---

Bel:

Cover

The hard cover’s dust jacket is stark white with two teens hand in hand, backs to the viewer, in yellow scrubs. With the dust jacket off, the fresh faced teens are facing forward. They both, however, are utterly miserable looking.

Characters

There is a plethora of hate-able characters in this angst- filled book–though it is difficult to separate the person from the situations they’re put into and how they survive to the best of their abilities.

Favourite

James. Some things never change.

Least Favourite

Sloane’s parents. UGH!

Beginning

Suicide is at epidemic proportions in the under 18’s. So The Program has been invented to ‘save’ at risk teens.

Storyline

Sloane’s picked for The Program; she endures and assimilates.

Ending

Things are never as black and white or clean cut as the ones in power would like.

Thoughts

I don’t know if I was in a bad head space when I started reading this book, or the book triggered a bad head space, but I do not recommend it for anyone with mental illness. It is far from a happy book, and by the end, I was ready to let my black dog catch me.

Perhaps some parts hit a little too close to home. Perhaps it was the parents and society using medications and ‘reprogramming’ instead of listening and using alternative preventative measures to treat their teens.

Quote

“I bet she looks beautiful,” my mother says. “The returners always look so healthy, don’t they Don?”

Kids help line http://www.kidshelp.com.au/  1800 55 1800

Life line http://www.lifeline.org.au/  13 11 14

 

Krista:

Cover

This cover is the perfect representation of the book. So far it’s been my favourite cover over all. The image of Lyla and James in yellow uniforms staring down a white hall represents the feeling of the book well.

Characters

Favourite

James: He showed the most emotions and things that I wanted to feel as a reader trying to identify with the characters.

Least Favourite

Sloane: I couldn’t connect with her or her family.

Beginning

Suicide rates have been rising and the school systems are implementing new programs to help them cope with the loss of loved ones but also to keep those survivors alive.

Storyline

With suicide now an international epidemic, Sloane knows her parents will do anything to keep her alive. Everyone who’s been through The Program returns as a blank slate. Their depression is gone—but so are their memories. The only person Sloane can be herself with, is James. They are both growing weaker, depression is setting in, and The Program is coming for them.

Ending

What I liked about the ending is that it gives us hope for the 2nd book in the series. It leaves us with the sense that there’s more out there to discover.

Thoughts

I had a hard time getting emotionally invested in a story in which all emotions are suppressed. Everything is so depressing. Mourning is not allowed and the actions that the parents and teachers take were very outlandish in my opinion. What I did appreciate about the book was the ending and the hint at an even bigger idea that could really take this story to exciting places.

Quote

“I’m so alone. It’s like being dead but still conscious.”

“It’s like I never existed. We had so many secrets together and now they’re just mine. The weight of them is too heavy for me to carry.”

 

Lisa:

Cover

I absolutely LOVE the cover on this one, for so, SO many reasons! First off, the white background: I like how it looks so clean, bright, and it makes the yellow suits REALLY stick out. Besides that, I also like that we can’t see the models’ faces. I’m just so tired of book covers where faces take over the entire thing! I feel like it ruins the character for me because the face on the cover doesn’t look anything like I imagine the character to look.

Characters

There were quite a few characters in this book that I despised, and one or two that kind of grew on me.

Favorite

This one is tough…I had such a hard time connecting with characters in this book simply because the way things worked in this world, and how EVERYONE just went right along with it, and never thought to question anything. If I REALLY (and I mean REALLY!!) had to pick someone, I would have to agree with Bel and Krista, and go with James. But I would also have to pick Sloane. Why you may ask? Because of their feelings and because they seemed to be the only ones to recognize just how wrong this entire situation is.

Least Favorite

Where should I start? Sloane’s parents? For goodness sake! Your child is being dragged away to this crazy place, which will completely wash out some of her memories! She will be stuck there for weeks under drugs. What else has to happen to her for their parental instinct to finally kick in?

