In Ecstasy by Kate McCaffrey.

“Ecstasy. I’d always thought I might try it one day. I’d heard kids at school talking about getting wasted on the weekends. They made it sound awesome. I pictured the roughly made tablets with their tiny butterflies. An amazing experience inside a tiny pill.”

Rating: 4/5.

Summary:Mia and Sophie have been best friends forever — but that’s all about to change. Experimenting with drinking, boys and drugs, their friendship is tested to its limits, and they soon find out just how very bad things can be.

Review: This novel was hard hitting, from the very first time Sophie and Mia took ecstasy you knew that things were going to get bad, though, I didn't think that they'd get that bad.

Something about the way Kate McCaffrey wrote this book kept me wanting to turn the next page. There was also something about the way she described things that made them so real, so real that I often felt like I was reading someones biography or their memoirs from their drug crazed days.

The novel is from two perspectives, I found Sophie's more enjoyable at the start, her problems more developed and the way that it was written was more intriguing. Mia's story, just beginning seemed to grab my attention but whenever I hit Sophie's perspective my first thought was: yay. At the end of the novel, I felt differently. Sophie's problems in some ways ending and other just beginning made her perspective less interesting and Mia's problems sky rocketing made her perspective even more interesting. McCaffrey did a very good job at keeping me hooked.

The novel, as you would have already assumed from the title revolves around drugs or more specifically ecstasy. It was very intense and frightening to watch what happened when the girls were under the influence. And I found the process of reading this novel, not only enjoyable, but educational. Reading a novel about this sort of stuff goes into much more depth and teaches you a little more then your health teachers and parents ever could.

“That morning I figured life couldn’t get any better. How could something that made you feel like that be bad for you?”

I found Mia and Sophie very easy to relate to, as the novel progressed, I was in tune with how Sophie was feeling and found her easier to relate to, her reactions to Mia's problem made me think of myself and how I would probably handle the situation the same. The way they thought about themselves and one another was very real.

As terrible as it sounds I love stories about the rising and falling of people in the 'in' crowd. In Ecstasy did a wonderful job of showing how the person on the rise in the group feels and reacts, and how the people already in the group react. How the friendships sour and the opinion of the person on the rise goes from good to bad.

The ending, once again, I got a perfect one. It gave me a little hope for the girls and left a lot up to my own imagination, and actually made me laugh, which was great.

I'm going to give this novel four out of five. It was so real and Kate McCaffrey is a wonderful and inspirational writer and I will be looking out for her other novel Destroying Avalon. I would recommend this novel to anyone, it's one of those books that teenagers should read so that they can understand the dangers of drugs and how easily you can get caught up in them.

--Allie.

Paper Towns by John Green

“Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is.”

Rating: 4/5.

Summary: Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues - and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

Review: Ah, Paper Towns, how do I describe thee?

It was a long wait for this novel and even with my hopes high for this novel and expectations even higher I still managed to love this novel. Though, I found that I enjoyed Looking for Alaska more, Paper Towns still has heaps to offer.

I expected nothing but brilliance from John Green and I got what I wanted from this novel, sometimes as I read this novel I was astounded by how deep and wonderful the characters were. I loved what this book had to say about our perceptions of people, our imaginations and how they make us judge or assume what people are like.

The characters were amazing, Q was sweet, sometimes he irritated me, but throughout the novel I learnt to live with it. Radar well, everything about him made me laugh, Ben was probably my favourite character, he was hilarious and there was something about him that I loved. Margo though, she was an amazing character that I to an extent admired, she made me laugh and made me all teary and sad, she was delightfully complex.

John does an amazing job of writing for and about teenagers, I loved how the characters were angst ridden and I found them easy to relate to.

“Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters."

This novel was hilarious all the way through, it had me laughing constantly.

The mystery was interesting, the clues I found hard to piece together and even though Margo was gone for the majority of the novel, I felt like the clues allowed me to get to know her. Even though the majority of the time I got to know her through Q's undying obsession that at points through the novel irked me, something about the way he went about looking for Margo at times annoyed me, but only for short bursts in time, then I was wrapped up in the awesomeness of the novel again.

Nerdfighters will adore all the talk of awesome in this novel, I sure did.

The ending, my oh my, does it have me wondering. It was shocking, and I must admit that I had a bit of a jaw dropping moment, I would not have picked what happened and the reactions and well, everything. I thought that the ending was great, I liked how ideal it was and then how it left you wanting to know more and more about the characters and what they actually did after you left them.

“The town was paper, but the memories were not."

