and got an idea of the theme. You see,  The Old Man and the Sea  is not a book to read for its action, drama, or humor...

    In this blog post, I will be reviewing Cinder , by Marissa Meyer.             The Lunars are a race of humans who live on the moon. When humans colonized the moon, the people who lived their were changed, do to the different conditions. When they had children, the children became almost another species.     Cinder follows the story of 16 year old Linh Cinder, who is treated badly because of her being a cyborg. When she was a young girl, she was taken in by a family, who horribly mistreats her because of her disability. Her only friend in the family is Linh Peony, one of her stepsisters. The book starts with Cinder, who is a talented mechanic, meeting Prince Kai, the heir to the throne of the Commonwealth. He asks her to repair his android. He takes the android, and tells the prince that he should return later to pick it up. It is obvious that she has a crush on him. When she gets home, she watches the news and finds out that K...

By Marlow Tracy           After reading Anna and the French Kiss and being absolutely blown away, I just had to pick up the sequel, Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins. Although my impressions of romance books were changed for the better by Anna and the French Kiss , I didn’t know if I would be able to say the same about its sequel. Luckily, it turned out to be just as much of a page turner as the first one, and I may or may not have stayed up until midnight finishing it the same day I picked it up.           The book follows the story of Lola, a 17-year-old costume fanatic with a 22-year-old boyfriend named Max that her dads do not approve of, a detective-loving best friend named Lindsey, and a mysterious history with the Bell twins living next door. Lola navigates through family troubles, guy troubles, costume troubles, friend troubles, and more on a coming-of-age/slice-of-life journey. Although the plot line...

By Kate A The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge is a Victorian murder mystery that takes place on a fictional island called Vane. Faith Sunderly and her family, which consists of her brother, her parents, and her Uncle Miles, are leaving England temporarily so her father can join an excavation on Vane. Her father,  Erasmus Sunderly, is a well-known natural scientist, but there are some rumors in England that he has committed fraud. After a few days on Vane, it becomes clear by the way the locals are treating the Sunderlys that the rumors about Mr. Sunderly have spread to the island. Many people seem to despise her father and the rest of the Sunderly family. When her father turns up dead, she suspects that he was murdered by someone on the island and is determined to prove it. After her father's death, Faith comes across one of her father's journals that explains one of his specimens, which he calls the Lie Tree. When a lie is whispered to the tree, it bears a fruit that, when e...

When I began reading  Magisterium  by Cassandra Clare and Holly Black with  The Iron Trial , I thought that I was going to experience a  Harry Potter  knock-off. While the basic premise of  Magisterium  sounds similar to  Harry Potter , what with the story revolving around three friends that go to a magic school unknown to ordinary humans as they conquer their fears, go on adventures, etc., it is definitely a series,  Iron Trial  in particular, that has some of its own unique moments. The Iron Trial  Callum Hunt is a 12-year-old without any knowledge of the existence of magic. He has a whole family of mages, but his father wants to protect him from the various dangers of the magic world. His mother died before he ever got to know her. Call lives a normal life that is changed one day when he receives an invitation to attend the trials of Magisterium, the secret underground mage school where his father and mother went. Call d...

  The Scorch Trials is a sequel to The Maze Runner, which makes it the second book in the Maze Runner series. The book follows Thomas and the Gladers --his group of friends from the Maze-- after they finally found a way to get out of that treacherous place. When they get out, there are people on the outside of the Maze who say that they want to help, and Thomas and his friends agree. They are taken on a Bus, when they discover Cranks. Cranks are crazy people who have been affected by the Flare disease, which makes them go crazy. (This is important for the next book in the series) They are split up from the group of girls, which was a group that was put in another Maze by WICKED. They discover that they have been led into a trap when a person they call the Rat Man shows up and tells them that it was a trap, and WICKED, the group that organised them to be in the maze, was still doing tests. He tells them that their next test is to get out of a dessert and reach a safe haven within tw...

By Marlow Tracy The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco, about a young girl named Tea who finds out that she is a special type of witch that can raise the dead, looked like an interesting book to read from the start. Judging the book by its cover and the inside flap, it seemed like a fun, detailed fantasy novel full of witches and character/world development, so I checked it out and began to read. Warning: prepare to be disappointed. The book started out confusing, and I found it hard to keep track of the events that were occurring as well as all of the characters and different cultural elements, but I kept reading because most books tend to start out with a lot of information that is later clarified. The very beginning held a common fantasy trope: a vague prologue written in all italics that didn’t really give away any information. I read through it but skipped over most of the boring description. As I continued reading into the chapter, I noticed that the writing style was quite j...