LA Readers' Reviews

Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman is a commentary on mental illness and generally explores the magnificent ways in which our minds work. It tells the story of a boy in highschool, named Caden, it explores his battles with mental illness and turns into a metaphor about his fascination about the ocean. It was very beautifully written and captures you easily. I would recommend this to anyone that wants to read a book that is written and has a less traditional format.

Looking for Alaska by John Green is a novel a coming of age book about a boy named Miles and a girl Alaska. I really liked this book the character’s are all well developed, Alaska specifically feels relatable to me as the reader. She is struggling through her young years in a very relatable way. The format of the book is also really interesting to me, it is broken into two parts; before and after. It is tragic, compelling while remaining pretty easy to read and follow. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading a coming of age story.

Is a historical fiction novel about a group of Japanese American teenagers whose lives were turned upside down by World War II. After the US government orders the Japanese Americans to be removed from their homes and sent to interment camps the main characters are made to leave behind everything they know and hold dear. The story is told from each persons’ in the friend groups perspective, exploring the difficulties each person faced. The characters really struggle with what it means to be an American when their own country treats them as less that human. Through their tight knit friendships they hold each other through the awfulness.

As they move from San Francisco’s Japantown to different camps, each person responds to their own situation in their own way- some rebel, some try and fit in, and a couple join the military to prove their loyalty. Through the harsh conditions and discrimination they faced, they supported each other. The novel shows the pain and strength of a generation forced to carry the weight of a country blaming them for a war.

I really loved this book, it made me laugh and it made me cry. It taught me a lot, and left me feeling like this is a section of US history that should be talked about more. I remember talking about it very briefly in second or third grade when we did a global focus on Japan and then talked about immigration to the US from there. But never once in my time at Lincoln has it come up. Regardless of the story’s historical importance I feel like the author did a very good job of portraying the story through teenagers eyes made to grow up too fast. I would totally suggest this book to someone looking for a historical fiction novel.

Why we fly is a book by author Kimberly Jones, a novel for teenagers,about two black girls named Nia and Kiva, with a passion and strong desire for the aviation industr.But thing do not come easily to the two girls,foe ordinary people they just need to try and they can do it .Nia and Kiva are two girls who are still in their teenage years growing up in a poor neighborhood.Nia is a girl with intelligence and talent,she always has a dream that is to be a pilot.However, things are not easy for her because of the doubts of her family and society always doubt her ability and strength.Kiva,her best friend,is a person with extremely delicate creativity,her passion for building airplanes has never faded,it flow forever in the heart of a young girl.Because they have the same hobby like and a love for aviation they always sympathize with each other and support each other.Although both have to face racial discrimination and countless difficulties, financial as well as social and pressure but they still do not give up but keep trying.

After reading the story I feel that Nia is constantly trying because she passed important tests to reach her dream of becoming a pilot.Although she is not supported by her family or society,she always proves herself to be twice as good as others.I feel extremely respectful of her resilience when she does not have the consent of her family and school, but she does not care and breaks her own barriers.

I really recommend everyone to read this book once because it not only tells about the efforts of breaking through and trying, but it also tells about the extremely beautiful friendship between two girls who always sympathize and understand each other, beautiful love, discrimination of race and gender, talking about the aspirations and perseverance of two girls. I feel that the message the book brings is the efforts and limitations that society brings.

The Bridge Kingdom is part of a series. It is a five-book series. The first two books follow the same two characters. The other three books follow characters introduced within the first two books. In addition, there is also a novella featuring the characters from the first book that is intended to be read after book three.

The main character in this book is Lara. She is a princess from a kingdom called Maridrina. She is raised in the desert with her sisters, isolated from society with one purpose, to infiltrate Ithicana, also known as The Bridge Kingdom. Lara and her sisters are each competing for the same role, to marry the king of Ithicana and bring the kingdom to its knees. But Lara is willing to go to any length to ensure her sisters are given a chance at a normal life, including sacrificing herself to go. In the desert, Lara and her sisters face unspeakable horrors, horrors that are claimed to be a necessity. Once Lara arrives in Ithicana she begins to see the truth and question everything she was ever told. She even begins to fall for her husband, Aren, the king of Ithicana. Aren is a very interesting character. He has no intentions of letting Lara into his heart. She is the daughter of his enemy, an enemy that his kingdom has only known peace with for fifteen years due to the Fifteen Year Treaty. A treaty that a princess from Maridrina would marry the king of Ithicana and the princess from Ithicana would marry the prince of Harendell. As Lara and Aren begin to fall for each other their relationship is constantly tested and, by the end of the book, no one knows whether or not they’ll make it out together.

