Harry Potter Should Have Died

HARRY POTTER SHOULD NOT HAVE DIED. EVER. NEVER EVER. Glad I got that out of the way. Yes, I know when I first heard about this book on mugglenet.com I swore to everyone within shouting distance that I would never stoop so low as to read it. But guess what. I stooped.
And it was good! It's written partially by Emerson Spartz, the founder of mugglenet.com, and he was cracking me up as always. And for the record, they don't think Harry should die either, and they argue both sides of the issue in the book.

Actually, they argue a lot of issues. Such as who was the most surprising character, whether the infamous epilogue in Deathly Hallows was a disappointment (HECK NO, it said just enough and left the rest to our imaginations), and other important issues that needed arguing. Then there were the other issues, the not-so-important and rarely-thought-of-ones. Like who would win in a battle, trolls or centaurs? (So centaurs.) Or whether you'd rather give Voldemort a foot rub or shave Hagrid's back. If I was in that situation, I'd be pinching myself with excitement, so the answer didn't matter to me, I'd take either.
Then my favorite: Which couple had the best romantic plotline? Here were the candidates: Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, and... HARMONY? Harmony is Harry and Hermione paired up, which ignorant prats on mugglenet.com have been suggesting since like Sorcerer's Stone. Now mugglenet.com is notoriously against Harmony, so under this heading they had a bunch of bold letters randomly sprawled through the paragraph supposedly proving Harry and Hermione's true love for each other and these letters spelled 'delusional'. Gotta love Emerson's sense of humor.
That's the thing about a great series like Harry Potter, everyone has something to say about it. So when the real series is over, there's still movies and fan fiction and guides and forums and chats and websites and rumors and the author and it's just great.

HOLY FRED AND GEORGE BEST SEQUEL EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe not THE BEST ever as in EVER, but the best one I can remember reading. In fact, this book was better than the first by an almost landslide for me.

The first book, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, merely interested me. I loved the storyline and it was a great book, but I figured it would just be another series I read and remembered vaguely as "Oh yeah, that was a good book, wasn't it?" In The Hunger Games we meet Katniss who lives in a postapocalyptic world called Panem, ruled by a President that separated the world into 12 Districts. Katniss lives in District 12, the coal mining district, and everyone is very poor and close to starvation. But kids can help their families; they simply write their name down for the tesserae and they receive a bag of grain for their family. But there's a catch: they'll be entered into a drawing for the Hunger Games, a battle-to-the-death contest between a male and female from each district (24 contestants total) where everyone is tossed into an arena for survival of the fittest. When Katniss' little sister gets picked, she volunteers for her and wins the Hunger Games, pretending to be in love with the male from her district, Peeta, to get them both out of there alive, which is unheard of in Hunger Games history.

Fast forward almost a year later. Katniss and Peeta are supposedly madly in love (Peeta for real, Katniss pretending because the President is threatening her) and they're touring Panem one district at a time. Since the public figured out how Katniss and Peeta defied the Capitol (government), districts are forming their own rebellions. Katniss seems to stand for them, and this makes the Capitol nervous. In fact, they use Katniss' mockingjay pin as a rebellion symbol.

Now here comes the plot twist: KATNISS AND PEETA GET TOSSED BACK INTO THE HUNGER GAMES. Just when you were wondering where the heck the plot in this sequel was going (admit it, you know you were) IT GETS AWESOME! And death defying! And crazy!

That's why this is the best sequel ever. So read The Hunger Games series, because it will amaze you. And just when there seems to be no way to survival, they get there anyway. This book also takes the cake for one of the best male monologues I've heard out of a teenage character. Peeta has this amazing speech when another contestant is dying and he's talking about colors (dang the copyright laws, or I would put it here) and it was so amazing.

Also attesting to how great this book is: I could be heard screaming NO, PEETA, NO, PLEASE LIVE!!!!!!!!!!! from my room. The people who heard me were downstairs.

