The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, to be honest. I started out a little afraid that this was going to be too much a cross between Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Instead, I got an intelligent adventure that, just when it started seeming a bit predictable, threw me for a loop. Although there were no witches and wizards, there was an evil man determined to control the world through subliminal messages sent via the television into the minds of children. (Mental note: stop letting my kids watch so much TV!) Three orphans and a runaway are the only four to ever pass the test given by the mysterious Mr. Benedict at the same time, which is critical, because in order to thwart the plot devised by Mr. Benedict’s evil twin, a team of children is needed. While on the surface the book is a thrilling spy story, at a much deeper level it also serves as a statement about society as a whole, but you definitely don’t have to dig to get a lot out of reading it. While parts of the story are intense, and somewhat sad, I never had to worry about slipping into despair—one of the “punny” names would snap me right out of my gloomy mood (i.e. the name of the brainwashing villain is Ledroptha Curtain, and his remote Institute is on Nomansan Island). The ending is a little hokey, and room is left for a sequel or two, but if you’ve ever felt lonely, left out, unwanted or just plain too smart, you’ll love it. If you like picking on people who’ve ever felt lonely, left out, unwanted or just plain too smart, you’ll love it, too.

Lauren Myracle's ttyl, ttfn, and l8r, g8r series

I wasn’t sure I was going to like this series of books (ttyl is first, ttfn is second, and l8r, g8r is the third and final installment). As a former English teacher, and a spelling/grammar OCD fanatic, I was convinced that the fact that the ENTIRE text of all three books is in IM-speak was going to drive me over the edge crazy, but in the end I found it somewhat refreshing. Don’t get me wrong, I still had occasional urges to go through it with a red pen and correct the crap out of it, but I could totally see why these books would appeal to teenage girls.

Think Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants in a chat room, and these books are what you get. Inside, you’ll discover three BFFs at the start of their sophomore year, ready to take on whatever life throws at them. Maddie, Angela, and Zoe (or mad maddie, zoegirl, and Snow Angel) are as different as you can get, yet their friendship has managed to remain intact. The subject matter is a bit racier than in Sisterhood—parts of the books even made ME blush, if you can believe that—and it only gets more so as they progress through high school (ttfn chronicles their junior year, l8r, g8r is them as seniors). Think inappropriate relationship with a teacher, drunken frat party—and that’s just them as sophomores!

All in all, these books hold mass appeal (the first two in the series were best-sellers, and the third will be there upon publication this month) and are sure to be frequently circulated in any library (even NHS!).

Sold by Patricia McCormick

If you've read Cut or My Brother's Keeper, then you know what an incredible author Patricia McCormick is. If you haven't, you don't know what you're missing. In either case, you HAVE TO read this book.

Sold is the story of 13-year-old Lakshmi, who lives in a small village in Nepal with her Ama, her little brother, her pet goat (who thinks it's a person--anyone else have a pet like that?), and her piece of crap step-father. While Lakshmi sees her step-father for the drunken waste of space that he is, her Ama thinks she is lucky that any man would want to take in her family--a mother with children and not much else. He has a physical disability that prevents him from working with the other men in the village, but he's still able to go to the tea shop every day and gamble away any and all of the money the family is able to scrape together with their meager crops. The family is often hungry, often going without even the small luxuries other families can afford, living in a shack with a leaky roof, because he can't be bothered to put any effort into anything other than getting drunk and making his way to the tea shop. Lakshmi often asks to go to the city to work as a maid for a wealthy family so she can make enough money to buy a new roof, but Ama won't hear of it. Finally, after a monsoon wipes out their only source of income, Lakshmi is told she'll be going to the city after all.

Once she gets to the city, which she learns is in India, Lakshmi discovers what has truly become of her--her step-father has sold her into prostitution. The horrors that she and the other girls must endure are unspeakable, and the tactics used to scare them into submission are sickening. How Lakshmi is able to maintain even a glimmer of hope is a mystery to me. While you know the ending MUSR give the reader the same glimmer of hope, you never really feel like there's a happy ending, because in the Author's Note, you learn that at least 12,000 Nepalese girls like Lakshmi are sold into sexual slavery each year.

At several points in the book, I felt as though I couldn't go on reading, but at the same time, I couldn't put it down. And in the end, all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around these girls and bring them home with me.

Eggs by Jerry Spinelli

I think the thing I like the most about Jerry Spinelli’s books is that his characters learn. His characters learn through the simple act of living, like so many of us do. In Eggs, Spinelli weaves together the lives of two children suffering from a sense of loss.

David’s mother died when she fell by walking on a wet floor and hitting her head. His father works 200 miles away and only comes to his mother’s house, where he and David now live, on the weekends. Primrose doesn’t know who or where her father is. She just has what she thinks is a picture of him and a mother who isn’t really a mother at all, except biologically.

Both David, nine, and Primrose, thirteen, live behind a shell of self-imposed seclusion, until they meet and form a friendship that teaches them both that it’s okay to let the rest of the world in. Spinelli’s characters show depth through actions instead of analysis, and I couldn’t help thinking of the similarities between Refrigerator John and Archie, the older, wiser man who is the common link between characters in his Stargirl.

Spinelli doesn’t need profanity or violence to get his point across, and the ending is hopeful without being over the top. This isn’t a novel packed with action and intrigue, but it’s well worth the time it takes to read, and is sure to be a hit with Spinelli fans everywhere.

4.5/5 STARS

Release date: June 2007

The Virtual Life of Lexie Diamond by Victoria Foyt

I just finished this book, and I have to say, it took me FOREVER to get into it. The back-story was agonizing to get through, but I'll admit that once I got past it, it was a pretty good book. Lexie spends way too much time building virtual relationships, in my opinion, and it bothered me that no one seemed to care that she didn't have any "real" friends. In fact, even online she only had one. The sci-fi element is definately present--she can talk to her dead mother through her computer--but it's nicely balanced with mystery and suspense. I was almost obsessed with Lexie solving the case and bringing her mother's murderer to justice. Even though it's made pretty clear who the killer was, I kept waiting for either someone to believe Lexie or kill her.

There were very believable parts--the reaction to her mother's death by both Lexie and her father, Lexie's need to both protect her father and uncover the truth about her mother's accident--but there were some things that seemed a little too over-the-top. While I liked that Lexie finally makes friends with people outside of the Internet, it seemed a bit much to have one of them perched at the top of the school's social ladder and the other the super-cute surfer boy next door. I think the quickly-formed friendship between Lexie and Zoe would have been more believable if Zoe had turned out to be the friend Lexie had all along and didn't know it.

The ending left me wanting more--a more complete resolution with regards to the arrest of her mother's murder as well as the hows and whys of it all, and more about what how Lexie adjusts to her new life after her father's "wedding."

3/5 Stars