Tag Archives: friendship

Turtles All The Way Down by John Green – Book of the Week

This week’s Book of the Week is the long-awaited Turtles All The Way Down, by John Green – it’s not actually on the display yet, because I’m still reading it!

The blurb says:

Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.

I am on the last-but-one chapter, so it will be available to borrow soon – watch the display!

A Library of Lemons by Jo Cotterill – Book of the Week

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I have chosen one of the new books for this week’s Book of the Week – a wonderful, warm story which I read over the Easter holidays. A Library of Lemons is all about the power of friendship and how important it is to look after one another.

Calypso usually keeps her head buried in a book – but when a new girl joins her class who also loves reading and writing, it sparks a close and special friendship. Mae’s home is busy, lively and noisy, just like her – and Calypso loves spending time there.

Since her mother died Calypso’s dad has grown distant, and keeps to himself. But when she discovers the sad secret hidden in her father’s library, she realises that something is very wrong.

Unboxed by Non Pratt – Book of the Week

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Four teenage friends reunite at their old school, five years after they left a time capsule on the roof there. But when they made the time capsule there were five of them. Unboxed is a wonderfully readable story about the kind of friendship that can overcome all the obstacles and last forever.

Alix, Ben, Zara and Dean meet at their old school to keep a longstanding promise to open a memory box they left there when they were thirteen. But there is a gaping hole – their friend Millie has died. When they open the box, secrets tumble out and old feelings rise to the surface.

Unboxed also has the most gorgeous cover – all midnight blue with gold stars. It’s a lovely book to hold as well as to read.

The Girl of Ink and Stars, by Kiran Millwood Hargrave – Five Star Review

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★ The Floating Island – Joya once was a floating island, going wherever the sea currents and winds took it. What a fabulous idea. Imagine waking up to mountains one day and deserts the next.

★ The Mythology – The island myth of Arinta, the warrior girl and the fire demon Yote is a story within a story.

★ The Friendships – It’s an unlikely set of friendships between Lupe and Isabella, and Isabella and Pablo, but it works simply because they are so different.

★ The Cartography – Maps tell their own story, and the ones in this book have secrets too.

★ The Look – I’m a sucker for a beautiful book, and this one is lovely with artwork edging every page, gorgeous maps and very white, fine paper. It makes you feel good just to be holding it.

New in the Library – How To Be Bad, by E Lockhart, Lauren Myracle & Sarah Mlynowski

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How To Be Bad is a road-movie book about three very different girls, written by three different authors! It’s a light, fun read about friendship and breaking the rules.

When you’ve had enough of being good, sometimes you’ve got to be a little bad …

Jesse, Vicks and Mel could not be more different.

Jesse is as thoughtful as she is uptight, and keeping a secret that she knows will change her life forever.

Vicks is a wild-child, seemingly oh so confident, but also anxious about her absent boyfriend.

Mel is the new girl in town – the rich kid, needing to get over some of her fears and find some friends.

But Jesse, Vicks and Mel have one thing in common: they’re desperate to get the heck out of Niceville and discover their true badass selves. One ‘borrowed’ car later and it’s time to hit the road.

Let the bad times roll …

Looking Glass Girl by Cathy Cassidy, reviewed by EM

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Looking Glass Girl is written by Cathy Cassidy and is an amazing book. It’s based on the story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. It’s main character is a normal girl named Alice Beech.

Alice is a great actress and played the lead character in her primary school production of Alice in Wonderland, at high school, her and her friends split apart. Her friends befriend a popular girl named Savannah or Savvy, and her friend Erin.

Alice is bullied by this group and when she is invited to a sleepover by Savvy she goes but ends up having to go to hospital after a nasty fall when she shatters a mirror over her head. She is taken to hospital and it is discovered that she is in a coma. We are taken into her mind where she is in her own wonderland and the other characters try to bring her back by talking to her.

But will Alice wake up?!

I loved this book and found I couldn’t put it down – it’s an amazing twist on Alice in Wonderland.

Monday 17th March – Books of the Week

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Brash, loud, rude, funny, heartbreaking and vulnerable and all too good at bringing back the hot, cringing embarrassment of being a teenager, Paper Aeroplanes by Dawn O’Porter is all about the friendship between Flo and Renée, fifteen, and growing up in the ’90s on the island of Guernsey. Goose catches up with them a few years later as they prepare to leave school and move on.

The blurbs…

It is 1994 and fifteen-year-old Guernsey schoolgirls Renée and Flo are not meant to be friends. Thoughtful, introspective Flo couldn’t be more different to extroverted, sexually curious Renée. But what they have in common runs deep. Loneliness, frustration, and the longing for escape from their dysfunctional families…

Fifteen is an age when anything can happen, life stretches out before you. Where every happiness feels like heaven. And every betrayal is the end of the world.

For Renée and Flo, it’s the year they become themselves.

and

Renée and Flo are eighteen and on the brink of their adult lives. But while Flo is determined to get to uni and take Renée with her, Renée can feel her sense of independence soar.

As Flo turns to the church for support, Renée embarks on a seductive and perilous relationship with an older man…

In their final year before leaving their home on Guernsey, will Renée and Flo still be each other’s soulmates, or is this the end of their friendship?

I read both books back-to-back in a thoroughly indulgent splurge of nostalgia – I think these are books for teenage girls to read, and then share with their mothers…