Origins (Yes, More Sweep)

My Sweep obsession never ends. Oh, and update: I got Kerrie Ann obsessed with it too, and she's on like Number 9 already. So she's as obsessed, if not more, than I am.
Anyway, Sweep #11. Origins. This book has almost no Hunter or Morgan whatsoever in it. It also has no journal entries, which is another first. Turns out this book is about Rose MacEwan, a young witch in 1683 who is Morgan's great-great(etc.)-grandmother, on Ciaran's side. She started the dark wave that's still wiping out masses of witches in Morgan's time. Notice anything in specific about the year I mentioned? Well, in 1682, witch trials were ABUNDANT.
So it's not a good time to be in a coven... Rose and her mother have to attend Presbyterian church every Sunday and make magick in the woods to avoid suspicion. And one day, while out in the woods, Rose meets the guy of her dreams, her soul mate: Diarmuid. They fall in love and meet in the woods every day. Eventually, stupid Rose, who is only seventeen, GETS PREGNANT. Yeah. This is like a 300-year-old-magickal-soap opera. So she's *ahem* "with child," and Diarmuid is now avoiding her, and to make this book even better, Rose gets charged for witchcraft and is sentenced to the gallows.
Of course, then comes the dark wave.
This book actually had old-timer-witch-speak in it, like "thou" and "thee" and all that good stuff, so if you're looking for classic witchy literature this is where you can find it in 200-page-or-less form. I liked this book, although it kind of sucked that there were only about five pages of Hunter and Morgan. Oh, one more spoiler: Morgan DOES find out about Justine from the last book. *Dun dun duuunnnnnn!*

The Prince of Tides

One thing I always like to do with books is figure out where the title comes from, why it was named that or where the reference is from or whatever. In this book, it turns out to be straightforward at first but towards the end of the book there's more deeper, hidden meaning.
This book is confusing to summarize... I don't know how I'm going to do this, because half the book takes place in the present (which is really 1986) and the rest takes place in the narrator, Tom Wingo's childhood. So here we go, read what you choose to from here on out:

The Story From Childhood
Tom Wingo was born, along with his twin sister Savannah, into an abusive family on a dark, stormy night. They already had an older brother (barely older) named Luke, and their mother's name was Lila. While their father was at war, this small family of four moved into their grandparents, Amos and Tolitha's house. This is a dysfunctional family from the start: Tolitha picks out her coffin in her midfifties so as "not to give her family any trouble" and every year on Good Friday, Amos carries a giant wooden cross down the main street of town for the heck of it, or so it seems. And family interests? Well, they include collecting black widow spiders.
When Dad comes back the Wingo family is reunited in the then-and-still-partly-very-racist South Carolina. And this is the fifties, so there's even more tension. Savannah and Luke and Tom grow up, surviving their father abusing them and their mother, their father's random get-rich-quick schemes, and anything else you could toss in for one heck of a traumatizing childhood. Of course, it all gets worse and worse as it goes on...

The Story In The Present
Flash forward to Tom in his mid-forties. His wife is cheating on him, Luke has passed away, he has three beautiful daughters, he fights with his mother daily, and he just got the news that Savannah tried to commit suicide. He and his twin have not spoken in three years.
So Tom packs up for some "alone time" and moves into Savannah's New York apartment, a drastic change from the small-town racist South they come from. He is telling his childhood story to Savannah's shrink, Dr. Lowenstein, to help figure out what she's been repressing that made her try to kill herself. (That's where the whole past-present thing gets confusing, which is why I put it in this format.)
Tom gets to know Dr. Lowenstein pretty well, well enough for her to ask him to coach his son since he's a football coach. Actually, they get to know each other so well that Tom ends up falling in love with her. Yes, even though he's already a got a wife, but isn't that how all sad stories end up?

This book does have a sort-of-shocker of an ending, though. Well, at least it makes you think quite a bit, and even though the ending of the past story is heartbreaking, the ending of the present story is pretty happy in someways. It just kind of shows you how life can be beautifully heartbreaking and heartbreakingly beautiful at the same time, if you get what I mean, with maybe a little sarcasm thrown in there.

