Book Review: ALICE IN CHARGE

Author: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Number of Pages: 336
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Release Date: June 15, 2010

In this installment of the Alice series, Alice is forced to deal with the usual issues facing a high school senior- college applications, getting ready to leave home, worrying about dates for the dance- as well as a group of Neo-Nazis that just happen to be the very teenagers surrounding her at school.

At this point, I'm really starting to wish this series would just end. I was convinced that this was the last book in the series, but alas! it is not. I don't know how many more there are. I'm not really sure that I care.

This book was basically Alice whining page after page about her busy life. She was like: "OH MY GOSH I'M SO BUSY WITH MY EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES THAT I HARDLY HAVE ANY TIME FOR ANYTHING ELSE, EVEN THOUGH I MAKE A POINT TO CALL MY BOYFRIEND (WHO IS IN COLLEGE) EVERY MINUTE OF MY LIFE."

Hold the phone there, Alice. Okay, so you're busy. Well, I am too, and so are a lot of people. GET OVER IT. Maybe, if you didn't spend so much time wallowing in your self pity about your boyfriend not being there to hold you at every moment you desire, you would have some time to- oh, I don't know- MAKE SOME DECISIONS ABOUT COLLEGE.

As you can probably tell, I've pretty much had it with Alice.

A lot of people seem to really like these books (according to some reviews on Goodreads.com). I can totally see the potential for this to have been a great series, but it's just too stereotypical and Alice is just too whiny.

My Rating: :0) :0) 2 our of 5 smileys.

Would I recommend it to a friend?: Sorry Alice, but no.

Thanks for putting up with all of my complaining!!!!
Yours,
NutFreeNerd

Book Review: PREP

Author: Curtis Sittenfeld
Number of Pages: 420
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Release Date: November 22, 2005

Prep is the story of Lee Fiora, a girl from Indiana who decides to go to a prestigious private school in Massachusetts for her high school years. This book describes all four years of her life at Ault School, the prep school she chooses to attend.

Okay, so let me start out by saying that I had really high hopes for this novel. The cover was simple and cool and the summary on the back sounded very promising. And normally, I really enjoy books about people at boarding/private schools. I liked everything about this book- until I started reading it.

This book started out okay, but as I progressed further it started to get worse and worse. Lee, the main character, reminds me of Holden in Catcher in the Rye. All she does is complain and whine and OH MY GOSH IT JUST GOT SO ANNOYING! Every time something good was on the brink of happening to her she would have to go and mess everything up and then she would wallow in self pity for another fifty pages. And then at the end. With Cross. I kept wanting to scream at her for being so idiotic. Seriously! How stupid can you be?

Overall, this book was not enjoyable to read at all.

My Rating: :0) :0) 2 out of 5 smileys. It was that bad.

Would I recommend it to a friend?: No. Absolutely not.

Yours,
Aceba

Book Review: ALICE, I THINK

Author: Susan Juby
Number of Pages: 320
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: May1, 2004

15 year old Alice has been homeschooled ever since first grade- until now. To please her new counselor Bob, Alice agrees to actually go to school for high school. This novel is written from Alice's point of view as her diary, and in it she writes about all her wacky adventures with her unusual friends and family.

When I first started reading this book I thought that I would like it a lot, but as I read further on I actually began to like it less and less. This book is extremely random, and although it was sometimes very funny, it didn't keep my attention at all. I found myself wanting to just read it all at once to get it over with. To me Alice's personality was totally random, and I really couldn't relate to any of the characters at all. As you can probably tell, I really didn't care for this book at all.

Rating: :0) :0) 2 out of 5 smileys

Would I recommend it to a friend?: Probably not.

Hugs,
Aceba

Book Review: FEAR: 13 STORIES OF SUSPENSE AND HORROR

Recently I finished reading Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror. It is a collection of 13 short scary stories written by various authors. They are Jennifer Allison, Heather Brewer (author of The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod), Ryan Brown, Meg Cabot (author of The Princess Diaries), Alane Ferguson, Heather Graham, Peg Kehret, Tim Maleeny, James Rollins, Walter Sorrells, R.L. Stine, Suzanne Weyn, and F. Paul Wilson. It was edited in its entirety by R.L. Stine.

Overall, this book did not impress me. I checked it out from my town library thinking, This will be great! I can't wait to read some really terrifying stories!!!

Yeah, right.

Not one of these stories even came close to making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, or to making my heart start beating rapidly, or to making me uncomfortable in the darkness. They just weren't scary. I don't know if it was just me, like if I'm just not afraid of this type of 'scary', or what. They were suspenseful, just not frightening. But, who knows? Maybe if you guys read it you'll get scared. If you do end up reading it, could you leave a comment saying if it scared you or not???

Rating: :0) :0) 2 out of 5 smileys. I know, this isn't a good rating. It's not that it was a bad book, because it wasn't- the stories were excellent. It's just that it promised to be a terrifying read, and it TOTALLY wasn't for me. I was really disappointed by it, hence the two smileys.

Would I recommend it to a friend?: This may sound strange considering I gave it such a low rating, but yeah, I would recommend it to a friend. But before they read it I would give them a heads-up that it isn't as scary as they might like it to be.

Always,

Aceba