Hey all! This review is going to be done by our guest blogger, Jen!
A little background on the wonderful Jennifer, she is the literacy specialist at the school I work at. She recently just got back from her honeymoon in Aruba where she reveled in the fact that she could actually read for fun instead of as just part of her job. We were talking about the books she read and I asked her if she wanted to write a review to share with everyone! So without further ado...
Author: Ron Rash
Goodreads rating: 3.55
Pages: 371
The year is 1929, and
newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North
Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although
George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an
illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains—but she soon shows
herself to be the equal of any man, overseeing crews, hunting
rattle-snakes, even saving her husband's life in the wilderness.
Together this lord and lady of the woodlands ruthlessly kill or vanquish
all who fall out of favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never
bear a child, she sets out to murder the son George fathered without
her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena
suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons'
intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel as the story moves toward
its shocking reckoning.
Rash's masterful balance of violence and
beauty yields a riveting novel that, at its core, tells of love both
honored and betrayed.
Author: Holly Goldberg Sloan
Goodreads Rating: 4.12
Pages: 384
In the tradition of Out
of My Mind, Wonder, and Mockingbird, this is an intensely moving middle
grade novel about being an outsider, coping with loss, and discovering
the true meaning of family.
Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old
genius, obsessed with nature and diagnosing medical conditions, who
finds it comforting to count by 7s. It has never been easy for her to
connect with anyone other than her adoptive parents, but that hasn’t
kept her from leading a quietly happy life . . . until now.
Suddenly
Willow’s world is tragically changed when her parents both die in a car
crash, leaving her alone in a baffling world. The triumph of this book
is that it is not a tragedy. This extraordinarily odd, but
extraordinarily endearing, girl manages to push through her grief. Her
journey to find a fascinatingly diverse and fully believable surrogate
family is a joy and a revelation to read.