The Rules of Survival

This is the first book I've read by Nancy Werlin and I have to say I enjoyed it quite a bit. My best friend Kerrie Ann was reading Impossible by that same author and said it was AWESOME, so I researched the author and found her in the school library and voila, I read The Rules of Survival. It turns out to be a very sad book.
The whole story is a letter the main character, Matt, is writing to his younger sister, Emmy, about when she was too little to remember being kidnapped by their psychopath mother. Basically these three kids, Matt, Callie, and Emmy lived with their mother Nikki in an apartment and their aunt lived in the apartment downstairs because they owned the place. Nikki is the kind of mom who comes home really late, in the morning, and sometimes not at all. Matt and his sisters learned the rules of survival very early in life with that kind of parent. Their father? Well, Matt and Callie's father sends child support once a month for all three kids even though Emmy is not his. But he knows enough about Nikki to stay away.
Then Matt runs into Murdoch. He sees Murdoch stand up for a kid that had an abusive father in a convenience store, and from then on he becomes obsessed with finding Murdoch. By a strange twist of fate Nikki begins dating Murdoch, and they break up shortly when Murdoch sees Nikki's true colors. After that it's a race against time for Murdoch, Matt's aunt, and Matt's father to get these three kids away from their mother before she cracks. But then the unthinkable happens... Nikki kidnapped Emmy.
It was a really good family story, especially in the written-letter form it was, but it was kind of thrilling, too. Not really edge-of-your-seat Stephen King thrilling, but thrilling enough to make you hope Emmy was going to survive. I can't wait to read more of Nancy Werlin.

Sweep+Hunter=AWESOMENESS

Sweep #10: Seeker. And what a huge surprise... THIS BOOK IS FROM HUNTER'S POINT OF VIEW! Which you obviously realize when you read the back of the book and the first sentence is "I love Morgan."
But anyway, in this book Hunter leaves Morgan for a short time to go to Canada and track down his parents. And he finds his father! Who turns out to be a broken, lonely old man who has an addiction to contact with the Underworld. As for Hunter's mother? She dead. *sob* She died like a month before Hunter found them, or something.
So while Hunter's trying to pull his family back together, he also has a job to do in Canada. A witch has been learning people's true names (which allows her to control them) and making a list, which is strictly forbidden by Witches' Council laws. Hunter has to go track her down, only to find this nice, twenty-something young lady who keeps hitting on him.
This is where I screamed, HUNTER, YOU'VE ALREADY GOT A SOULMATE!!!!!!! And he remembers at the last minute and pulls out of her spell, literally. And you know how every chapter is started with a character's journal entries in this book? Well we get to read Morgan's journal entries in Seeker, so we are updated on her life too even though we don't see her all that much through the story.
I can't wait until I'm reading about Morgan again, though.

The Pelican Brief

Out of the three John Grisham books I have read, this one thrilled me the least. Sure, it had some good, suspenseful scenes, but it really was a little boring and a bit too farfetched to just blame it on artistic license.
Basically two Supreme Court Judges are found dead, and an amateur law student (given that she's practically a genius) rights a brief connecting the two murders. It gets out that she wrote it and now he boyfriend's dead, and she's on the run for her life. This sounds super thrilling, but it's actually not as good as it sounds. And by the end, you will get what I mean about the whole farfetched thing.
Another interesting thing about this book: I got it at the thrift shop I work at, and the person who donated it had left a note in the book. It seemed to be a travel schedule for a Vegas trip or something, I don't know. It was kind of cool though, so I'm copying it here.

Random Note I Found In My Book
WAKEUP AT 4:00 CROSS FREEWAY
FUN Thurs.
Tubbing, JET SKI, Laid out, WAVERUNNER,
NIGHT -STORM
-THUNDER
All-SECURE BOTH BOATS
-BED 3:30 OR 4:00
TOO CHOPPY TO SKI ON FRI.
-WINDY EXT./FLAT
LEFT ON SAT afternoon
LAS VEGAS 3:30-4:00
WAIT till-8:00
WENT out SAT night.
AUNT Got Sick-DIABETES Shock-HEAT
HOSPITAL

CHECKED iN At Excalibur
MOVE CAR-ACCIDENT
Get Bathing Suits TAKE to get tire
pay $60
POOL CLOSED 6:00 wassqs
Guys-PARTY-DRINK-RUDE
No Rooms Anywhere
-SLEPT ON FLOOR
Got up at 7:30 on Sun
hrs homE.

Yes, that's really how this person writes. It makes no sense, but it puzzled me more than the story did.

I Was Feeling Blue, So I Read The Blue Girl.

In the back of this book there's a little paragraph about the author, Charles De Lint, and how he's unofficially the king of urban fairy tales. After reading this book, I totally agree. By the way, the title is TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY.