This wonderful novel gets four out of five from me, it was amazing and I had a lot of fun reading it. I would recommend it to anyone who reads YA because it's a great book and I would also recommend John's other books (though I have only read Looking for Alaska) because he is an author that you do not want to miss out on.

Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball

“Jonathan left all of these fragments behind and I have tried to put them back together in some kind of order. I hope that this hold him together”.

Rating: 5/5.

Summary:Jonathon Bender had something to say, but the world wouldn’t listen. That’s why he writes letters to everybody he has ever known—including his mother and father, his brother and other relatives, his childhood friends and neighbors, the Tooth Fairy, his classmates and teachers, his psychiatrists, his ex-girlfriends and his ex-wife, the state of Michigan, a television station, and a weather satellite. Taken together, these unsent letters tell the remarkable story of Jonathon’s life.

Review:My mum arrived home with a bag of books from her book club, out of curiosity I picked through the pile and that is where I found this wonderful novel. The first pages had me hooked and when I really got into this book there was no going back. It’s not like anything I’ve ever read before.
The book is written very differently, not using the traditional third or first person but letter form, with a collation of articles, excerpts from Jonathan’s eulogy and his mother’s diary and conversations between Robert and people who knew Jonathan.
This is a tragic story about abuse and suicide and how the victims deal with it. The letters are hard hitting, at some points throughout the novel I was gasping at what Jonathan had written.

“Dear Grandma and Grandpa Winters,
Thank-you for giving me the Etch-a-Sketch for my seventh birthday. I liked drawing with it better then drawing on the walls, but I always felt sick when I shook it and everything on it’s magic screen disappeared. It reminded me how my dad would grab me by both of my shoulders and shake me until everything went blank inside me too”.

Jonathan was very easy to love because he was so blunt and sweet, very sweet and that really just made you a little sadder. What I really liked about Jonathan was that when he wrote the letters to his abusive father you could tell by how he wrote them that he was like: stuff it. He never searched for approval from his father, he knew that he didn’t like him and he didn’t try and change that. His brother Robert on the other hand was a lot harder to like, he was in denial about everything and would make awful comments about his brother and didn’t seem to really care.

Jonathan’s mother Alice was tortured character who was frightened and it was hard not to feel the deepest sympathy for her. I hated his father, some conversations between Robert and Tom (the father) would make you feel sick, he treated Jonathan so badly.
The book leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions and depending on which characters you like and trust will leave you with your own opinion on whether what Jonathan was saying was true or false.
The story does a great job of showing Jonathan’s mental illness, Sara (his ex-wife) explains a lot of what happened to Jonathan in a very personal manner and really makes you seem like you were there.
The story was hauntingly real, the characters, the plot, the reactions, the circumstances.
It’s a quick and enjoyable read and it ends very abruptly.

I’m giving this novel five out of five, it was so dark (though not disturbing) yet touching, I loved reading this novel and would recommend it to anyone, especially fans of darker writers.

--Allie.

Also, stay tuned because in the next couple of days I will be posting my interview with Melina Marchetta (how exciting!) and giving out the information about my first contest!

The Push by Julia Lawrinson.

“Love is just about the only hold anyone can have over another person; if you have that, then nothing else in necessary.”

Rating: 5/5

Summary: (from julialawrinson.com.au) Erica is restless for a life outside her office job, her boring boyfriend and her mother's tiny house in down-and-out Glebe.

In the 1950s, Sydney is quickly building a reputation for sinfulness, and some of the most attractively sinful people are to be found in a group known as the Push. They meet regularly to discuss their wicked ideas at the Royal George, and Erica is drawn into the captivating crowd.

Review:Doesn't the cover just sell this novel to you? I know the old saying: never judge a book by it's cover. But I don't agree with it in terms of reading, that's one of the first things I do. And this gorgeous cover is just the beginning of good things for this novel.

It's written in third person and in multiple perspectives to give you a good view of everyone and why they are the way they are, for example Trish, who is the best friend of the main character Erica, who introduces her to the notorious push, has a family that doesn't respect her and that causes her to rebel.

Erica is the main character and I think that as far as MC's go she was wonderful and easy to relate to. She's beautiful but shows that with beauty doesn't come everything, especially reassurance. We really watch her grow up throughout the story.

Johnno from the first time you see him is something special, his introduction is fantastic and you see that it suits his personality very well and it leaves a lasting impression on you. Some points through the novel I hated Johnno, but as it progressed that changed and I loved him more, he wasn't fickle, he was just passionate and wouldn't allow anything to sway his views.

I thought that Vanessa was a great character as well, very original. In the novel there was at least one character that you could relate to, Lawrinson's characters were realistic and interesting to read.

