Miss Lowe's Book Nook

Hello all! College is again plaguing me with a lack of free time for reading. I finally got a book read because I read it on my phone! Ebooks do have some redeeming qualities. I finished up I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You , the first book in Ally Carter's Gallagher Girl series. I started this series when it first debuted, but fizzled out before it finished, so I'm going back to read them all properly! I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Carter's style and spunk. Our main character is Cammie, also known as "The Chameleon". She's the daughter of spies and now attending an elite spy academy (the Gallagher Academy, where the series gets its name), training to go into the field herself. Aided by her best friends, Bex and Liz, she gets into the average amount of trouble for a teenage spy. Two people come into her life and throw it out of wack- Macey, the rich, snobbish daughter of a prominent senator, and new Gallagher Girl; and Josh,

Hello all! Again with the busy college-ing. I've really been into creative non-fiction lately, and so I picked up Amy Poehler's book, Yes Please . I recently finished Parks & Recreation , which Amy stars in, and I loved every second of it. Her book was right up there with Parks & Rec in how funny, heart-warming, and relatable it was. The majority of the book was essays, but they were all easy to read and fun. Amy traced her journey in comedy throughout her whole life, from her blue-collar childhood to being on SNL. She told tales of living purely for comedy and friendship in tiny apartments, the events surrounding the birth of her sons, how she met her best friends, and stories from her school days. There were also quirky and funky lists and letters sprinkled throughout, which I loved. Amy's personality shone through every page. Her essays, while on Hollywood-esque topics, all had relatable themes for the average person. My favorite essays were "Gimme That Pud

College has been insanely busy for the last few weeks, but I've finally had time to finish another book. Searching for inspiration for my creative writing class, I picked up How to Ruin Everything by George Watsky. I had heard a lot of hype about it, and it's got a blurb from Lin-Manuel Miranda on the front, so I had reasonably high expectations. My expectations were thoroughly met. I've never been an avid reader of essay collections. They always seemed dry and boring, much less exciting than my traditional adventure novels and realistic fiction. I now have a new appreciation for essays and creative non-fiction. It takes talent and work to be able to tell your own stories on the page. Watsky did an amazing job with his essays. This book contained 13, and I loved all of them. If I had to pick favorites, I would say "Tusk", "Three Stories", and "Concert Tickets". Before reading his book, I knew nothing about George Watsky. I now know that he&#

I am officially moved back into the dorms! I start my sophomore year of college next week, and I couldn't be more excited. But in the midst of all this excitement, it was nice to read a simple, easy read. I just finished This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen. It's one of her most popular books, and I liked it quite a lot! Remy Starr has had four stepfathers, and is about to have a fifth one. Her mother, famous romance novelist Barbara Starr, has flitted from husband to husband for Remy's whole life. With high school finally over, Remy is anxiously awaiting August, when she can escape to Stanford and a new life, away from her mother's writing quirks, her brother's lizards, and a long string of boyfriends. Remy knows boys- to her, they're formulaic, a set pattern that she can always predict. All are kept at arm's length, not seeing the real Remy under her fabricated exterior. And she likes it that way. You see, Remy doesn't believe in love. She's watched her

Hello, everyone, from a post-Cursed Child world! I have been reading a lot lately, but it's mostly been rereads of Harry Potter and then my first reading of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. (I didn't do a review of it because I'm not a spoiler-y monster.) But now I'm back in the real world, so I took a trip to space in the form of The Martian by Andy Weir. I loved it! On humanity's third manned trip to Mars, Mark Watney is the crew's botanist and fix-it man. All is going smoothly, until an emergency evacuation leads to disaster- Mark is accidentally left on Mars while the rest of the crew rockets back to Earth. Completely alone, he is thrown into a battle for survival on the barren Red Planet. With his botanical background, mechanical know-how, and razor wit, Mark becomes the hero the human race never expected. His every move is captured by NASA, sent to Earth, and analyzed by every news station. He becomes an intergalactic MacGyver on a survival mission. An

