Category Archives: Read This

Read This!: A STUDY IN CHARLOTTE by Brittany Cavallaro

Read This, Reviews,

A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro

Summary:  The last thing sixteen-year-old Jamie Watson–writer and great-great-grandson of the John Watson–wants is a rugby scholarship to Sherringford, a Connecticut prep school just an hour away from his estranged father. But that’s not the only complication: Sherringford is also home to Charlotte Holmes, the famous detective’s enigmatic, fiercely independent great-great-granddaughter, who’s inherited not just his genius but also his vices, volatile temperament, and expertly hidden vulnerability. Charlotte has been the object of his fascination for as long as he can remember–but from the moment they meet, there’s a tense energy between them, and they seem more destined to be rivals than anything else.  Then a Sherringford student dies under suspicious circumstances ripped straight from the most terrifying of the Holmes stories, and Jamie and Charlotte become the prime suspects. Convinced they’re being framed, they must race against the police to conduct their own investigation. As danger mounts, it becomes clear that nowhere is safe and the only people they can trust are each other.

 

This is going to sound hyperbolic, but 5 stars aren’t really enough to explain how much I loved this book. I’ve never been a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes – I mean, he was okay and all – but this book just grabbed me and held me spellbound all the way through.

Before I opened this book, all I knew about it was that it was about Holmes and Watson’s great-great-something-grandchildren, and I assumed that it would be something like “Young Sherlock Holmes” where a pair of lads at a boarding school solve a mystery while rescuing an intriguing girl named Charlotte. (Guess that says something about what previous Sherlock Holmes adaptations have taught me to expect…)

This book is not anything like that. No swooning heroines here.

The first thing you need to know about A STUDY IN CHARLOTTE is that, in the world of the book, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were 100% real. (Arthur Conan Doyle was Watson’s literary agent.) Now, with the aid of some well-meaning family meddling, their descendants Charlotte Holmes and Jamie Watson are students at the same Connecticut boarding school. And where a Holmes and Watson go, mystery is sure to follow.

Moody and mercurial are defining Holmes characteristics – HOW has the great detective not been reimagined before as a teenage girl? It’s beyond right. The characters here are fantastic – I want to hang out with them the way I want to hang out with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Charlotte is brilliant, flawed, and utterly, agonizingly human, and Jamie is a wry, appealing, gold-hearted narrator (who, by the way, is also no slouch in the brains department). Together they are incandescent. Sure, there is sexual tension, but it’s so, so much more than that. One of my favorite quotes:
“I wanted the two of us to be complicated together, to be difficult and engrossing and blindingly brilliant. Sex was a commonplace kind of complicated. And nothing about Charlotte Holmes was commonplace.”

Just read it. You won’t regret it.

A STUDY IN CHARLOTTE is out now.
View all my reviews

Read This!: THE REMARKABLE JOURNEY OF CHARLIE PRICE by Jennifer Maschari

Read This, Reviews,

The Remarkable Journey of Charlie PriceThe Remarkable Journey of Charlie Price by Jennifer Maschari

Summary: Ever since twelve-year-old Charlie Price’s mom died, he feels like his world has been split into two parts. Before included stargazing and Mathletes and Saturday scavenger hunts with his family. After means a dad who’s completely checked out, comically bad dinners, and grief group that’s anything but helpful. It seems like losing Mom meant losing everything else he loved, too.  Just when Charlie thinks things can’t get any worse, his sister, Imogen, starts acting erratically—missing school and making up lies about their mother. But everything changes when one day he follows her down a secret passageway in the middle of her bedroom and sees for himself.  Imogen has found a parallel world where Mom is alive!  There’s hot cocoa and Scrabble and scavenger hunts again and everything is perfect . . . at first. But something doesn’t feel right. Whenever Charlie returns to the real world, things are different, and not in a good way. And Imogen wants to spend more and more time on the other side. It’s almost as if she wants to leave the real world for good. If Charlie doesn’t uncover the truth, he could lose himself, the true memory of their mother, and Imogen . . . forever.

This book is heartfelt and earnest, and I sobbed through the last 30 pages. Charlie is a 12 year old boy who loves math and his friends and his family, and he and his sister are both reeling from the death of their mother. When his sister finds a portal to a world where their mother is still alive, at first it seems like a miracle. But as Charlie soon learns, there is no joy without loss, no way to enjoy the good things in life without also accepting the bad. Charlie and his friends are a brave and loyal group, and readers will enjoy getting to know them.

THE REMARKABLE JOURNEY OF CHARLIE PRICE is out now.

View all my reviews

Read This!: THE LAST BOY AT ST. EDITH’S by Lee Gjertsen Malone

Read This, Reviews,

The Last Boy at St. Edith'sThe Last Boy at St. Edith’s by Lee Gjertsen Malone

Summary: Seventh grader Jeremy Miner has a girl problem. Or, more accurately, a girls problem. Four hundred and seventy-five of them. That’s how many girls attend his school, St. Edith’s Academy.
Jeremy is the only boy left after the school’s brief experiment in coeducation. And he needs to get out. His mom won’t let him transfer, so Jeremy takes matters into his own hands: He’s going to get expelled.
Together with his best friend, Claudia, Jeremy unleashes a series of hilarious pranks in hopes that he’ll get kicked out with minimum damage to his permanent record. But when his stunts start to backfire, Jeremy has to decide whom he’s willing to knock down on his way out the door.