Imogene, the main character, has just moved with her ex-hippie (but still bringing the man down!) mother and he psychadelic musician of a brother (Jared) to Newford. She is known as being a tough cookie, a complete loser, but one you wouldn't want to mess with. At her old school she ran with the tough crowd and was basically close to dropout status until they moved and Imogene meets Maxine. Imogene's first words to Maxine are "You remind me of the imaginary friend I had as a kid." This pretty much sets the tone of their friendship, and they remain together, the two social outcasts of the Newford high school, as best friends.
That's not even the main plot of the story. Now here comes Adrian, the high school's resident ghost who either fell, jumped, or FLEW off the building six years before Imogene moved to Newford. Now he haunts the school, making himself visible only to nerds in need. (Yes, I know, this book sounds cheesy, but it's actually really good.) Adrian falls in love with Imogene (no, not your classic ghost/human love paradox with a secret twist that lets them be together) and shows himself to her. Imogene takes it rather well, and pretty soon she's tattoo-deep in all sorts of magical crud: faeries, angels, ghosts, imaginary friends, and spirits that maybe Imogene shouldn't have seen...
This book kind of has an all-over-the-place storyline, but it all comes together for a fantastic fantasy tale. (That last sentence may be redundant.) I am now going to search amazon.com for all other books by Charles De Lint.

Strife (More Sweep!)(#9)

I read this book in like one day. 188 pages, all good. The one thing I usually like about the books in the Sweep series by Cate Tiernan is that she ties up all the loose ends at the end of every book, usually. This book, there was one gaping loophole, and the author didn't even hint at solving it in the next book. That was a bit disappointing, but oh well, not every book can be perfect.
Anyway, in Strife, Morgan finds herself in the center of strange happenings yet again. She's back together with Hunter, but weird things seem to be going on around her. Like when she was in a Kithic (her coven's name) circle at Hunter's house, books started flying off the shelves around the room, and a shelf fell over at the library. And then when Erin and Morgan are doing their own circle in Morgan's room Morgan levitates! The common factor in all these occurences were Morgan and also Mary K.'s (Morgan's sister's) friend Alisa. Wait, new characters... Must introduce.
Alisa was always one of the minor characters in the Kithic circle. Now we're reading her Book of Shadows entries at the beginning of each chapter and we find out she doesn't like Morgan much-- Morgan's power makes her feel uncomfortable and she wants to leave Kithic because of Morgan. We also meet Erin, a defensive magick specialist from Scotland (whos' actually Irish. Confusing, huh?) who is supposed to help Morgan learn to protect herself from her evi father Ciaran. Both of these women were always around when weird things started happening around Morgan, so either one of them could be causing it too. My bet's on Alisa.
We also see some conflict with Morgan and her adopted parents. They really don't understand her ties with Wicca and they're worried because her grades are dropping. So what do they do? They try to get her into CATHOLIC SCHOOL. They change their minds at the last minute though because they see how hard Morgan's trying to pull up her grades.
This is how deep into the book I got, though: I had a dream MY parents were making ME go to Catholic school on top of my public high school and I was failing miserably. Sound familiar?
Lke I said, the one thing that diappointed me about this book was that we never saw who was causing the supernatural action around Morgan. Now I gotta read #10 to find out.

The Client

Wow. I never thought I'd like legal thrillers, but this book was amazing. It's like there are so many loopholes you never know about, and you're reading, going, "How in the heck are they going to get out of that subpoena???" and next chapter the solution seems almost simple. It was so complex and mindbending.
So anyway, the book starts off with two kids, Mark and Ricky Sway, sneaking through the wood behind their trailer home while their mom's at work to share a cigarette. They see somebody parked ahead and notice that the guy has a tube running from his exhaust pipe into his car. Basically: suicidal. So Mark tries to talk the guy out of it and ends up sitting in the car with him, and the guy turns out to be a famous lawyer defending the mob in a huge case. (Someone in the mob killed a senator everyone pretty much knows he did it, except they can't find the body so there's no case because of the whole habeus corpus thing.)
So this lawyer, Romey, tells Mark everything he knows about the case. Then he shoots himself.
Ricky goes into shock and Mark ends up scared to death. The police want him to talk, but he knows the mob will stop at nothing to shut him up, so he hires himself a lawyer, one who's only been practicing law for FOUR YEARS. And she's 52 years old. Her name is Reggie Love, and with her help Mark may just figure a way to get out of the justice system alive.
SUCH a good book, although it is kinda long. Now I want to see the movie.