I've been a busy bee lately, but I devoured my most recent read in less than 7 hours. Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon is one of my favorite books of the year so far. PSA: I only picked up this book because I heard it's going to be a movie starring Amandla Stenberg (Rue from The Hunger Games) and Nick Robinson (from The 5th Wave). Now that I've read it, I totally agree with their casting. Madeline Whittier is our main character. Since she was a baby, she has been living with an autoimmune disease that prevents her from going outside, because any little thing could cause an allergic reaction and kill her. So she has lived in her white room and white house for 18 years, with her mother as her constant companion, as well as her nurse, Carla. They're pretty much the only people she knows, aside from the teachers that she talks to on Skype. She reads books and plays games with her mom after dinner, and lives a very calm life. Then, out of the blue, a new family moves

Fun fact about me: I have an unreasonable amount of knowledge about the Tudors of England. I have devoured dozens of books about Henry VIII, Bloody Mary, and Elizabeth I. But I had never read very much about someone who had a (very) brief rule in between them- Lady Jane Grey. So when I heard about My Lady Jane , a new retelling of her tale by the combined creative minds of Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadows, and Brodi Ashton, I could not resist diving in. It was so much fun! For those of you who haven't spent ages researching Tudor monarchs, Lady Jane Grey had her nine day reign (yes, only NINE days) after the death of Edward VI. She had been married to the son of one of Edward's chief advisors, Lord Dudley. After Edward's death, Dudley put Jane on the throne (she had a legitimate, if distant, claim to the throne) to stop Edward's sister Mary from becoming queen. However, Mary soon gained the support of the military and common people, deposed Jane, and had her beheaded. (Start

Sometimes, you read a book and it's just a little too real and freaks you out a bit. Kill The Boy Band  by Goldy Moldavsky was that book for me. In it, four fangirls do some insane things, all in the name of their favorite band. Now, I'm quite a bit of a fangirl myself- I can talk for literally hours discussing whether Snape was a good guy or a bad guy (he's so awful guys come on) or if Aaron Burr was a sociopath or just misguided (the jury's still out on this one). But these girls take being fans to a whole other level. The book begins with four girls, drawn together in fandom- Isabel, Erin, Apple, and our narrator, whose real name I don't think we ever actually found out. Whenever she introduced herself to other characters, she used a name from an 80s movie. Quirky, but it creates an unreliable narrator. These four teenaged girls are enormous fans of a British boy band called "The Ruperts". Yep, all four members are named Rupert. It got a bit confusing

Summer reading continues! This one wasn't as good as I had hoped, however. But it was good enough to occupy me on a long car ride! Lock & Mori by Heather W. Petty was yet another Sherlock tale, but with some significant twists (that didn't always work the way I hoped). In this new version of the classic crime solver, instead of teaming up with Watson, Sherlock bonds with a girl named Mori- short for Moriarty. Mori is our narrator. Her mother has died from cancer and her dad, a Detective Sergeant in London, is nearly crazed with grief, even going so far as to start abusing Mori and her brothers. Then Mori meets Sherlock. He's odd and off the beaten path and somehow knows all about her from a glance. He also happens to be the guy that always stands in the same bandstand as her in Regent's Park, though they never realized it until they met in school. When the father of a schoolfellow is murdered in the park, "Lock" and Mori can't help but investigate. L

Confession: I've been in a bit of a slump. My summer so far has been quite busy, and I managed to re-read about three Harry Potter books before picking up another new read. However, I did just finish a rather enjoyable book- Summer Days and Summer Nights : Twelve Love Stories , a cute little anthology featuring twelve popular YA authors, edited by Stephanie Perkins. It was a fun way to get back in the swing of things. As I said, there were twelve individual stories in this book. I didn't read all of them- two of them I just didn't vibe with, so I skipped them. However, all the other ones were enjoyable. I'll just tell you about my favorite ones: "In Ninety Minutes, Turn North", by the editor, Stephanie Perkins, and "Love is the Last Resort", by Jon Skovron. I've read a but of Perkins before, but I had never read anything by Skovron, so he was a surprise. Perkins little tale was actually a bit of a sequel. She has added to a Christmas anthology

