Catching Jordan by Miranda Keanelly

Recently, I finished reading "Catching Jordan" by Miranda Keanelly.  And it is about a girl who is starting QB for her high school football team.  Everyone is jealous of her.  The boys are jealous because she is an amazing football player but the girls are jealous because she gets to spend so much time with the football boys.  Then a new quarterback named Ty comes and Jordan likes him.  They compete for starting QB.  Jordan's best friend, Sam gets jealous and feels that he is starting to lose Jordan because suddenly she spends all her free time hanging out with Ty. 

I think Catching Jordan was basically about Jordan finding her place.  In between chapters Jordan would write poems that were about her life and feelings.  There is a lot going on in Catching Jordan and all the characters play an important part.  For example, Ty adds to the emotion of the story with his family history and Jordan has problems with her dad because her dad plays professional football so he has seen many injuries and doesn't want Jordan getting hurt. 

Another issue was that all the high school kids in the story were seniors so they were waiting for their acceptance letters and it added a lot of emotion to the the story because when a character was anxious or stressed the reader could really feel that.

Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans

I recently finished reading "Level 2" and it was mostly about a girl named Felicia who dies and find herself now living in "Level 2" Which is like an afterlife.  It is technically in the middle of living and death.  There are other people in Level 2 and everyone can bond on reflect on memories from there lifetime.  Felicia meets a guy named Julian who I think likes Felicia.  Felicia thinks Julian is very mysterious and I agree with her.  He often pops up out of no where.  Julian thinks he can help Felicia become reunited with someone from the living life but Felicia doesn't want to trust him.

I think an issue is Felicia needs to learn to trust people.  She thinks Julian is mysterious but he could also be very helpful but that will only happen if she can trust him.

If I were Felicia I would probably trust Julian because, like, you're already dead so it's almost like you can do whatever you want. 

I thought it was a very good book because as the book goes on, we learn more and more about Felicia.  We learn a lot about how she lived her life and who was very important to her. 

Hooked by Liz Fichera

In this book, Fred is the only girl on the boys golf team.  The boys don't like Fred, especially this one boy named Ryan, whose best friend got kicked off to make room for Fred.  I thought that Fred was really passionate about golf and reminded me about how me and my friend Ashley act towards softball.  Not only can we be compared to Fred, but I think we can also be compared to Ryan.  I think this because Ashley and I can get a little competitive when it comes to new girls trying out for the team. 

One of my favorite characters was Fred's dad.  I liked Fred's dad because he was very supportive and trusting in his daughters decisions. 

I also liked Fred's older brother because the author set him up in a very mysterious way, revealing little by little about him, throughout the book. 

I think both Fred's dad and brother were very trusting in Fred.

New Girl by Paige Harbison

 I felt bad for two characters in this book.  I felt bad for Callie because everyone was being mean to her and Dana was trying to control her life.  I feel that Callie did good because she didn't let it bother her that much.  Callie knew that she could live her life the way that she wanted to.  So even though Max was Becca's ex, Callie still had the right to go out with him if they liked each other, which they did.

I also felt bad for Becca because even though she was popular and amazing, some people were mean to her and she had a hard time fitting in any school, let alone Manderley.  I also realized that Becca realized that she was mean.  She made Max stay with her by making him feel guilty and when she got pregnant she just wanted to be alone for a little but that turned out to be her death.  She did not know about the storm.

I also kind of feel bad for Dana because Becca was her BFF and she saw Becca die and she blames herself for not going after her when she fell in the water.

I thought that New Girl had a really rough beginning which took a something to get into but I'm glad I continued reading because it was a really nice book about a boarding school, with a mystery that the seniors are trying to solve via Facebook and history.

Blog post on Rebecca's blog

http://beccadoodles.blogspot.com/
This week, I reviewed Rebecca's  blog post on the book "Stay" by Deb Caletti. I think Rebecca started her post of in a good way by saying how she thought it was a complex book.  In Rebecca's post, I think she did a good job of adding in how she thought Clara felt.  Rebecca also added how she thinks she would've felt if in Clara's position which makes her post seem even more relatable and realistic.

Rebecca's post really makes me want to read this book and I think it is because of the intense details she used and the positive way she described the book. Rebecca used good structure for her post.   This post stands out compared to some of her other ones because I think Rebecca put a lot more ideas into it.

In some of her other blogs, she focused on one idea and found three or four details from the book to support it. In this post, she had a more broad idea and it was easy for her to add in her feelings and her thoughts about the authors choice on the dads perspective.

This Is Not A Drill by Beck McDowell *Spoiler*

In, This Is Not A Drill by Beck McDowell, there are two students, Emery and Jake.  They are tutoring in a first grade classroom.  The book is told from the point of view of Jake and Emery.  It is a very suspenseful book. 

Right when Emery and Jake are about to leave to head back to there high school classes, a man comes to the classroom and asks to take his son Patrick. Emery, Jake, and the teacher tell Mr.Stutts that he cant take his son without going through the mainoffice first.  Mr. Stutts takes a gun and threatens to shoot so Emery, Jake, the teacher, and all 18 students are held hostage.

Soon into the book, the teacher passes out from lack of insulin, as a diabetic. Even though Mr. Stutts does not want anyone to leave the room, the kids beg him to allow the teacher medical attention, so eventually he lets Jake carry the teacher down the hallway to the principle. 

During the book, Emery does a very brave thing and talked to Mr. Stutts, revealing to the reader some of his past.  We find out Mr. Stutts is a soldier who is suffering from PTSD.  It almost makes you feel bad for him because really, he only wants to be with his son, which his wife wont let him do. 

In the end, Jake and Mr. Stutts get into a fight with the hand gun, resulting in Jake getting shot, the class pet runs into the hallway, followed by Patrick who gets shot, causing Mr. Stutts to run into the hallway after his son, getting shot himself. 

All three characters lived, and the other 17 first graders were all okay.

Shut out byv Kody Keplinger

Recently, I finished Shut Out, which is about a group of girls, led by Lissa, that have boyfriends on both the soccer team and football team of Hamilton High. The two teams hate each other and are constantly pulling pranks on one another. So the girls decode to go on a "strike" where they vow not to show there boyfriends any attention.  The boys catch on to the plan and try to outsmart the girls.

I think an issue in this book is sexism. A lot of the characters underestimate girls. I noticed some of the teachers are sexist and favor boys in the book.

I also noticed that sometimes the girls are prejudice against themselves. They often underestimate themselves, especially when it involves the strike.