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Realistic Fiction Book Review Contest
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-First, a review gives the reader a concise summary of the content. This includes a relevant description of the topic as well as its overall perspective, argument, or purpose.
-Second, and more importantly, a review offers a critical assessment of the content. This involves your reactions to the work under review: what strikes you as noteworthy, whether or not it was effective or persuasive, and how it enhanced your understanding of the issues at hand.
-Finally, in addition to analyzing the work, a review often suggests whether or not the audience would appreciate it.
Have fun and choose books that interests you. May the best book review win!
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An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Speechless by Hannah Harrington
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
She Loves You, She Loves You Not... by Julie Anne Peters
Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by David Levithan
Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen
The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle
Faking Normal by Courtney C. Stevens
Then You Were Gone by Lauren Strasnick
Far From You by Tess Sharpe
Falling For You by Lisa Schroeder
While He Was Away by Karen Halvorsen Schreck
Something Maybe by Elizabeth Scott
The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith
The Mailbox by Audrey Shafer
Past Perfect by Leila Sales
The Summer I found You by Jolene Perry
Getting Over Garret Delany by Abby McDonald
Winter Longing by Tricia Mills
Sing Me to Sleep by Angela Morrison
Five Summers by Una LaMarche
Lost For Words by Alice Kuipers
Promise Me Something by Sara Kocek
The Opposite of Hallelujah by Anna Jarzab
Take A Bow by Elizabeth Eulberg
Collide by J.R. Lenk
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend by Kody Keplinger
Shooting Stars by Allison Rushby
The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks
Sixteenth Summer by Michelle Dalton
(More to be added later)
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If I Stay: isn't it part of a series, according to GR's it says If I stay #1 indicating it is part of a series. I only ask because I have an idea for a book and in my opinion it is a standalone since the next book the author writes in completely unrelated and it doesn't mention the characters from the first book at all.
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Yes, it is part of a series. I meant to go back and edit the list of books above.
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For my review I read "13 Reasons Why" by Jay Asher. The story is narrated by Clay Jenson, a high school junior, who's kind-of-friend and secret crush, Hannah Baker, recently killed herself by swallowing a handful of pills. A few weeks after the incident, Clay finds a box left outside on his doorstep, with no return address. He opens it to reveal 7 cassette tapes numbered 1-13 on each side in blue nail polish, the number 13 having a tape to itself. He plays the first tape, horrified to to hear the voice of Hannah Baker rolling through the speakers. But as he listens, Hannah explains that each tape bears one reason for her having killed herself, and that these tapes are to be sent along to each person responsible. The tapes send Clay on an adventure around his town, visiting the sites of the incidents on the tapes, fully putting himself into the mind of Hannah Baker. Hannah's attitude about the whole ordeal is light, cracking jokes about being dead, making the book dark and almost disturbing in a way. But the moments when Hannah gets down to business are truly heartbreaking and make you want to hug her and tell her that everything is going to be alright, even though it's not. Throughout the book, there is a recurring theme about how you should treat people. As Hannah narrates the worst moments of her life, she explains how she begged for help but never received it. She was waiting for someone to stop her, but no one noticed a thing and kept treating her the same. Treating her badly. And as Clay hears the tape directed at him, he realizes that he could have helped her, had he known she needed help. And he discovers that you shouldn't treat anyone badly, because you never know what they're going through. I loved this book, I read all 288 pages in a day. The author's use of Clay's thoughts while hearing the tapes and his mother and Tony's input were very effective emotionally. It opened my eyes to how much it hurts to go through something like this and seemed like the author had. I think other people would love this book just as much as I do. It makes you more aware of the fact that there are people who are going through terrible things and we can help them if we look close enough to notice it.
I really hope that this review isn't too long, or that I turned it in too late. :P Anyway, here it is.-------
Four Star Rating for The Heartbroken Heartbreaker.
So I was in a bad mood and I was looking for a book that I could hate that was bearable enough for me to read all the way through. Essentially, something to kill time and distract me from the knowledge that I didn’t have an actual book to read. So The Heartbroken Heartbreaker seemed like the natural choice. It is about Kyla Evans, a teenage girl who’s dating her ex-boyfriend (Cedric)’s enemy (Seth) to get revenge and make him jealous.
