A Book Review: Scenarios Series by Nicole O'Dell

Nicole O’Dell’s Scenarios series were really great books. Though it is one series, in each book there are new characters in new situations. The characters were lovable and very well described to a point where I grew to love them. They were written so realistically! Even though the majority of the books are about high schoolers I would reccommend it to anyone 12 and over. 

One thing I really loved about the whole series was the Christian theme. It takes true talent to do a Christian book—if you do it wrong it can come off cheesy—and Nicole O’Dell did it really well. It was realistic and well written. I really liked the way the main character always was (somewhat) willing to put church first, while still worrying about what their friends would think. I enjoyed the way the main character was able to (in some situations) turn her friends to Christ and how praying was a regular thing for their families. I loved how the Christian message was written into the books as part of the story, but also as an outreach as well. 

And, of course, I loved the two ending options. The scenarios the characters get themselves into are scary yet real and both endings are written naturally, as if there was no other ending. It was fun to read the two ways the character could have gone and see the results of both! Nobody can not like the ending because if a reader doesn’t like one ending there’s the other one!

My personal favorite of these books was Truth or Dare. In it, a girl named Lindsay and her friends start playing a game at their sleepovers called (you guessed it) Truth or Dare. For a while it’s fun, but then the dares get worse and worse. Then the absolute worst happens: Lindsay’s friend Kelly gives her a dare she knows she can never do, and Kelly says she’ll be kicked out of the group of friends if she doesn’t do it. Which will she pick? This one was my favorite because the book centers around friends, not boyfriends, and it’s something I can relate better to. It was so real and captivating; I loved it! 

The next few books were really well done, too, though I couldn’t quite relate as well as Truth or Dare. All that Glitters focuses more on boyfriends. I’m not a fan of those type of books, but I still found All that Glitters a great read. Making Waves was about a girl who swims on the swim team and her teammates tell her to use an illegal drug to get her through the final race. Like the previous book, I couldn’t quite relate to that sort of thing, but it was written so well I felt I could. Overall, the whole series is a definite 5-star rating and a series I’ll definitely reread again.

Lucy

Name: 

Lucy

Age: 

6

Personalities:

Sweet, caring, brave when she needs to be, spirited 

Best Moment: 

When she stood up to Mahalia by not singing “Happy Birthday” correctly. 

A Book Review: The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman

Wow! This book was amazing amazing amazing! I’ve read other books like this before—with other worlds and over governments—but this was by far the best one yet! I read it in almost one sitting. It was so captivating and interesting! Honor and her parents live on an island under the watch of Earth Mother and her many rules, but Honor’s family doesn’t follow most of those rules. They have an illegal second child, stay out past curfew, and even Honor’s name, in which the H is silent, doesn’t seem appropriate anymore. Honor and their second child—her brother—Quintilian, worry about their parents. Because in this world, if you don’t follow Earth Mother’s rules, you disappear. And don’t come back.

I love love loved this book. Great writing, great characters, and a real realistic feel! Even though Honor starts as a ten-year-old and finishes as a fourteen-year-old I’d reccommend this to all ages. I take back my five stars—it deserves at least ten!

Mahalia

Name: 

Mahalia 

Birthday: 

Who knows? And who really cares, anyway?

Personalities:

Need I really list? She’s evil, cruel, wicked, mean, bad, naughty, awful, terrible, atrocious, abysmal, horrible, horrid, terrifying, horrifying, crummy, rotten, lousy, lazy, useless, pathetic, careless, selfish, harmful, damaging, destructive, villianous, nefarious, dishonest, dishonorable, ill-behaved, unruly, uncaring, ignorant, thoughtless, greedy, menacing, inconsiderate, vile, outrageous, bitter, sick, dumb, wrong, sinful, foul, corrupt, malicious, sinister, monstrous, atrocious, mischevious, malignant, nasty, unpleasant, filthy…you get the point. 

Greatest Wish: 

For the world to all become her slaves for eternity and for Amethyst & Friends to be destroyed for EVER!!!! 

Best Moment: 

None. 

Worst Moment: 

Now we’re talking! It could be when she captured Amethyst, tried to destroy Lucy, hired Quiana to take over and fly a jet plane (that’s illegal you know) and then throw them out the window (even more illegal) it could be sending innocent orphans on trains, or…never mind.

Appearance:

She’s really…oh, never mind, you don’t wanna know.