"As Long As He Needs Me (I'll Klingon Steadfastly)"

Yep, that's the title of a song the main character's show choir is performing for a choir competition. But that's not the least of Jenny's problems.
A: She is "Ask Annie" for her school's newspaper and can't tell anyone, least of all her best friend Trina who would spread the word faster than a shark swims toward blood.
B: She is maybe-sorta-kinda crushing on her newspaper editor, also her friend's boyfriend, Scott, who loves to cook and is extremely unavailable.
C: She is currently the only friend of Cara the Cow, a chubby, unpopular, wannabe girl at Jenny's school who has a meltdown at least twice a week at lunch.
D: The most popular teen star, Luke Striker, is going undercover to research a role at Jenny's school and he administration has asked JENNY to be his student guide.
All this would put me at the point of About-To-Explode. Jenny, however, handles it with all the grace you would expect the main character in a Meg Cabot book to have.





While she is showing Luke around school, though, Luke notices things about Jenny. Like how Jenny always smooths everything over, and never stirs up trouble even when it's the right thing to do. And he points this out to Jenny, in the same chapter where he asks her to prom. (I know-- WHAT THE HECK?) So Jenny starts stirring up trouble. She gives Cara the Cow a makeover and turns her into a whole new person. She foils the senior prank that's turning into a sadistic Cabbage Patch doll massacre (don't ask), and she walks out on her superlame show choir class and holds a strike in the library instead.
But you don't think Jenny's got enough on her plate? How's she going to resolve things with her sort-of-friend, want-to-be-more-than-friend Scott?
This book also has the Cabot flair of writing that my friend Cara (not the cow) and I both love. Like here:

"By the time Steve and Trina dropped me off at home Friday night, my nerves were shot. Between trying to
a) keep people from finding out Lucas Smith was really Luke Striker and not a transfer student after all and
b) prevent Luke from thinking everyone at Clayton High was devil spawn on account of the whole Betty Ann and Cara Cow thing and
c) get Trina her hat on time during "All That Jazz," let alone learn the choreography and
d) not slack off all my other stuff, like Ask Annie and trig and keeping Cara from killing herself and all of that,
I was a wreck."
(pg. 104)

Pssshhhh I would be too! But yeah, as in all Cabot books, everything ends up all right in the end, including a few surprising couple choices. Good, but surprising.

A Painted House

We read a few pages of this book in language arts class last year for a writing prompt. So part of this book was familiar to me, especially the part where Luke sees his first television. That's part of the reason I read this book in the first place, because reading only those few pages in class was going to bug me sooner or later, and the thrift shop had it for like 50 cents...
This is the first John Grisham book I've ever read, and what does my Grandpa say? "That book bored me to death. I had to quit halfway through." Thanks, really. That inspires a kid to read. I actually thought the book was good. Yes, a little long, but really interesting.
It was like one huge social experiment. You have the Chandler family, the ten Mexicans they hire living in the barn, and the Spruill family camping in their front yard. The Chandler family is a cotton farming family. They hire the Spruills and the Mexicans to help them pick. Then we have the neighbors, the Latchers, who are the 1950's equivalent of white trash. Ten kids in a shack of a house, no food to speak of, pregnant daughter who won't tell who the father is... Yeah. Good family life.
The story is told from the point of view of Luke Chandler, a 7 year old boy who is very naive but expected to pull his weight as far as cotton picking and farming goes. He also wants to be a baseball player, so a lot of the book has little baseball snippets throughout.
Luke discovers a lot of secrets, enough to make a kid want to 'fess up and run straight for under the bed. The Latcher girl's pregnancy? Well, the kid is now born and nameless, and the father may be Luke's Uncle Ricky who's away at war. The Spruill girl Tally? She may or may not be sneaking around with one of the Mexicans, Cowboy. And Cowboy? There's a whole other mystery right there...
So it's like social experiment meets soap opera. You hear situations like "Who's the father?" or "Their love can never be...", but you also see, "Whaddaya think'll happen if we throw a flood at this poor family?"
It makes for one interesting book, and I now like reading John Grisham books.

Hi, My Name is Sweep Addict #3...