I personally loved this book. It had a great tempo. There was a perfect mixture of action and romance. Lara’s character is written extremely well. She goes through a process of questionning everything she was taught. Watching her character develope and mature throughout the book was very captivating. Aren developes and matures with her and goes through a process of learning to trust people when he has been taught his whole life never to trust outsiders.

In this book, the characters are slightly older. Lara is the main character and she is twenty years old. Aren is twenty-five years old. The book is categorized as New Adult, or NA. I feel that this book wouldn’t have worked as well as a YA book. The characters would have had to be a couple years younger but that would have made it unappealing in a way. I’ve read books where the main character is a teenager and doing incredible things, but since she is so young it’s almost ridiculous. If Lara had been younger she also would have felt more immature, which would not have worked. Since she matures so much in this book as a twenty-year-old her character would have needed to be written as even more immature as a teenager which would not work for the role she plays.

When a city wide power outage occurs in New York city. While the power is out the story follows the main characters Kareem and Tammie as they attempt to make it back home without any transportation. And the story also follows other characters as they also try to make it home.

I do not like this book at all. It was a cheesy romance book and the lack of character development with the main characters left me frustrated. Instead of just focusing on the main characters Kareem and Tammie the author tried to follow other stories. Honestly I think the book would have been better if Kareem and Tammy’s story was the only one that was followed. Another thing that was frustrating was a character that I had liked was only followed for one chapter. The character was not mentioned again after this. The author put way to many story’s into one and I honestly think it would have better with just one.

6 story’s were followed in this book. And only two of them were interesting. I usually like books that follow more than one story’s but it was just to much to pay attention to. So it took me longer than usual to read as the story was just boring.

Although I have strong opinions on this book I would still say people who like cheesy romances would probably enjoy this book.

Compound Fracture is a book made by Andrew Joseph White, written in 2024 it follows a trans boy named Miles Abernathy who lives in a small town in west Virginia, his family-the Abernathys have had a history in there town about misfortunes happening to them and there family, Miles grandfather got killed while working on the local railroad, and his father recently got hurt due to a car crash that was caused by the local sheriff, Miles finds out about this and gets evidence about the “accident” which leads him to be injured and almost dies, now he has the powers to see the dead ghost of his grandfather, which watches over him while he tries to bring to justice his family.

This is the newest book that Andrew had written and I have read all 3 of his book and I have to say I really enjoyed this one, it had many parts of the story in which I related to the main character and the how he feels about himself and how others see him, and I really enjoy how the author made Miles in this book, and I also like many of the secondary characters and even the background characters, I think that this one might be one of-if not my favorite book that he has written so far, but I’ve said that with almost all of his book, and I really highly recommend this book to anyone who likes suspenseful books or who just wants a good read

Brownstone is a realist fiction graphic novel about a 14-year-old girl named Almudena. The story follows her as she struggles to navigate having to spend a whole summer with her dad who she has never met, and who speaks virtually no English.

She slowly warms up to her father as they progress through working on apartment repairs together. Almudena ends up meeting Idola who helps translate between Almudena and her father. However, Almudena resents the fact that Idola is her father’s girlfriend, and is resistant to the fact that her parents will likely never get back together again.

Almudena struggles to fit in with the other people living in the city, since she grew up with little to no knowledge of her Guatemalan heritage. She is confused and frustrated with the criticism she’s received due to her lack of knowledge for her Guatemalan history, but she eventually grows and matures enough to realize that she doesn’t need the validation of others to feel good in her own skin.

Although I really loved all the illustrations of the characters and architecture, I have a lot of gripes with the actual story of this book. A lot of the story in question felt very rushed to me, and I get it’s hard to portray character growth in such a short graphic novel, but I found myself rather frustrated by the rushed development in the characters that it didn’t feel very cohesive.

