Month: March 2022

Girl on a Plane by Miriam Moss is a Young Adult fictional retelling of high-jackings that occurred during the 1970s by Palestinian guerillas. The author tells in her postscript that she actually experienced these events, and although she had a hard time remembering it, she did her best to retell it in a way that drew readers in.

Fifteen year old Anna is traveling alone, on her way back to boarding school in England, when her plane is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. The plane is redirected to an airstrip in Jordan, where there is already another plane full of passengers being held hostage. Anna’s plane is kept hostage for four long, agonizing days full of heat and lacking food.

The highjackers didn’t intend to kill any of the passengers; their demands were simply for the English government to release one of their members, and they would release their hostages.

This story is short and simple; it doesn’t have a lot of character-development so you couldn’t really feel for Anna and the boys she befriends on the plane, but you got the main point of the story and understood the events that happened.

I think that my favorite part of the story was after everything had happened, years later, Anna returned to the Jordanian desert where she was held hostage. There was a horse farm instead of an airstrip, and she found the spot where her plane was kept. She stood in that spot and stared out on the horizon, seeing the view that she had watched for four days from the inside of a hot, crowded, smelly airplane.

In the article “Does YA Mean Anything Anymore?: Genre in a Digitized World, written by John Green, the idea of YA novels being taken too seriously seems to be thrown around.

Green talks about childhood; the books you read, the lands you escape to in your mind. He explains how illuminating the act of reading YA novels can be for both children, teenagers, and adults. Even though the genre is called “young” adult, the books found within are enjoyed by all groups of the population.

Green makes some interesting comments about how reading itself creates empathy within people. When you get sad reading about how your favorite character’s father died, you’re showing empathy for a fictional character. We take perspective from the characters, seeing things through their eyes and the way that they live. We begin to feel how they feel.

He also talks about how librarians are a huge part of keeping paperback media alive. Without librarians, there wouldn’t be libraries, and without libraries I believe that paperback media would disappear. Librarians also keep students engaged in reading, even if it’s not for a class. Students, from my experience, stop reading once they reach high school because they seem to not have the spare time for it. Librarians give that little reading engine a kick-start to get moving again.

I think that there is a big risk of paperback media disappearing in the future. It’s obvious that buying a book on your phone or iPad is easier and faster than going to the library or bookstore, but it’s also so unauthentic. Holding a device rather than a book while sitting down on my dock in the summer breeze just seems… miserable. Even if I’m reading, even if it was my favorite book on that screen, I couldn’t possibly truly appreciate it.

This novel by Andrea Portes follows a young girl named Daffodil who is trying to escape her past. Without giving any context for the first half of the story, the reader knows that something happened to Daffodil that previous spring; something she refuses to even think about.

As she’s trying to get away from this incident and the people she left in Nebraska, she decides to head to college early. Somewhere along the train ride to Bryn Mawr, she gets off the train. In the middle of nowhere in the countryside, Daffodil meets a professor who lives in a massive mansion. It just so happens that this professor is leaving for the summer… and he needs someone to stay at the house to oversee the renovation project in the backyard.

Considering Daffodil has no way to pay for her first semester room and board, she jumps on this opportunity. A huge mansion all to herself- and she gets a ridiculous stipend for it… almost too much money, it seems.

It doesn’t take long for Daffodil to discover there’s something odd about the house. She’s lured outside the first night, where she stands out in the field and can feel someone- or something- watching her from inside the house. She couldn’t not go back inside, though, so she just reminded herself that the working crew would be there in the morning and she would only be alone for a few more hours.

But then a few weeks go by and the crew who has been working in the backyard, building a guesthouse, hasn’t made any progress. They’ve had the same hole in the ground. No foundation laid, no housing materials to be seen. Daffodil brushes it off saying that she doesn’t know anything about construction, and doesn’t want to be rude by questioning the boss, Dave.

While there’s ghosts messing with her at night and a loud yet slow working crew around during the day, she has another concern. The odd old English lady named Penelope who claimed to be the professor’s friend, who he asked to keep an eye on Daffodil for the summer, shows up unannounced and unwelcome. The professor had never mentioned this woman, yet Daffodil never had a reason to not trust her.

Until one night where she has a dream that the woman tries to kill her- but Daffodil pushes her down the grand staircase of the mansion. It had all seemed so real in Daffodil’s mind, but when she woke up everything was perfectly okay and Penelope came back that morning to check on her.

Finally, as Daffodil begins to believe she’s going crazy, things begin to unravel. Daffodil’s past comes back in flashes, letting us know exactly what she left behind in Nebraska; her dead boyfriend.

Zander Haaf was the school’s golden boy, that is, until he died in a car crash while drunk driving- with Daffodil in the passenger seat.

“Blue Sargent forgot how many times she’d been told she would kill her true love.”

The Raven Boys, written by Maggie Stiefvater, is a fantasy novel set in Henrietta, Virginia that follows the story of teenager Blue Sargent as she goes on a quest with new-found friends. Blue lives in a big house full of psychic aunts and her mother. She has been told since she was a little kid that her true love will die if she kisses him. Every year, Blue stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them but this year, she sees a boy who speaks directly to her; his name is Gansey. Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school, and becomes friends with Gansey and his group of loyal friends as they journey to find ley lines (a.k.a. spiritual energy lines) and the buried Welsh king, Glendower. This journey, however, is not an easy one and challenges each character in the group as they battle a common enemy.

As a whole, I did enjoy this book. The plot itself hooked me in and I could not stop reading. There is a bit of a romantic twist hidden in the plot as well which I loved; it was slow-burning and grabbed my attention. I’m a fan for the action-packed romantic books and this one definitely hit that mark. The only thing that I didn’t particularly enjoy was the fact that it was very slow and a little confusing at first. It took me until halfway through to really understand what was going on. After I finally understood, though, everything became more clear and then I could enjoy the book. If you just stick through to the end, I can guarantee you that this book is quite enjoyable.

As for the pacing of the book…not my favorite. As mentioned before, it had a very slow start and I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere for awhile. It did pick up, however, about halfway through and that was when the pacing was a little more enjoyable. I just wish the plot had started to progress sooner to make the beginning of the book a little more pleasurable to the reader. Sadly, I didn’t really enjoy the characters individually. It was a very classic “quirky loner girl meets privileged rich boy and things start to kick off from there.” I know, that sounds super critical and kind of mean, but that was my honest opinion when Blue and Gansey met. I do have to say, though, their romantic and friendly interactions were good enough for me to have fun reading the book.

This is a great YA read and people who have read books like Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas (a personal favorite!!!) and City of Bones by Cassandra Clare would enjoy this. There is not an age limit to this book, however, younger readers may not find the plot enjoyable.