Forged By Fire Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I want to stress that the actual plot of the story and the characters were interesting and I enjoyed their purpose, action, dialogue. But I read a review about this book somewhere that said that too much happened at once in the beginning. I don't take peoples' reviews too seriously until I read the book, but this time around, I wish I would have listened. The author tried to cram FAR too much into one small book of 156 pages. The boy was 3 years old at the beginning and by the time it ended, he was 17. People were on drugs, in jail, out of jail, court cases complete, basketball tryouts, friends made, learned to cook, car accidents, dying, all within a few pages. The whole time I read this story, I felt like the author had written an outline of what should happen in each chapter and instead of fleshing it out and letting it grow progressively, she just rammed it altogether and then threw in stuff that happened in a previous book. I read one book by her and bought them all...and now I'm starting to regret it. I hope the fourth one is better, because I loved the first one about Andy, couldn't get into the "Romiette and Julio" book at all, and now this one is crammed. I'm confused over whether I like this author or not--in the book about Andy, the dialogue was on point and the plot was organized and easy-to-understand. In the "Romiette and Julio" book, the dialogue was out of wack and the story was slow. This book had great dialogue and an interesting plot like the Andy book, but it went entirely too fast. I feel like I'm reading books from several different people instead of one.

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Darkness Before Dawn Review

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(More customer reviews)Keisha is the senior class president of her high school. She had been going through some really difficult times the past year when her ex-boyfriend unexpectedly kills himself. The principal's 23 year old son is the new trak coach and he has his eye on Keisha. Slowly Keisha begins to find comfort in 23 year old Johnatan. Her parents and friends think there is something strange about Keisha and Johnathans realationship. Keisha is happy and loves the way Johnathan treats her like a women and not a high schooler. So Keisha breaks her parents rules and continues to see him. Suddenly Keisha's relationship with Johnathan takes a turn for the worst. Johnathan takes Keisha to his appartment and when Keisha doesn't coperate with Johnathan's plans that's when the big trouble starts. He tries to rape Keisha and he attempts to kill her with his jack knife.
I highly recommend this book. It may be a little boring in the begining but once your get a little further into it, your hooked. It also has a great moral/lesson to it. Another thing it shows how sexual preditors can be anywhere and it can happen to anyone. I enjoyed reading this book and think its a great book for teenage girls to read.

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Tears of a Tiger Review

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(More customer reviews)As a junior high school English teacher, I am always on the lookout for a good YA novel to teach to my students or to recommend that they read individually. When I heard of Tears of a Tiger, I had high hopes that it would be everything that I look for in a YA novel. First of all, I liked the fact that the main characters were African-American. I teach a large portion of African-American students, and I have a lot of trouble finding a YA novel in which African-Americans are the central characters (are you listening, YA authors?). Second, I absolutely loved the differing points of view style that the book is written in. The way that the characters are developed through conversation, letters, poems, essays, and so on is one of the best that I have read. This is a great teaching tool alone, not to mention a super way of telling the story. Third, the event that is the catalyst for the plot, the underage drinking and driving, is realistic and teaches a great lesson to teenagers. Given my glowing praise, you may wonder, why not five stars? The simple fact is that Andy's suicide destroyed the book for me. The whole plot of the book seemed to be leading to Andy's coming to grips with the death of his friend. I was thinking: what a great way to show kids that there are other alternatives than killing oneself to work through problems. Then, the suicide note and he is dead. This is not a good message to send to youth. While a mature young adult can read and understand this book the way that the author probably meant it to be read, this is not a YA book for the masses. In good conscience, I cannot teach a book to kids who have enough disturbing messages thrown at them from all sources on a daily basis as it is. They do not need to read a book in which the main character, a young man much like many of them, cannot cope with his mistakes and kills himself. Would I still teach Antigone and Macbeth, you may wonder? Yes, I would; the characters who commit suicide in many classic works of literature bear little or no resemblance to the teenagers of today. Andy, on the other hand, is too much like many of the teenagers that I run into on a daily basis. Our children need to be taught the real truth--that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

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