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The Princess Diaries - Meg Cabot
by bettyboop2002
I found this book in the children's section of my local library. I picked it up as it is on a BBC 'Top 100 books' list which I am currently making my way through.
ABOUT THE BOOK
This is the first book in 'The Princess Diaries' series. There are ten books in the series in the following order:
1) The Princess ... Diaries
2) The Princess Diaries Take Two
3) The Princess Diaries Third Time Lucky
4) The Princess Diaries Mia Goes Fourth
5) The Princess Diaries Give Me Five
6) The Princess Diaries Sixsational
7) The Princess Diaries Seventh Heaven
8) The Princess Diaries After Eight
9) The Princess Diaries To The Nines
10) The Princess Diaries Ten of Tens
At least with having the numbers in the titles it should be easy to keep track of which book to read next.
This first book was published in 2001 by Macmillan Children's Books. The R.R.P on this book is £5.99 although it is available on Amazon for £4.49 including delivery.
The book is 230 pages long.
THE AUTHOR
Meg Cabot has published a variety of books for children of all ages. For younger readers there is 'The Alfie Finkle' series, for older readers there are single books and more series' including 'The Heather Wells' series, for those ages in between there are plenty of books and series' to choose from.
The author's website allows fans to discuss the books, view the author's online diary and her latest 'tweets', as well as getting information on upcoming books.
STORYLINE
As you may have gathered from the title, the book is set out in the form of a diary. The diary is written by a 14 year old girl named Mia.
Mia wasn't too keen to write a diary and didn't see it as a very "cool" thing to do, but her mother thought it would be a good idea to write down her feelings as she doesn't seem to want to talk to her about them.
Mia's parents split up before she was born, she lives with her mother in Manhattan and starts by expressing her disgust at the thought of her mother choosing to date her algebra teacher instead of one of the other 2 million men in Manhattan.
Mia's dad lives in Genovia, he is recovering from cancer. From the book, here are Mia's thoughts:
'Cancer is a scary thing. Fortunately, the kind of cancer my dad had was pretty curable. They just had to cut off the cancerous part, and then he had to have chemo, and after a year, so far, the cancer hasn't come back.
Unfortunately, the part they had to cut off was...
Ew, I don't even like writing it.
His testicle.
GROSS!
It turns out that when they cut off one of your testicles, and then give you chemo, you have, like, a really strong chance of becoming sterile. Which is what my dad has just found out he is.'
Mia's dad calls and tells her he is coming to visit her to discuss the fact that he can't have any more children. It turns out Mia's parents have been keeping a big secret from her and her dad is actually a Prince. As he can't have any more children this means that Mia is heir to the throne, and overnight becomes Princess Amelia.
Mia is an awkward teenager, she doesn't want to be a princess, just work for Greenpeace and she certainly isn't impressed when her grandmother comes to visit to give her Princess lessons to teach her how to look and act like a princess.
The diary continues to follow Mia's everyday life, trying to hide her news from her friends, falling out with her best friend, her crush on the school hottie, her arguments with her parents and making new friends. All whilst trying not to fail algebra and learning to become a princess.
OVERALL
The book is obviously aimed at teenage girls. I think the fact that it is in diary format with a few notes and lists included makes the book easy to read and would appeal to young readers.
I thought the author did a great job of writing from a teenager's prospective and think most young girls would enjoy it.
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I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You - Ally Carter
by loogaboo
In the series of the Gallagher Academy books by Ally Carter, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You, Is the very first book in the series and a very good launch to the books.
The main plot of the book is a teenage girl named Cammie Morgan, daughter of the headmistress of the Gallagher Academy, which is no ... ordinary school, it's a school for spies. Cammie can speak 14 different languages and sentence a man to death in 7 ways, but there is one task that they haven't taught her to do, fall in love. They may have prepared Cammie for the outside world as a spy, but not for a teenage girl.
When Cammie makes her way into town, she meets Josh and is in no way prepared to handle her emotions, she may be able to find out all about his life, but can she face trying to tell him about hers, especially when she has a spy life, so can't even try to tell him. Can Cammie really fall in love?!
I found this book a real page turner, after the first chapter I was sucked into the life of being a spy at the Gallagher academy, wanting to know how this came to be, and most importantly to see how Cammie could handle being an ordinary teenage girl for a while, but as I found, it can be very hard. I also liked the way that the lead role was taken by a girl for once instead of a boy in a spy book.
I absolutely loved Cammie's character while she was funny and silly, she was witty and very deadly. Accompanied by her best friends, Rebecca Baxter and Elizabeth Sutton, or known as Bex and Liz, and a new addition to their trio, Macey, the senators daughter, Cammie manages to scrap through the tough on all of her life changing journeys!
This book is exceedingly good and I recommend it to anyone who likes a fast pace good spy book where you get sucked into the action! A big well done to Ally Carter on her amazing talent to create such books! Keep them coming!
Have fun reading guys!
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Shelter - Harlan Coben
by Alana-R
As a huge Harlan Coben fan for many years I have read every book he has written and in particular I loved the Myron Bolitar series so I was a little apprehensive about Shelter, Coben's first novel for young adults.
The young adult part didn't put me off so much as the fact that Shelter is about Mickey Bolitar, Myron's nephew. ... As a Myron fan I didn't like the idea, but I wanted a good book to read so I gave it a shot and I was pretty surprised to find that I could not put this book down!
Although Shelter is aimed at a younger audience than Coben's other novels, it does not really read as such. Yes Mickey is in high school and, yes he makes new friends with a goth girl and a nerd named Spoon (he's no Win to say the least) which all sounds a little too sweet valley high for me but once you get over that there is a pretty great story line developing. It's also pretty cool to see Myron through Mickey's eyes as the annoying uncle as compared to the novels about Myron himself.
As with every novel Coben writes, the plot is fairly complex with lots of twists to keep you guessing. What always struck me about his novels compared to other crime fiction or thrillers is that I never know what's going to happen or the "who done it" of the story. The fact that Coben can write and keep you in the dark about the who, what and where of a story in my opinion shows a true storyteller and Shelter is another great example of his writing style.
If the idea of reading a young adult novel is putting you off then you should know that apart from Mickey and his friends being younger than Myron and Win, there is very little difference in the type of events in the book. Mickey has just started a new school and he's a bit on the anti social side but manages to find himself a pretty girl to date and everything is looking pretty good for a teenager with a junkie for a mom and a father who is missing and thought to be dead.
But life isn't perfect for Mickey, he has to put up with his uncle Myron and things are about to get worst for Mickey when only a few weeks into his relationship with his new girlfriend she vanishes without a trace. Despite the fact that Mickey hates his uncle, he is like him in that he can't just forget about it and has to go investigating what's happened and like his uncle he is adept at getting himself in trouble.
Well worth reading if you are a fan of Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar series and a great novel to start with if you are new to Coben.
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