Beginning

The beginning of this story and the way this society runs is what suckered me in reading The Program: a world without emotions? How is that even possible? With brain washing and lots of drugs, I guess. Sloane and James (her boyfriend/brother’s best friend) are dealing with the lost of Sloane’s brother. But that’s pretty hard to do when you can’t express any sort of grief and when there’s threat of being sent to the “looney bin.”

Middle

Sloane is picked up and brought to the program. She doesn’t know what happens inside, but Sloane does know that the people who come back from The Program are cleansed and cleared of any sort of emotion. The majority of this book follows Sloane’s journey through The Program and the difficulty of dealing with these memories she can’t remember but somehow knows, after she gets released.

Ending

I don’t actually want to say what happens in the end, but this was definitely my favourite part of the book. Like Krista said, there is a little bit of hope and insight into the second book, The Treatment. And just Bel said, things aren’t always what they seem. I couldn’t put it in any better terms than Krista and Bel did.

Overall Thoughts

Overall, the story was interesting. Some of the characters were frustrating, but a few did grow on me. I liked The Program, but I did struggle a bit getting through it. I listened to it on audio (which may be why I was struggling my way through the story) and felt that some parts were just dragged out. When Sloane was in the program, I just felt like this part took SO long, and SO many things said seemed to be repeated over and over again.

I do plan on picking up The Treatment, but before I do, I will be reading The Program in physical form again, instead of listening to it on audio.

---

---

Annie has finally escaped her prison in Keane’s school, where she’s been locked up and guarded on a single floor for the last few years. She hasn’t seen or spoken to her sister since her dramatic escape and has finally met up with Adam, Cole, and Sarah, who have taken her in.

But after only a few days, Annie is worried about her baby sister. She’s tired of sitting in various motels rooms, feeling useless. She wants to help out somehow, someway, even if it means harming herself to have visions of Fia.

To do something productive, Cole takes Annie to meet another girl named Mae, who has been offered the same opportunity to attend Keane’s school. Annie tries to convince Mae to turn down the offer, but Mae explains that the girls at the school are actually the ones with all the power. She says that she wouldn’t mind being paid to do something she can do in her sleep.

Annie feels helpless. She doesn’t know what to do. She just wants to prevent any more girls from attending the school and wants her sister back.

On the other side of things, Fia has decided to destroy the school from the inside out with the help of James, Keane’s son. James is broken. He is still dealing with the grief from the loss of his mother, and the anger towards his father for destroying the beautiful school his mother established. Fia has decided to put all her trust in James and do anything he asks.

But Fia has never felt so unsure about someone like she does about James. Normally she can immediately sense anyone’s intentions, but when it comes to James her heart takes over. No matter how hard she tries, Fia can’t shake off the feeling that he might be hiding and keeping something from her.

After starving herself and going nights without sleep, Annie finally sees a vision of Fia that will change everything. She knows that if she doesn’t get there in time, she and Fia will never be free, but dead…

With so much love for Mind Games, there wasn’t any option but to pick up Perfect Lies right away! And I did…even though it was three thirty in the morning.

As with all of Kiersten White’s books, the element that I look forward to the most are the characters (if you hadn’t already guessed).

In Mind Games, Annie may be the older sister, but she’s very sheltered. She doesn’t know what Fia is doing or sacrificing for Annie’s protection. In Perfect Lies, her eyes are opened and she finally believes everything that’s going on around her.

As Annie took a few steps forward, Fia took a few back. In the first installment, she had to follow these crazy missions and do anything that was asked of her. But she has this amazing IDGAF attitude that really pulled me towards her. I liked her for it! But in Perfect Lies, that goes away a bit. Fia falls in love with James and her heart quickly takes over. Fia knows she has a weird feeling about him and that he isn’t telling her the whole truth, but she doesn’t want to believe it.

If you’re really into mind-numbing, jaw-dropping endings, then Mind Games and Perfect Lies are the perfect books for you! In the first book, the ending was so far out of this world, I never saw it coming. In the second book, I knew something drastic would happen, especially with Annie and her discovery of everything going on. But again, I would have never expected what happened.

