Seventeen-year-old Hannah travels from Moldova to America with fake documents to be a nanny for a Russian-American family.  Hannah is told that in exchange for taking care of two children and some “light” cleaning, she’ll make $400 a week on top of room and board–plenty to pay for her babushka’s surgery in no time at [...]

Tags: sexual abuse, slavery, social classes
Filed under: Book Review

If You Like… is a feature highlighting blogger recommendations for books, authors, TV shows, movies, and music based on the things you already know and love. This week’s post includes recommendations for stories about characters from opposite sides of the tracks. If you like characters from opposite sides of the tracks, you might like… Books/Authors [...]

Tags: friendship, lists, romance, social classes
Filed under: If You Like

Lauren Myracle’s Shine is a departure from much of her other writing. Starting off with a news article about a hate crime in which a gay teen is beaten, tied up, and left with a gas hose shoved down his throat, this book wastes no time in getting to the heart of matters.While the teen [...]

Tags: coming of age, drugs, friendship, hate crime, homosexuality, mystery, social classes
Filed under: Book Review

Melody and Harmony are twins. Separated at birth, Melody was brought up to be a pro Surogette while Harmony was raised to be a churchy wife at 13 with babies of her own soon after. In their society, only teens can get pregnant because of a virus spreading around that prevents older women from having [...]

Tags: dystopian, identity, satire, sex, social classes, teenage pregnancy
Filed under: Book Review

Anna expects her 16th summer to be like every other. She lives on an island off the Georgia coast; every summer tourists flock to the beach locale and Anna helps her family serve them ice cream by day and then hangs out with her friends by night. While she enjoys her work creating and dishing [...]

Tags: beach, coming of age, dating, identity, social classes, summer, sweets
Filed under: Book Review