First off, I have to say that I had to battle my ten-year-old son for this ARC. He’d seen a blurb about the book months ago, and had been asking weekly when we would get it. So once that book came into the house, he grabbed it and wouldn’t let go until he was done. He loved the pranks, the characters, and pretty much everything about it.

So did I. Seventh-grader Jeremy finds himself in the unfortunate position of being the only male remains of a failed attempt by St. Edith’s to go coed – and his mom won’t let him transfer, because the only reason they can afford the school is the scholarship money she receives as am employee of St. Edith’s. So Jeremy is determined to get himself expelled. And he knows just who to ask for help: his wild friend Claudia, mastermind of the school’s Film Club and violator of every point of the school’s dress code. Jeremy sets some guidelines for the pranks, though: no one can get hurt, and they can’t steal or damage anything. (The image of Jeremy assiduously labeling each of the garden gnomes he steals with the addresses of their owners cracks me up.) But soon the pranks get out of hand, as pranks often do, and not only do property and people get hurt, but Jeremy’s sister and her friends are blamed for his actions. When the big decisions have to be made, Jeremy starts to realize that maybe being the only boy in a sea of girls isn’t so bad after all.

Jeremy is a likeable, believable character. He’s one of those boys who isn’t particularly bothered to be surrounded by girls – but who feels like he ought to be. His friends are equally well-drawn, particularly Claudia, the bold prankster with a heart of gold, and Emily, the literal girl next door who’s just waiting for Jeremy to notice how compatible they are. THE LAST BOY AT ST. EDITH’S is a middle grade read with lots of fun and lots of heart.

THE LAST BOY AT ST. EDITH’S is out now.

View all my reviews

Read This!: WHERE FUTURES END by Parker Peevyhouse

Read This, Reviews,

Where Futures EndWhere Futures End by Parker Peevyhouse

Summary: Five teens.  Five futures.  Two worlds.  One ending.
One year from now, Dylan develops a sixth sense that allows him to glimpse another world. Ten years from now, Brixney must get more hits on her social media feed or risk being stuck in a debtors’ colony. Thirty years from now, Epony scrubs her entire online profile from the web and goes “High Concept.” Sixty years from now, Reef struggles to survive in a city turned virtual gameboard. And more than a hundred years from now, Quinn uncovers the alarming secret that links them all.  Five people, divided by time, will determine the fate of us all. These are stories of a world bent on destroying itself, and of the alternate world that might be its savior–unless it’s too late.

In this twisty mindbender of a book, Parker Peevyhouse gives us five interconnected stories, each set a little further in the future – a future where our world has become intertwined with an alternate one that brushes up against it. The choices of these five teens uncover the mystery of the Other Place more and more, until a choice is made that changes the fate of one world forever. As in any good sci-fi projection of the future, the parts of the book that are most chilling are those that are the most realistic: the way that Brixney, ten years from now, moves into a debtors’ colony with her brother after their parents die in an accident. The way that Epony, thirty years from now, has to remake herself online in order to survive. The way that Reef’s livelihood is pursuing credits in a virtual reality game that overlays the city of Seattle. The way that conglomerates like Microsoft-Verizon casually take over the world and push people out of their homes as the oceans rise due to global warming.

A sobering commentary on society, technology, and humanity’s penchant for making destructive choices.

WHERE FUTURES END is out now.

View all my reviews

Read This!: BLACKHEARTS by Nicole Castroman

Read This, Reviews,

BlackheartsBlackhearts by Nicole Castroman

Summary: Edward “Teach” Drummond, son of one of Bristol’s richest merchants, has just returned from a year-long journey on the high seas to find his life in shambles. Betrothed to a girl he doesn’t love and sick of the high society he was born into, Teach dreams only of returning to the vast ocean he’d begun to call home. There’s just one problem: convincing his father to let him leave and never come back. Following her parents’ deaths, Anne Barrett is left penniless and soon to be homeless. Though she’s barely worked a day in her life, Anne is forced to take a job as a maid in the home of Master Drummond. Lonely days stretch into weeks, and Anne longs for escape. How will she ever realize her dream of sailing to Curaçao—where her mother was born—when she’s stuck in England? From the moment Teach and Anne meet, they set the world ablaze. Drawn to each other, they’re trapped by society and their own circumstances. Faced with an impossible choice, they must decide to chase their dreams and go, or follow their hearts and stay.

Before he was known as Blackbeard, the pirate who could strike fear into hearts of men without striking a physical blow, he was Edward, nicknamed Teach, a boy who wanted nothing more than freedom. Before there was Blackbeard’s ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, there was Anne, the girl who became the queen of his heart. This is the story of their unlikely yet inevitable romance. Prepare to be swept away.

BLACKHEARTS is out now.

View all my reviews