I’m sad that there are only two books in this series (if you can call it that), but Kiersten White did an amazing job tying up loose ends and surprising me. If you haven’t started reading this series yet, you should ASAP!

---

---

Getting your annual flu shots, you know you’ll most likely wake up the next day with some flu-like symptoms like a fever and a stuffy nose, but never would you assume you’d get telepathic powers…

These New York high school students definitely never thought they would!

They never thought they would be able to overhear their parents having sex in the room next door or that their school nurse had a career in stripping! While the idea of hearing everyone’s thoughts sounds cool, it isn’t as awesome as comics and movies make it seem. When they can hear everyone’s thoughts, they mean EVERY SINGLE PERSON!

The teenagers learn a lot about their classmates, their teachers, their families, and each other. They can’t keep seem to keep any secrets—not that Mackenzie’s cheating on her boyfriend, not that Olivia has a new jerk boyfriend, and not that Tess is crushing on her best friend.

Unsure of what to do with their newly discovered powers, these average teenagers have no idea if they should tell someone and, if so, who? If they did tell, what would they do to them? Would they run crazy tests on them?

But who wouldn’t want to be telepathic? You can easily cheat on tests, know what that cute guy on your date is thinking, and know when someone is gossiping about you!

When the temporary nurse at school starts acting suspiciously and starting to ask questions about the telepathic teenagers, the groups of friends don’t know what to do. Some just want this horrible nightmare to end, and others are afraid of what might happen to them. It’s a tough decision to make, and a decision that will affect the rest of their lives. 

Don’t Even Think About It was a light read when it comes to super powers. The story revolves around NORMAL teenagers, who don’t intend to save or destroy the world with their newly-discovered abilities. Instead, they are much more focused on themselves, their secrets, and the secrets of their peers.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story, I liked the characters, and I liked that it was light-hearted and not dark. But I do have to admit two things—there were a large number of characters and the nurse caught on to them very easily.

At the beginning of the book I was struggling to keep up with who was who, and what everyone was doing. The different perspectives weren’t divided by chapters and they would randomly change between characters.

When the nurse first shows up at the school, she’s on the mission to find this group of teenage students with telepathic patterns. But after only confronting the students twice, they basically spit it out without hesitation. I guess I was hoping the group would avoid her longer and that she would have to REALLY try and get them to admit it instead of just blurting it.

I LOVED Ten Things We Did And Probably Shouldn’t Have, and I loved this one from Sarah Mlynowski as well! Can’t wait to pick up her future books!

---

---

If you haven’t started reading a Kiersten White book, you should! They are absolutely AHH-mazing reads! Recently I’ve been on a reading high that completely revolves around Kiersten White’s books. Her characters are fantastic and their development through her stories is incredible.

I’m addicted to her writing and the characters she creates. I’ll admit it.

When it comes to Mind Games, it’s exactly the same. The story follows two sisters named Annie and Fia. Annie is two years older, blind, and has the ability to see visions of the future; she still blames herself for not seeing her parents’ car crash and warning them earlier. Fia has perfect instincts and can see someone’s intentions before she even knows the person.

When their parents passed away, Annie was invited to attend a “special school” for girls with similar abilities to hers. No matter how unsure and uncomfortable Fia feels about this offer, Annie thinks it’s an amazing opportunity and doesn’t want to it give up.

After years of attending this “special school”, the two sisters quickly learn that it’s everything but. The school takes advantage of the girls and uses them for corporate espionage. Without any obvious powers, Fia is used for completely different work; she’s become the hands of the school, doing any and all of their dirty work.

If Fia refuses to do any of the jobs she’s given, Keane—the owner of the school—threatens to hurt Annie. While Annie is locked on a single floor in the school building without any idea of what her sister is doing, Fia is forced to eliminate a guy named Adam. She isn’t allowed to know why. She never is. She only has to get the job done.

When Fia can’t bring herself to murder Adam, she confesses everything to him and lets him go. She knows what she’s done and what’s at stake.

Fia’s tired of doing all the dirty work and she wants to escape with Annie. Even if it means having to lie, fake Adam’s death, and murder her own sister…

Let’s start with my favorite part: the characters.