Like I said in my post yesterday, I got a lot of reading done on vacation! On the flight home from the beach, I finished Zodiac by Romina Russell. It was a vivid space extravaganza, with dashes of romance and mystery thrown in for good measure. We are presented with a world based on the Zodiac. The twelve constellations are home to people that exhibit and value the traits of their sign, even down to their physically appearance. Rhoma Grace is from Cancer, a culture based on water and nurturing relationships. She's a young trainee in the Cancrian academy and a drummer for a band. When disaster strikes one of her planet's moons and sets off a chain reaction of chaos, Rho is suddenly thrust into the limelight as the new head of her people. However, more danger lurks in the far reaches of space. A mysterious figure haunts Rho's Ephemeris, which is her device that shows her the stars and allows her to read them. Fleeing Cancer to warn the other Zodiac houses about the coming d

I love summer vacation. So much reading! This week, while laying on the beach, I read Trouble is a Friend of Mine by Stephanie Tromly. It was a delightful romp of mystery, teen angst, and surprises. Our main character is Zoe Webster, a 16-year-old girl in upstate New York. She just moved to River Heights with her mother, both of them recovering from her parents' messy divorce. On Zoe's first day at the local high school, a mysterious boy in a suit shows up on her doorstep, introducing himself as Philip Digby. Over the coming months, Zoe and Philip get themselves and their friend Henry into a boatload of trouble, including truancy, breaking and entering, vandalism, drugs, a kidnapping investigation, and a cult. With an angry school officer on their backs and the average high school drama all around them, Zoe, Digby, and Henry conduct an investigation to find a missing teenage girl, whose disappearance may or may not have something to do with a mystery from Digby's past. Al

Fact fact: 12 hour drives are really good for getting some reading done. Today I breezed through Virals by Kathy Reichs. I bought and read it quite a few years ago, but it remember almost none of the plot, so it was like reading it anew. I actually enjoyed it more this time around! If you've heard of Kathy Reichs, you'll know she writes the books that inspired the TV show Bones , centering on forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Virals centers on her great-niece, Tory Brennan. Tory is living with her father on a remote island off of South Carolina. He's a marine biologist working at a research facility on another nearby island. Tory, meanwhile, has befriended the other scientists' children- Hiram, Shelton, and Ben. They're all wicked smart and love science and their island. While investigating one of the other islands, Tory and her friends discover a wolfdog pack. When one of the pups goes missing, they're on a hunt to find it. When they find him hook

Why not start summer reading with a good old-fashioned sob story? I just read Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, which has recently been made into a film starring Sam Claflin and Emilia Clarke. I could tell from the trailers alone that I would end up crying, but I trudged on, and seriously did cry at the end. Moyes knows how to tear you up. Will Traynor was a world traveler and successful businessman until one fateful day in London. After a near-fatal crash, he's left as a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the upper chest down. Louisa Clark is an almost entirely ordinary girl, from an ordinary tourist town. She dresses eclectically, but lives a quiet life still in the her same childhood home with her parents, sister, nephew, and grandfather. When she loses her café job, Lou (as she's called), her nearly fruitless job hunt leads her to becoming something of a caregiver and companion for the wheelchair-bound Will Traynor. Over the course of her employment, the changes they both work on ea

Hello all! It's finally summer vacation, so I can get a load of reading done. This weekend I read a book that was actually recommended to me by my sister. Thanks for the Trouble by Tommy Wallach was a surprising and heartfelt read that I thoroughly enjoyed. Our main character is a high school senior named Parker Santé. He's been mute since his father died, and uses a mixture of sign language and writing in a notebook to communicate. Hanging out in a swanky hotel one day, he encounters a girl of indeterminate age with silver hair and an extremely large wad of cash. Parker attempts to steal this rather obscene amount of money, but instead gets roped into a deal with the silver-haired girl, whom he learns goes by the name Zelda. (Like Fitzgerald, not the video game.) Throughout the next three days, from October 31 to November 2, Parker and Zelda get into some insane hijinks. There are parties, fistfights, chess matches, alcohol, beaches, museums, hospitals, and more. They seem

