Bookish Review: The Daughters

The Daughters tells the story of Lizzie Summers and her friends Carina and Hudson. All three girls are daughters of the rich and/or famous, and they have rules about being such a daughter. The book is about what happens when they break some of their rules. Lizzie is the daughter of a supermodel, but she unfortunately got the looks of her journalist father. She is mortified every time she has to pose with her mother for a paparazzi photo until she falls into "ugly modeling" and gets labeled the new face of beauty. In the midst of all this, the girls are starting high school and Carina is fighting with her business mogul father while Hudson struggles under her pop-star mother's creative control over Hudson's first album. Throw in a very attractive boy from Lizzie's past, who wants to be a friend...or more than a friend...or not even a friend, and it's quite an interesting story!

The friendships and angst feel real. Tweens will love these girls and be very eager for the next installment after the cliffhanger ending.

Bookish Review: The Titan's Curse

The Titan's Curse is the third book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series. The first two books have also been reviewed here. Percy and his friends start off with a rescue mission fir two suspected half-bloods at a school in New York. With a little help from Artemis and the Hunters, they manage to get the kids safely away, but Annabeth is lost in the process. Soon, Artemis is also in trouble, and Percy, Grover, Thalia, and the Hunters must go on a cross-country quest to save them. With a little help from the gods along the way, they make it to the West Coast where they have another altercation with Luke and the others trying to restore the Titans to power.


Another good installment to the series.

Bookish Review: The Sea of Monsters

The Sea of Monsters is the 2nd book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series. The echoes of Harry Potter are a bit louder in this one than in the first, but even so, it is an enjoyable story. We rejoin Percy, a demigod (son of Poseidon and a mortal), as he heads out on a quest to save his friend Grover, a satyr on a quest to find Pan. Annabeth, daughter of Athena, rejoins him, and he has picked up another companion--his half-brother, the cyclops Tyson. As the book opens, Percy is kicked out of yet another school for an incident with monsters in the gym. In addition to saving Grover, Percy must also save Camp Half-Blood, since Luke, under the spell of Kronos, has poisoned the tree (formerly Zeus's daughter Thalia) that protects the camp. There are more fun mythical allusions and the book is fast-paced to keep readers' attention. Recommended.

Bookish Review: Inkheart

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke is a book for booklovers. Technically, it is a children's book, but I think bibliophiles of all ages will enjoy it. It will shortly be released as a movie, though what I have seen of the trailers so far leads me to believe they have taken some liberties with the story. Meggie and her father have the ability to read books to life, but at a price. When Meggie was only three, her father (Mo) was reading aloud to her mother, and three characters from the book appeared in their world and Meggie's mother disappeared into the book. Meggie's father vows never to read aloud again. He works as a book doctor, repariring bindings and chewed pages, and he and Meggie are continually on the run from Capricorn, one of the characters he set loose in the world, though Meggie does not know it. Capricorn is a true villan, and wants to get his hands on Mo so Mo can read him riches and other tools from books that will help him increase his power. When it is discovered that Meggie also has the talent, Capricorn is happy to use her instead.
The book is an adventure, a love letter to books, and a really good read. I will certainly write a review of the movie when I see it, and of the other books in the trilogy when I read them. Highly recommended for book lovers of all ages. I also found myself wanting to read many of the passages aloud--it would be a great one to share at bedtime with kids, as long as they are not too young. There are some scary elements in the book, and we don't want nightmares, now do we?

Bookish for Kids: The Lightning Thief

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan is the first book in the Percy and the Olympian Series. Percy (short for Perseus, of course) Jackson, age 12, is dyslexic, has ADHD, and has been kicked out of more schools than you'd care to count. He's never met his father, and his mother has married a real terror, but she loves Percy very much and tries to take care of him. Percy has almost made it all the way through the year at his boarding school--the first time he has spent so long at any school. Of course, it can't last, and Percy gets kicked out after a series of strange happenings. His mother decides it is finally time to do what his father wanted and take him to summer camp, but not just any camp--Camp Half-Blood. Percy soon discovers that his father is one of the Greek gods and that gods and satyrs and dryads and all of the other mythical creatures are not myths at all. A war is about to break out between Poseidon and Zeus, and Percy must go on a quest and find a way to stop the war.

The book is fast-paced and full of fun mythological allusions. I love mythology; I took a whole elective on it in high school, in addition to the myths I was exposed to in my Latin and English classes, so I found this a really fun read. I think it will appeal to Harry Potter fans as well.