A major theme in this story is loss of innocence and it's carved marvelously throughout the story.

The emotion runs strong in The Push and something about the jealously Erica feels about Johnno and girls is very real.

“Is she – was she with Johnno?” asked Erica.

“It doesn't work like that,” Trish said. “It's more...fluid.”

I don't usually like books set in another time era, they tend to confuse me, but if you're one of those people like me then don't worry about it, the era doesn't make this novel hard to follow or annoying because of the way they speak or act. I actually really loved this novel because of it's era.

I may seem a little uninformed when I say that I had never heard of the the push (it was an actual real group of people) before reading this novel a few months earlier and I learnt a fair bit about it.

I love the ideas this novel possess and how opinionated the characters appear to be, the controversy was relevant for the time era.

I don't know whether it was intentional, but Lawrinson shows clearly which path Erica could have taken, she could have played it safe and stayed in the dining room at lunch with Jean and stayed in a relationship with boring David, but she chose the elusive push with Johnno.

“She with me!” David said. “I'll punch your head in you impertinent pig.”

The man gave a small laugh. “Oh you will, will you?”

There are a few mini mysteries in this novel, based around Erica's absent sister Peggy and hearing things from Peggy's POV is great though she isn't having the best life.

Lawrinson's writing style is wonderful and I love the vague way she writes. She does a wonderful job of keeping the characters in character and keeping you hooked.

The ending! The ending was great! I can't believe how wonderful I thought it was and I'm so picky about the end. It was happy but at the same time it wasn't corny and allowed you to have your own and wide opinion of what happens next. It gave the best sense of closure and hope I have been given in a long time.

This book was a delight to read, everything was marvelous and I am having trouble thinking of something bad to say about it.

I'm giving this novel five out of five. It was different, interesting, the characters interesting and the plot great. Lawrinson may be an Aussie author and her novels may be hard to get a hold of for people in the U.S, but if you ever get the opportunity to read The Push take it, because you will not regret the twenty something dollars you spend to experience it.

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta.

“This morning, my mother didn’t get out of bed.”

Rating: 5/5

Summary: Francesca is beginning her second term in year eleven at an all boy’s school that’s just started accepting girls. Her mother has had a breakdown and no longer gets out of bed and she misses her old friends.

But what Francesca doesn’t expect when she arrives at her new school, seriously not wanting to be there is that the new friends she makes grudgingly are fiercely loyal and that there’s more to them then it seems. She doesn't expect to fall in love or that she has the power to bring her family that is slowly falling apart in her mother’s absence back together.

Review: This story is phenomenal. Melina writes a magical book with raw and extraordinary real emotion.

With the terrible summary I have written and provided you all with you're probably thinking that this is an awful novel with not much going for it, maybe you're thinking: depression? What a sad topic, why on earth would I want to read such an unhappy tale? Please don't let any of that sort of stuff put you off.

Marchetta has the writing ability to make you seriously care about her characters. Her characters are easy to relate to, fun and different. In each novel Marchetta produces comes with it a fantastic set of new characters and as a reader and major fan of all of her novels the characters in Saving Francesca still stand to be my favourites.

There where so many points where I was touched by the characters who are so much deeper then they seem, and there were even more points where I was laughing out loud at what a character had said or done.

It's an all star cast in this novel and if you're looking for a novel with characters that are beyond the ordinary then you must pick this book up. There's Thomas and Jimmy who make you laugh, there's William who makes your fan girl hearts go insane, there's just so many wonderful characters I could be here all day babbling about them.

Francesca is a fantastic narrator, and what you see and feel thorough her eye’s is real and true. You feel her pain about her mother’s problem, you feel her anger toward the people who just don’t get it and you laugh with her whenever Thomas is a smart ass or when Jimmy invites himself around.

The plot is interesting and I felt driven to finish this novel because...of well everything, the characters – don't get my talking about them again. The plot, original and interesting and the writing, Marchetta's style is in one word blunt and in two: blunt and beautiful. She doesn't beat around the bush, she never drags things out for too long, she tells you all the truth she can and tells it beautifully and by her doing this she has become and probably will always stay my favourite author.

This novel, to be fully appreciated needs to be read by people who are mature, when I read this novel for the first time at age thirteen the mother's depression made me feel a little sick with sadness, but when I reread it a year later I loved this book so much that I am till this day constantly reaching for this novel for comfort when I have a bad day.

This novel gets five stars. Everything about it is wonderful and amazing. I hope that you're putting this novel on the top of a very long list of books to read or running off to buy it because Saving Francesca is not to be missed by YA readers because it is definitely amongst the finest in that category.

--Allie.