Finals week is fast approaching! So what have I been doing? Reading a book that has absolutely nothing to do with any of my classes! Today I finished Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman. It was, shall we say, enlightening. I've always been fascinated by the brain. It's three pounds of mushy pinkness floating around in a bone bowl, but it somehow controls our bodies, understands science, creates worlds out of ink and paint, and stores obscene amounts of information. I always end up in awe of God's handiwork when I learn more about the complexities of our squishy control centers! Eagleman is certainly very knowledgeable. He focuses on the brain as the center for thinking rather than giving us a tour of the specific parts and their functions. His case is this: our consciousness is actually only a tiny, miniscule part of our brains, and the rest is out of our control. Most of what we think we think, is actually thought and processed in deeper parts of

Hello all! Hope your days are lovely. This isn't really going to be like my normal blog posts. It's more my thoughts concerning one particular character- Hermione Granger. If you don't know who that is, I have two questions for you. 1. Have you been living under a rock for roughly 15 years? 2. Seriously how do you not know the brightest witch of our age? Well, on with it! I first started reading J. K. Rowling's epic saga in third grade. I was already a fairly advanced reader and devoured books like mad, but those books I read so voraciously that I had books 1-6 read in less than 4 months. (Book 7 didn't come out until after 4th grade.) Not bad for a 9-year-old. These books were like drugs to my young mind. I had never read anything like them before. Somehow, an entire world fit inside the pages and then leapt into my head. And there was one character that has always stuck with me, through half a dozen more readings of the series. Hermione Granger. To underst

Sometimes you pick up a book and it just seems to fit perfectly in your hand and you open up to that first page and the words form pictures in your head from the first sentence. That's how you know you've found an excellent book, and I found one this weekend. I had heard loads of buzz about A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro, so when I spotted it in Barnes & Noble, I had to take a peek. It hooked me so much that I actually stood there in the bookstore reading the first twelve pages. I bought it, and read another fifty pages that night. After that, I had to physically make myself read it more slowly and still finished it yesterday. It's one of the best mysteries with the best characters that I've read in a long while. If you're familiar with the old Sherlock Holmes series at all, you'll love this quirky and exciting retelling. One of the main characters and narrator is Jamie Watson, the however-many-greats-grandson of the famous Watson. (Yes, in th

Wowzers it's been a while! Honestly, I got addicted to crossword puzzles so I put down my books for a while. But I'm back at it! The book I just finished is of a different breed than most others that I've written about. It's nonfiction, for one, and for another, it's aimed at a more adult audience. The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner was an excellent read and it sparked a lot of introspection and deep thoughts on my end. When I found this book, I was trawling the "World & Cultures" section of the public library, in search of a book about traveling, as my wanderlust had kicked up but I was stuck here in Nebraska. The sky blue binding caught my eye at first, but the tagline was what made me pluck it from the shelf: "One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World". I was intrigued by the concept of a self-proclaimed glass-half-empty sort of guy traversing the globe in search of happiness. I consider myself a relatively sunshine

Last week on vacation with my grandparents, I had plenty of time to read. I finished the third book in The Naturals series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. This one is titled All In and it definitely lives up to the name! We pick back up soon after the last book finished. Our protagonist, Cassie, is home for Christmas with her family when her father comes home early, bearing news- there's been a major break in her mother's case after five years of nothing. But as soon as Cassie learns this, she and the other Naturals are thrown into a new case in Las Vegas. A serial killer is on the loose, and the only links between victims are the numbers written on their wrists. In the world of casinos and poker, we learn more about Sloane's past, as well as Cassie's. Insane twists and thrilling chases are commonplace. All In is a read that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until the last sentence. The twist at the end made me literally put down the book and gasp in surprise.

Winter break is such a good time to get some reading done! On a long car ride this past month, I reread one of my favorite love stories- The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith. For a shorter novel (less than 300 pages) it packs a lot of punch. Our main character is Hadley, a teenage girl from the Northeast flying to London for her dad's marriage- to the woman he left her mother for. Amidst all the hustle and bustle of the trip to the airport, Hadley ends up being a mere four minutes late for her flight, and misses it. They put her on the next plane, three hours later, and because of that, her whole world changes. I've been a fan of Smith for a while now. She is an excellent writer of love stories. This book is actually what introduced me to her. With its short but complex plot, it pulls you in and doesn't let go until the last page. Another thing to note is Smith's unique writing style. She writes in present tense, but in third perso