Minor spoilers ahead but I just had to about it because it really stuck out to me. There is a point in the story were Almudena gets close with this woman named Queralt who owns the convenience store on the block, and when Idola comes in the store, she says she doesn’t want Almudena to hang out with her anymore because she’s a lesbian. Although I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to include homophobia in a story, my issue with this piece of plot is that the two characters make up seamlessly a bit after this interaction with very little insight on Idola’s part, or even any further commentary on Idola’s homophobia, and why she acts this way or why she suddenly no longer had issues with it. The story even includes another queer character named Beto who is Idola’s son, which I thought was going to be used as an instance to portray Idola’s growth by supporting him, but it’s just kind of mentioned and then moved on from. I often like when queer characters aren’t just focused on for their queerness but this just felt like a missed opportunity in my opinion.

Also, the story seemed to be trying to use a panther motif throughout the story to portray Almudena’s imposter syndrome towards her identity has half Guatemalan, but I feel like it wasn’t used enough to actually register with me until after re-reading the story.

However, I don’t think this book is all horrible, I think the story showed the steady progression of her building her relationship with her dad, and giving conclusive insight into why he was gone all her life. It was nice to see Almudena grow and become more accepting of her identity, and become more confident overall in herself.

I would recommend this story to those who love realistic fiction graphic novels with beautiful illustration styles, as well as coming-of-age stories portraying the conflicts and struggles of being mixed.

Flamer by Mike Curato is a semi-autobiographical graphic novel about a boy named Aiden Navarro, who’s currently dealing with the day to day bullying at the summer camp he attends, since the bully’s think he’s gay. Navarro, with the help of his friends, and absolute best friend Elias, pushes through the torment of the other boys and tries to have a good time at camp before he has to start high school.

I think Flamer is a fantastic book, giving a scary yet honest look at the life of a queer teen. The drawings done by the author also help to reinforce the realistic portrayal, Aiden has issues with his self confidence, constantly mentioning how he’s overweight to the reader, Curato’s portrayal of the teen has sparked controversy however. The book has some heavy topics, which may be argued as to why it has been banned or challenged numerous times ( even though the main reason is most likely because the book is gay).

Some of the topics delve pretty deep towards the end of the book. Without spoiling too much, Aiden, later in the story, is shunned from the whole group and feels isolated, we see as other campers treat him differently and his own character changing, lashing out and adorning a black hoodie which he keeps zipped and over his head. During this period the main reason why this book may be challenged occurs, the banning of this book only further isolates the individuals who are like Aiden, feeling alone and lost in their most formative years. This book helps queer teens to not feel so lonely, as it shows them someone who they can relate to, and the book doesn’t end on a sad note, showing there’s hope for the people who feel hopeless.

I believe it goes without saying who I would recommend this book too, besides the obvious, I’d also recommend the same people who challenge this book to read it and really think about the affect a ban on this will have.

Heir of Fire By Sarah J Maas follows Aelin Galathynius as she travels to the lands of the fae to get information out of her aunt, the fae queen Maeve. But when she gets there her aunt refuses to even let her enter the city. She makes Aelin train with a fae, Prince Rowan Whitethorn, until he deems her training complete. Aelin stays outside the city walls and trains with Rowan for months. During this time, they slowly grow closer, she starts to trust people again and her new friends start to break the walls that she has put up.

I really like this book. Since it is the fourth book in an eight book series, we have watches Aelin trust very few people, those people break her trust, and watched her retreat back into herself. Because of this I loved to see her begin to process all of the horrible things that have happened to her and watch her finally begin to trust people again, starting with Rowan.

As she grows closer to Rowan she begins to embrace who she is and stop being afraid of who she is. By the end of the book, Aelin has almost fully embraced who she is and has realized who she wants to be. As she gets information from her aunt and leaves to go back to Rifthold, she stops taking crap from people who should care about her. This book does an amazing job of showing how different people deal with grief and how, the people that care about you, are not the people who manipulate you and try to shame you for the things things that you have done to survive.

This series is amazingly written and perfect for anyone who loves fantasy, fighting, and beautiful character development.