CeCe Mills (Iowa)--Hard Love-- Cynthia D. Grant. This book is about a boy who isn't sure about his sexuality. He meets a young woman who is a lesbian and falls in love with her. On a scale of 1-10 it is an 8!

Grant [Iowa] - The Bourne Ultimatum - Robert Ludlum.  In the Bourne Ultimatum, David Webb is an aging professor of oriental history at a nondescript unversity in the American Northeast.  When a telegram concerning an international terrorist arrives at his home, his violent alternate personality, Jason Bourne, takes control.  The Jackal, a former nemesis of Bourne, is back and he is prepared to finish the job.  This is a thrilling tale of one man's internal struggle, his past haunting him, and how he finally brings it to an end.

Jamie Bortell

Popular Fiction

5/14/09

Secrets

Secrets, by Robin Jones Gunn is a story of secrets and the way they destroy a person from the inside out. Secrets is the first book of a series called The Glenbrooke Series. All of the books deal with a big life problem taking the main character away from God and leading her back to Him as she deals with her problem.

Jessica Morgan is a twenty-five year old runaway looking for a new life in a small town called Glenbrooke. Suspense is held by the author’s semi revealing statements about Jessica’s past and her feelings about whatever made her run. The story is told in third person and only the thoughts of the main character are written. When Jessica crashes her car on the way into town, a local firefighter, Kyle, saves her life in more than one way. After changing her last name to Fenton, only a few people in town know who she really is and help her to face her past and move towards the future.

I love reading series books and read rather quickly, so I picked this series to read for the choice unit in my high school popular fiction class. I enjoyed this book because Jessica is very easy to relate to at the beginning of the book. She feels guarded and has trouble trusting people and I think that’s an easy feeling to connect with.

The pace of the novel was very suitable. Although Secrets is not a mystery novel, it held suspense and was a page turner. The word choice was a little elementary so it was too easy of a read for me. A novel with adult characters should be written with more mature vocabulary than a novel written for pre-teens.

The end of the book seemed cut short. All of Jessica’s problems were resolved at once and fixed with the snap of her fingers. It’s part of a series so the closure desired may be in the next book, but each one is told with a different main character so it won’t be the same. I would like to see the author make the book a little longer to make the ending seem more important and thought out like it should be.

Jessica finds that her past would stay with until she dealt with it, which is true in the real world as well. Running away can only make problems seem farther away and make it easier for them to haunt us. I would recommend this novel to a younger reader who is looking for a good series to pass the time with. Secrets is a casual read that doesn’t take a lot of attention or effort to get through.

Jamie Bortell

Popular Fiction

5/14/09

Whispers

Whispers  the second book in The Glenbrooke Series by Robin Jones Gunn, is an easy to read novel about decision making and the importance of thinking things through. The main character Teri is on vacation in Hawaii making mistake after mistake in her romances and leading her to question herself and everything around her.

Teri goes to Hawaii to visit her older sister Anita and her husband Dan, and to reconnect with her romantic interest from the previous summer. When she gets there, everything is not what she expected and she meets Scott, Gordon, and several other new people who change how she feels about the direction of her life. Scott, the sailor sweeps her off her feet with charm that may not be real. Gordon, the clumsy Australian is the humor of the book with his one-liners and clumsy incidents.

I’ve read the first book in the series as well as this one and the first book was clearly better written. It was hard to enjoy this book because the main character is supposed to be a mature adult and she seems to just whine for half of the book. I would have enjoyed it more if she had made more informed decisions and reacted to problems like an adult should.

While the writing style of the first book, Secrets, was somewhat plain, the vocabulary of Whispers was painfully plain. It held no qualities of a page turner for me. There were only simple phrases and sentences with the occasional word that was way above the rest of the writing.

The plot was unrealistic. I would have like to see Teri do something more interesting than go to the beach and cook. That seemed to be all she did in most of the story. It finally became more interesting when she returned home to a small town. The good part of the book should have been when she was in an exotic place on vacation; it just didn’t make sense.

While this book stresses the importance of decisions, which is a valuable life lesson, I would only recommend reading this book to someone interested in reading the entire series; this is by far the worst of all seven books. The story is necessary to understanding the rest of the books, so I finished the whole novel. I would only give Whispers three stars for it’s poor writing style and slow moving plot.

Sara

Period 4

Popular Fiction

Change of Heart, by Jodi Picoult is a type of mystery novel that makes the reader dig deep, and really think. Throughout this book the reader gets the story told to them by four different characters. Each character is completely different, but they are all connected by one person, Shay Bourne. This story gives a different perspective for each chapter. The author wrote this novel with the idea that “redemption can come in many different ways.”

            This novel tells the story of Shay Bourne. He is a death row inmate in a New Hampshire prison, the first inmate on death row in many years. There is something special about Shay that makes him stick out. Many people believe Shay is the new Messiah, he can heal people, turn water into wine, make many out of one, and all of these miracles relate back to what Jesus did in the Bible. Shay is in prison because he was convicted of double murder of a police officer and a little girl. The mother and wife of the victims, June Nealon, has a tribulation to overcome. Her other daughter, Claire, is in need of a heart transplant, and Shay wants to donate his heart to her. The problem is Shay is supposed to die of lethal injection and lethal injection stops the heart so it is not able to be transplanted. This is where Maggie, the attorney, comes in to try and get the state to change their rules and let him die by hanging. All the mention and publicity of Shay brings June to a lot of anguish as she tries to make a decision. “If Claire received Shay Bourne’s heart, it would be bad enough if she were to harbor thoughts of murder. But what would absolutely wreck me was if, with that heart in her, she had to feel her own father and sister being killed. In that case, better to have no heart at all.”(Picoult238)

            Change of Heart was a persuasive novel. It seemed to me, as I was reading this book in popular fiction class, that Jodi Picoult was trying to convince people to believe different things, mainly regarding religion. Many times I felt like the author was ridiculing Christianity. She wrote it being respectful but underneath the words I caught a hint of sarcasm. Throughout the story she made Christianity the antagonist. Overall I did like the book, because the story line was interesting, minus the put-downs on some religions. The author’s writing style had a very broad vocabulary, and at times it was difficult for me to understand. I also found that it was hard for me to keep reading because it seemed repetitive and elongated. The characters in this novel were very well-developed; they were round, and dynamic. This made them more believable.

            This reflective, informative, and gloomy novel was difficult to read as a fifteen year old popular fiction student. I would recommend this story to an older crowd because of the broad vocabulary, and obscene situations. This book was interesting to read but I would not recommend it to most people.

 In this story many people would instantly characterize Shay as a bad person because of the inhumane crime he was convicted for. Many believe that no matter what he does it is impossible for him to make up for his past. Others, such as Maggie, give Shay the chance to redeem himself by letting him donate his heart. Shay felt that he could make up for what he cannot change by saving the life of another young child. The question is “can redemption be reached by giving and eye for an eye?”