Getting the Girl:  A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance, and Cookery.

by Susan Juby

Getting the Girl has both of the things I love and the things I hate about young adult novels.  I enjoyed the interesting plotline and appealing main character/narrator.  Sherman Mack is a quirkly ninth grader with a fairly irresponsible mother.  To say that he is often unsupervised, is a gigantic understatement.  Sherm attends a high school where some secret group or person "defiles" a fellow classmate for very obscure reasons.  Being defiled is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to a person, because it's equivalent to being a leper in Biblical times or an "untouchable" in India.  In one nanosecond, the entire student body turns against a student in very cruel, nasty ways.  Did I mention that the defiled are always girls?   When one of  Sherman's friends is defiled, he decides enough is enough, and begins his own entertaining and mostly ineffective "investigation" into possible suspects.  This is a fun read, but here comes the thing I hate most about young adult novels.  When authors feel the need to include multiple crudities and unending suggestive language and situations, I just get frustrated.  It seems to take the fun out of the story for me.   I would recommend this book with warnings.                  ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams

                                                                                                                                                                                

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

by Beth Fantaskey

     Jessica's Guide is yet another in the huge glut of vampire books following the popularity of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series.  In it, Jessica is a normal teen, adopted by her parents from Eastern Europe when she was a small child. When Lucius Vladescu, a vampire prince, arrives to claim Jessica as his vampire princess bride and carry out the pact made years before, Jessica realizes her senior year is not likely to go as planned.  Lucius is quite handsome, but completely arrogant and overbearing.  And he finds Jessica common and unappealing.  Although the plot premise has potential, I found it just didn't quite live up to the promise.  The book has a bantering tone some of the time that indicates the author was after a light-hearted comedy.  But as the story progresses, it gets darker and more intense.  The reader is left with ambiguous feelings.  Jessica is no Bella and Lucius is no Edward, but still this is a mostly entertaining read for those who can't get enough of vampires.

            ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams

Into the Wild
by Jon Krakauer

"In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt McKinley.  Four months later his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters."  So begins the Author's Note of Into the Wild, an account of the events leading up to the tragic death of Chris McCandless.  Krakauer began his research into this harrowing true tale for the purpose of writing an article which was published in Outside Magazine in early 1993.  The article received so much attention that Krakauer decided to do further research and expand the piece into a book.  Meticulously and sympathetically, Jon Krakauer retraces Chris's steps following his graduation from Emory University in 1990, when he disappeared into the West and discontinued all contact with his family.  Though estranged from his parents, Chris was no hermit.  He made friends and influenced people along the way.  In addition to revealing the passionate and intense personality of McCandless, Krakauer also includes stories of other adventurers who ended much as Chris did, and devotes a chapter to his own life when he was near Chris's age, all for the purpose of shedding light on the person Chris McCandless was.  A fascinating and engrossing read, Into the Wild is a cautionary tale against the pride of youth.  I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves a good adventure story, but especially to young men with itchy feet and the intense desire to experience nature to the fullest. 
      --reviewed by Dail Sams