VVMBookBlog

Jenna Fox’s parents adored Jenna.  Every year on her birthday they began a year’s worth of video highlighting the major events in her year and leaving a lasting record of her life.  But then when she was 16 she was in a bad accident that resulted in many broken bones and severe burns all over her body.

Eighteen months later she wakes from a coma, living in another state with her mother and grandmother, but remembering nothing from her first 16 years.  Watching the videos from her childhood help awaken some memories, but something just doesn’t seem right about her circumstances or how people are treating her.  Why doesn’t she walk right, what are those voices she’s hearing in her head, and why does it seem like she is being kept hidden?

It’s a few years in the future and advances in medicine have made many things possible for accident victims and others who normally would have died.  But have society’s ethical decisions kept up with medical possibilities, what happens when adoring parents are in control of those medical possibilities?  The science fiction undercurrents in this story bring up all kinds of discussion points on what is legal, what should be legal, and what would we do if we woke up in Jenna’s situation.

Miranda is in 6th grade in the late ’70’s, and one day received the first of a series of  mysterious notes from someone who must be watching her, and must know what will happen to her in the future.  She lives with her single mother in a New York City apartment, and her mother is training to be on the TV show, $20,000 Pyramid.

The story follows Miranda’s struggling friendship with her friend, Sal, and the mystery of the vagrant, the “laughing man,” who hangs out on their corner and calls out to people passing by.  Miranda’s favorite book is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle, and Miranda makes lots of connections to the aspects of time travel in Wrinkle in Time, and how location time and space affect the events in her life with her friends.  All of these elements come together in a compelling story contained in the mysterious notes of what Miranda needs to do to prevent a tragic death.

There is much to follow and keep up with in this book, making it a more difficult story to read and understand.  I wanted to read it fast to find out who was sending the mysterious notes, but then I missed some of the depth that came from Miranda’s thoughts about how things happen in time and her comments about her favorite book,  A Wrinkle in Time.  There’s a lot to take in from this story and should be read more than once to really appreciate it.

Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up as he arrives in an elevator to the Glade, a place with other boys his age who have no memories of their past but are working together to survive and find a way out of their dangerous world.  The Glade is surrounded by a series of mazes and designated “runners” negotiate the mazes, attempt to map them, but knowing that the design of the mazes changes every night.  Night also causes the gates to shut in the walls around the Glade, and anyone caught outside the gate are probable victims of the terrifying mechanical Grievers that roam the mazes at night.

Thomas soon emerges as a leader for the Gladers, but his status is threatened when the first girl–Teresa–arrives in the elevator one day, in a coma but soon with a mysterious message for their group.  Does Thomas know Teresa from the past and how can he recover some of his memories to help them escape from the danger they are in?

This is another book where I had to keep reading to the end, but I wish it had ended differently.  It’s obvious there will be a sequel and hopefully that will give more information that I thought was missing from the book’s conclusion.

If you liked City of Ember, you will probably like this book that gives a scary look into a future civilization.

Life is good for Mia, a talented cellist, her eclectic parents, her little brother, Teddy, and her rocker boyfriend, Adam.  Then her family goes out on a short car trip on a snowy day, and next thing she knows, she separated from her body and watching hospital medical staff working to keep her alive after a tragic car accident.   Action in the story all takes place over a 24-hour period of time, so while she is deciding whether she will “stay” or not–whether she will fight to live,  she does lots of remembering those past experiences with her family members and friends.

A story for more mature readers, this was one of those books where I wanted to read the ending to see what she decided, but I forced myself to be patient and read through her memories and observations of her family and friends as they gathered in the hospital waiting room for the doctors to care for Mia.  And I wasn’t disappointed because this is a great story and one that causes readers to look at their lives and wonder what they would do in similar circumstances.

Lena has always been close to her older sister, Dora, but that relationship is challenged when Dora is hospitalized for depression.  Lena just wants things in her family to get back to normal but her parents are always fighting and, even when Dora comes home from the hospital, Lena’s need to watch out for Dora becomes overwhelming.  The title “Black Box” refers to the warning that comes with one of Dora’s medications that comes with a “black box” warning that the person taking the drugs might be at risk for suicide.

The short chapters make this book a really fast read, and the intense story kept me reading to the end.  Good, uplifting story about the effects of mental illness on the person suffering from it and everyone involved with that person.