A Book Review: Love, Aubrey by Suzanne Lafleur

Love, Aubrey is the best, most amazing, saddest book ever written. And I mean it. You will never regret reading it! The writing is so capitivating; you feel both Aubrey’s happiness and sadness. You feel so bad for her, and you can’t stop reading until the last page, when you find out the outcome. It will keep you thinking long after the last page and I’d say the only thing wrong is you’ll go crazy wanting a sequel so you can hear more of Aubrey’s future life! 

The story is about eleven-year-old Aubrey. Her dad and little sister, Savannah, have just died in a car accident, and her mom, crazed with grief, abandoned her. Left alone in her house, Aubrey lives alone for a week—until Gram comes to take her home to Vermont. 
At home, Aubrey’s friends had abandoned her, she was living by herself with nobody to watch her, and she hated school. Here in Vermont, she goes to a nice school, lives with her caring grandmother, and has a new best friend, Bridget. But the emptiness from the loss of her family is still there. They’ve been searching for her mom for a long time with no clues. Why would her mom just….leave?

Wow—it is just a beautiful book. It takes true talent to write a book so good it makes you want to cry. Read it! You will never regret it, and you will never forget Aubrey’s story. Reading her memories, you start to miss Savannah, too, even though you never knew her. 

Love, Aubrey definitely deserves five stars. It’s the most amazing book you’ll ever read. 

Writing Tip #3: The Editing Process

The editing process. It can be hard. It can be difficult. But it can also be very exciting. When you’re editing, you have power to change everything and anything.  You can change the starting point and ending point. You can change characters, add characters, delete characters. You can add and delete chapters. The point of the editing process? It’s to make the book the very best it can be.
So here’s my top secret (not really) tips on making your story the best.

1: Your first attempt will never work as a book.
That’s the hard fact. The first try, the first attempt, most likely is going to stink. (Mine always do.) What’s the point of the first draft, then? To get the story finished. Don’t worry about grammar. Don’t worry about editing-along-the-way. Don’t worry about names, chapters, or if it makes sense. When you’re writing your first draft, you have 1 goal and one goal only, and that is to get it done.
Once your first draft is finished, I highly advise starting a new draft and rewriting the story—this time, worrying about all those things I told you not to worry about. Can you still use your great sentences from the first one? Sure. But make sure they really are great sentences first.

2: Feel free to change the story around!
Once you have a second draft finished, you may have a great idea for a new plot twist. If that happens in the middle, feel absolutely free to start again on a third draft. You may think your story is working fine and you don’t need a third draft. If so, consider yourself amazingly talented, skilled, and lucky, because I can’t get a really good story until draft 4 or 5. Mostly because I keep coming up with better ideas. (LOL.)

3: Once you’re finished with it, set it aside!
This is EXTREMELY important. When you have a draft that you think works, put it aside and DO NOT LOOK at it for at least a week. Why? Because after a week, when you look at it, you will find more mistakes or things you can improve. I can pretty much guarantee it. You should just see my third draft of The Hidden Amethyst, which I thought was the final one. It’s hilarious. I had a chapter where Amethyst (called Eliza then) and her friends are almost run over with an airplane! Not only was it totally unrealistic, it was ridiculous. I also had the Mochas be good people, because I added them in afterwords to get the names in—which leads me to number 4.

4: Do Not Get Lazy!
I got lazy in my third draft of The Hidden Amethyst. How it went was: I wrote all about “Eliza” and her friends walking along having an adventure and I’m sure I had multiple descriptions of their raggedy clothes in there. So later on, I add in the Mocha family because I need to get my friend Avery’s name in there, and my story leads to the Mochas giving them all these clothes. The problem is, later on, they have ragged clothes and I knew it. I got lazy. Instead of finding all those descriptions of their clothes and changing them, which would have been the better idea, I just wrote a chapter where they get robbed. Pathetic, right? DO NOT DO THIS. Obviously, when I went back to re-edit (that’s where Eliza became Amethyst) I deleted that part out, in the process making the Mochas evil. My whole third draft, come to think of it, is just me getting lazy. So take that as a lesson: if you find an issue like the one above with an easy way to get rid of it and a hard way, generally, the hard way will get you a better story.

These are the tips I’m following myself as I work through my next book, which should release next August. Hope they were helpful to you!

Avery Mocha

                                                        Name:

                                                      Avery Mocha

Birthday: 

 July 12

Personalities: 

Cautious, reluctant, kind; a follower

Greatest wish:

For her mom (Jenny Mocha) to become good

Best Moment:

  When she came to Dr. 

Sawyer’s office to

                                                     apologize to Amethyst