As you already know, I LOVE Kiersten White’s characters, and Annie and Fia were two perfect examples. Annie was the older sister and was much more calm and collected. Fia, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. She was the younger sister, but felt like she was the protector of Annie, and was willing to do anything Keane asked of her to keep Annie safe. Fia did as she was asked, but she also had this IDGAF attitude, which was sooo kick butt!

Overall, the story was crazy good! The entire idea behind a school using girls with these super powers for corporate espionage was so interesting; I bet there are probably people who really do this too!

Don’t even get me started on the ending of Mind Games, because my brain is still mush! What a CRAZY ending. I can’t believe how this turned out!! I never saw it coming, and….just WOW!

But if I had to admit to one bad thing about Mind Games, it would be the structure. The story not only switched between the sisters’ perspectives, but also between different times. It would randomly go from the present to the past and then back to the present. Within a couple of chapters I got into the swing of things, but at first I was completely confused and lost.

If you get the chance to pick up Mind Games, I recommend you do! But beware: chapters don’t just take place in the present, but also in the past!

---

---

The Blue Bloods series has had many reviews: some good and some bad. Many people also seemed to be on the fence in their opinions, and I’ve finally decided to start this series and give it a shot. While I I do not find the covers very appealing, I was pretty interested in seeing what Melissa De La Cruz had in store for me. I guess the covers do their job of representing the story of vampires, but I feel like they could have been so much more beautiful and detailed …

After reading so many poor reviews on this series, what ultimately made me push those to the side and ignore them, was the awesome synopsis. I usually don’t grab for historical fiction books, but I thought it was really cool that the author incorporated the Mayflower and the early settlers into her vampire story.

My biggest worry was that this series would turn out to be more like “Twilight” than a modern day vampire story. But after reading about twenty or so pages, I let go of the breath I was holding. Blue Bloods takes place in Manhattan, New York, and revolves around wealthy high school teenagers.

Schuyler, the main character, isn’t feeling like herself. Her veins are turning bright blue underneath her pale skin. Something isn’t right, and Schuyler doesn’t know what to do or who to tell.

There are two different types of Blue Bloods, the immortal ones who live forever and the recycled ones who are always reborn but within different bodies and different life times. For these Blue Bloods to continue to be born and reborn again, before they pass away, they must keep a drop of blood which holds all their memories and thoughts.

When these vampires are born, they live what seems to be a normal life, until the age of sixteen. Just like Schuyler, they start to change and regain all of their memories of their old lives.

Blue Bloods are angels who have fallen from heaven. They hope to regain their angelic statuses by being good and just.

After a student is murdered, many Blue Bloods are suspicious that someone is after them, and they take drastic precautions to protect themselves and one another. They fear that Silver Bloods are out to get them. (Silver Bloods are another type of vampire.)

Schuyler is tossed into the middle of this entire thing–dealing with becoming a vampire again and having the Silver Bloods out to  get her. All this while, she’s modelling jeans and going to school.

So even though Blue Bloods wasn’t outrageously amazing, I do plan to continue the series. The first book always has a lot of ground to cover and explaining to do, so I understand why it wouldn’t be as action packed.

Now that I got that out of the way…

The things I liked about this book:

1. The way this world was set up with different types of vampires, Blue Bloods (immortal and recycled) and Silver Bloods. I’m interested in learning more about how these classifications came to be. And how they deal with one another.
2. I also found it intriguing how the author included the Mayflower and the settlers. This was one of the main reasons I wanted to read Blue Bloods, and it was one of my favorite parts of this book.

Things I didn’t … really like:

1. I just feel like there were a lot of lose ends that weren’t tied up. I understand that there are more books to this series, but I just felt that the topics brought up in Blue Bloods weren’t completely finished.
2. Schuyler and her jeans modelling. There are so many girls spending their entire lives preparing, wishing, and compromising everything to become models. But for some reason, Schuyler is dragged to this modelling interview, and basically begged to model … really? She  basically has offers thrown at her!

 

---