From this premise, I went into this story expecting the usual problems I find in teen/YA stories: shallow relationships, superficial values, stereotyped and 2-dimensional characters, immature decisions, teenage angst without justifiable reason, teenage stupidity (Don't shoot me! I'm 16 and I know as well as anyone else how stupid teenagers can be), and of course, insta-love
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was completely wrong.
The Relationships were:
1. Real. There was depth to the (former) romance between Cedric and Kyla and substance to the foundation of the new relationship developing between Kyla and Seth. It was a romance that was realistically woven.
2. Complex. The characters were connected in more ways than one, but not so much that there were too many “twists” or that it started to sound like a conspiracy theory. They had history. There are reasons for their wounds, like the (kind-of-sort-of) ex-girlfriend, father who died from cancer, and walk-out parents. These characters had lives outside of the story.
3. Justified. Cedric and Seth didn’t hate each other for no reason. There were legitimate reasons for all three of the characters to be angry with their parents (though some reasons were better than others). Some of their reasons were immature, but totally justified for two boys in that situation. I can’t say that I would have taken the higher road if I was either of them.
4. Believable. The conversations in the book are utterly hilarious. I stayed up until 4 in the morning to finish this book and I was laughing my head off almost the entire time. It was balanced between shameless flirting, good-natured teasing, pointless arguments, and philosophical discussions. In other words, how normal teenagers talk. They’re never stupid ALL the time or INTELLIGENT all the time. There is depth here.
The Characters were
1. Human. Even though Seth and his friends are obviously the popular kids at school, they weren’t stereotyped into being judgmental, shallow, or stupid. They were funny, likable, and lively. No cardboard cut-outs here.
2. Flawed. Ok, so I lied a bit. There was a little bit of immaturity, mainly on Kyla’s part. At the beginning of the story, she’s utterly pathetic: she makes out with random strangers around Cedric, but only when he’s around; she’s mad at everyone and quick to judge. But she grows so much in the course of the book. We can watch her transition from being a petty teenage girl to a mature young woman.
3. Beautifully broken. They did despicable things, but once you found out what their motives were, your heart just broke and all you wanted to do was crawl into the story and piece them back together.
The Values were:
1. Unexpectedly deep. I found myself so incredibly, profoundly touched beyond words.
2. Admirable and respectable. Kyla learns to stand on her own and find meaning and purpose in life beyond getting back at Cedric. And it addresses the fact that there’s no such thing as a happy ending. There’s always something after the last page. Which is a good segue into my warning for this book: There is no real closure in this book. Admittedly, that’s my favorite part of this book (though it killed me). But I know that there will be many who hate this. Most people don’t want a book to end with so many loose ends unless there is going to be a sequel. But this is life and I thought that it was beautifully executed. We read the last page with the knowledge that Kyla had finally learned how to live with tragedy and heartbreak. She had finally learned how to move on, and that’s good enough for me.
All in all , definitely worth it and recommended for age appropriate audiences. There’s a lot to learn here and even if you hate the lack of closure, read it anyway because, frankly, you need to learn how to deal with it. In real life, you’re probably not going to see how everything fits together before you’re dead. You’re going to have to live with dozens, if not hundreds of loose ends.
It really only has two notable flaws, and one was completely expected. The first, and expected one, was that it was very rough. As with almost all books on Wattpad, the story is first draft and mostly unedited. Expect typos, but few that will impair your understanding of the story. Second, metaphors galore. It’s almost incoherent and scatterbrained. But not enough to significantly detract from the story. If it bugs you, just skim past the passages of introspection.
NOW GO READ IT.
Mod
I know I cut this really close, but here's my review for the contest!https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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First let me apologize for not announcing the winner when I said I would and for announcing it so late.
I have come to a decision and the winner is Angie's book review of The Heartbroken Heartbreaker.
If you would like to read her book review, just click on the following links below:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A new book review contest is soon to come.
Congrats, Angie! Your review is awesome! :D
cancer
GLBT
overcoming fears and responsibilities
understanding families trouble
finding friends and yourself
sports
growing up
finding romance
coping with violence, crime, alcohol and drug abuses
living with physical and mental disabilities
dealing with death, disease, accidents, and suicide
Your realistic fiction book cannot be part of a series even if the series is made of novels. The book you select has to be a standalone book. Any questions, just ask.