I'm only Sweep Addict #3 because my friends Cara and Melissa are numbers 1 and 2. Good series... I started reading it over the summer after the Sweep Brigade (Cara and Melissa, namely) forced me to. Now I like it too. It's about Wicca, mainly, although there's also a lot of subplots running through the books concerning the main characters' love lives which is another reason I keep reading because that part has a pretty good storyline, too.
Anyway, onto this book. Changeling. Referring possibly to the fact that the main character, Morgan, is going through some difficult changes at the time. Her bloodline is descended from the Woodbanes, the most evil out of all the original Wiccan clans. So Morgan has a lot to worry about. She wants to be good, but she finds herself making bad choices and only thinking about herself because of the tremendous power she holds. The title can also refer to the fact that Morgan BECOMES A WOLF during the last chapters of this book!!! Yes, Morgan learns how to shapeshift. And almost ends up killing her true love in the process.
Speaking of true love, like I said their are a lot of romantic subplots in this book. We see more going on with Sky, Raven, and Killian, but not so much going on between Morgan and her true love Hunter because Morgan broke up with him last book (I'm still mad at her for that).
All I have to say after this book is BAD MORGAN!!!!!!!!!!!! She broke up with her boyfriend, starts to bond with her root-of-all-evil father Ciaran, and is having trouble staying on the good side. Stay away from the dark side you must, Morgan.
While I was reading this in science class today, the complete jerk sitting next to me notices the summary on the back (a miracle! he can read!) and asks, "Dude, are you WICCAN?" I was so ticked off with him I just spat, "Why is it any of YOUR business?" and now I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm a witch. Oh well, that could work for me.

DEAD MAN'S FOLLY

The one thing that always confuses me about Agatha Christie books are the number of characters. She always puts like ten suspects in her books (actually in Ten Little Indians, there are exactly ten) and calls all the characters by their last names so you don't even feel like you know them really well. That happened a little bit in Dead Man's Folly, but not too bad. Not like, say, Murder on the Orient Express.
Anyway, the infamous Hercule Poirot (pronounced air-KYULL pwa-ROW, so I'm told...) gets invited by a murder author to kind of like a fake murder party because the author feels something bad might happen (call it a hunch... My English teacher calls it foreshadowing). You know how back in the day people used to gather at a huge estate and have a clue hunt? Well that's what they're doing. The only problem is the girl who is being paid to be the victim and lay around dead for the day in the boathouse is actually DEAD. As in DEAD dead. Now M. Poirot is doing what we call nowadays Freakin' Out because he not only didn't prevent the murder, he has no idea whodunit.
As always, it turns out to be the person you least expect it to be. And no, this is not technically a spoiler, because in Agatha Christie books, it's NEVER who you expect it to be. It's usually the person who has an airtight alibi, too.
Another thing I like about her writing is her humor. There is subtle humor and a lot of times you have to read between the lines to find it because it's supposed to be a "proper English mystery" (insert snobby English accent here). But trust me, it's there. And it's hilarious when you get it. It's like, ha! I'm laughing at the same thing people fifty years ago did!
Yep, so another good mystery. The downside? I didn't find even ONE of my English vocabulary words, DANG IT.
I'm also a little mad because the copy I have is from the thrift shop and has this totally awesome cover but I can't find a picture of it already online. Now I'm gonna have to drag out my camera... Oh well, it's worth it.

BAG OF BONES

Hands down, best Stephen King book I HAVE READ THUS FAR IN MY EXISTENCE. Goddess, it was so good. It was weird, though, because this book is so un-Stephen-King-ish. Or, as Mrs. Myers would say, it didn't fit King's normal style. There was little gore, not as much swearing or grotesque scenes *ahem*, and overall it was more a suspense book compared to his normal horrors.
It's about Mike Noonan, a "second-rate suspense novelist" whose wife Jo has been dead four years and keeps dreaming about his summer home on the TR, Sara Laughs. He goes back and meets some interesting people, the least of which include 4-year-old Kyra and her 21-year-old mother, "Mattie." Also while he's there, Mike discovers some disturbing connections throughout the town history, dating back to almost Civil War times. He also discovers some not-so-ancient secrets, including why his wife died and what she had discovered about the town...
Um, how can I say this... SUCH A FREAKIN' AWESOME BOOK. I've read a lot of Stephen King, and I have to admit this book is a bit slow and doesn't jump right into the action in the beginning, but it picks right up and slowly starts to creep you out as you read further and further until you discover you can't put it down... because the book is GLUED TO YOUR HANDS.
I wish I could post excerpts from this book in here, but because of the dang copyright laws... dang it.
I love Kyra and Mattie in this book; they live in a trailer, and their lives are so stereotypically white trash and yet seem so much more fun than the suburban lives we live.