Thursday, February 11, 2010

The Truth About Forever

Dessen's The Truth About Forever showed me the many things one girl can go through and how she deals with each problem.

One theme of The Truth About Forever is to never be afraid to express your opinion about something. Macy's, the main character, main goal is to satisfy her mother and Jason, her boyfriend. She must make perfect grades and keep all her focus on academics throughout her senior year, so she can get into one of the top colleges. Although Macy does not enjoy trying to fit her life around the word "perfect", she seems to do it anyway, just to keep the others satisfied. Towards the middle of the book, Macy has some chaos involved in her life, something that is the farthest thing for normal for her. While involved, she realizes she likes a little bit of disorganization in her life. This small realization begins affecting her life in big, some bad and some good, ways. If Macy would have never expressed her opinion about the way she wanted to life her life, she would still be trying to achieve perfect, which she, along with the others, understand.

The characters are very important. Macy is a high school student, a senior to be exact, who is preparing to graduate the following year. Her mother is a very organized, hard working real-estate agent who is always on-the-go and hardly ever has time for her daughters, Macy and Caroline. The reason she is so busy could be a result of her husband and Macy's father's death only months ago. Jason is Macy's boyfriend. The summer in the setting of the book, Jason is gone to what Macy calls Brain Camp. Jason is very smart and has high expectations for himself and also for Macy. Delia is the head of Wish Catering, the catering company at Macy's house when she is exposed to disorganization. Wes is Delia's nephew and soon to be Macy's new best friend. Wes is the main person that helps Macy realize she'll never be perfect and also help her find out who she is.

I highly recommend this book. I've read it twice and I'm sure if I read it a third time it wouldn't get old. It's a very good book for young girls and has a good message.

374 pages

Friday, February 5, 2010

Twisted Book Review

Anderson's Twisted entertained me with it's "twisted" story about a high school student and the trouble he got into.

One theme of the book is to never judge a book by it's cover. After Tyler got into trouble with the law, everyone judged him and assumed he was an awful person to be around. Another theme would be to always be yourself, no matter what others may think or say. Tyler always saw himself as the nerd boy and it caused him to do something rebellious to get noticed. The consequences to his actions were not worth just getting noticed, and having other people's view of him changed.

Tyler is a high school student starting his senior year. He has always been very smart and thought of very highly by the people around him. In his mind, he was a wimpy nerd boy that was known as a loser. He wanted to change that. He spray painted part of the school and got caught so he had to do community service and was on probation. Throughout the book, Tyler sees the consequences to his decisions and how they have affected the new person he is. For example, he is framed for a few incidents t he wasn't involved in because of his past.

The main character in this book, Tyler, could very easily be related to students in high schools today. Everyone wants to fit in because it seems like it's the "cool" thing to do, but most of the time people are better off just being their self. I recommend this book very much. It's short and easy to read. Also, it's easy to get into so you're not bored halfway through the book.