Miss Lowe's Book Nook

For long time, I've heard the buzz about Sarah J. Maas and her books. I figured it was time to give her a try, so this week I picked up A Court of Thorns and Roses , the first book in a trilogy. While I was a bit hesitant as first, I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed ACOTAR (as the cool kids call it). Our heroine is Feyre, a poverty-stricken human girl. The sole provider for her family of a father and two sisters, she hunts in the woods to keep them off the harsh edge of starvation. One particularly brutal winter day, Feyre encounters a wolf in the woods. But with whispers of faeries crossing the wall and attacking humans, Feyre takes the risk, killing the wolf even though it may be a faerie in disguise. The next day, a vengeful faerie rips her from her home, taking her across the wall to Prythian, the land of the fae. Alone in a strange land, surrounded by those who could kill her in an instant, Feyre is constantly on her guard and fearing for her life. B...

Ahh summer! So much time for reading. This week I picked up the sequel to one of my favorite reads of the last year, A Study in Charlotte . The second book in Brittany Cavallaro's trilogy, The Last of August was a decent read, though I don't think that it lived up to the excitement and mysterious delight of the first novel. We reunite with Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes only a few weeks after the events of the first book, over Christmas break. The two young sleuths spend a few days in London with Jamie's family and then trek to the Holmes' family home, Sussex. We meet Charlotte's parents, Emma and Alistair, as well as her beloved uncle Leander. Several uncomfortable dinners later, chaos strikes, throwing Jamie and Charlotte into the thick of an art-forgery ring in Berlin, on the track of Moriartys and in the mix of Milo Holmes' guardsmen and eyes in the skies. As Watson and Holmes struggle with their personal relationship, with August Moriarty thrown in to...

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become. - C. S. Lewis If you didn't know, I'm planning to become a high school English teacher. Since I will be in the classroom in a few short years, I have been doing my best to stay up on popular young adult literature so that I can discuss and explore contemporary works that my students will be able to relate to easily. In this search, I came upon Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston. I finished this book in about seven hours. I just couldn't put it down. And I think it is one of the most important books I have read in a really long time. When I say a book is "important", I don't mean that it's pretentious and should be considered a classic. To me, a book is important when it tells a story that needs to be told in a way that can hel...