[b: Mark of the Thief|17453187|Mark of the Thief (Mark of the Thief, #1)|Jennifer A. Nielsen|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1402065517s/17453187.jpg|24341792] is a fast-paced, energetic read. There are few lulls in the action. Around every corner is a new trial for Nicholas Calva, from the moment he tires of being a slave until the end of the story. It's the beginning of another series that Nielsen fans will gobble up.

My one concern, and I hope that gets fixed later in the story, is the character of Livia, Nic's sister. At the moment, she's not very well-developed, and is mainly being used to stir Nic into action. Oh, I need to stay in the mines to protect her. Oh, I need to find her because she's been kidnapped. Oh, I need to give into the villain because he's going to kill her. As an adult gender studies major who's read far too many critiques of video games and comics suffering from this same plot line, I'm not sure I really want it perpetuated in the stories I recommend to kids as well. I'm holding out hope that because this is the first in the series that Nielsen will make Livia into more of a well-rounded character, rather than the MacGuffin she appears to be here. And please, please, don't let her be fridged.

A powerful tale from Sheinken. It captured the feel of the times and showed how the Pentagon Papers impacted the Vietnam War and its ripple effects to today.

This is a beautifully illustrated picture book about exploring your house and your backyard in the nighttime. I really like how Gerstein did the night illustrations, dark on dark shades figures.

My favorite kind of illustrations

I hope this book finds its readers. This story is told in lyrical prose, close to poetry but not quite, and meanders a bit through a brief time in the life of Sophea, called Sofie, who lives in Portsmouth NH with her father, Johnny. I could feel Portsmouth come alive around me in Farish's story, and I can picture Johnny going on fishing trips and coming back. Sofie desperately wants to keep him home in NH, but the fishing industry is dying and he needs to go away. This prompts her mother and grandmother to move in, people Sofie wants nothing to do with, as they have been long absent from her life. He also doesn't want her to see Luke, a deckhand of his who is suffering from PTSD after being a medic in Afghanistan.

I was initially troubled by the idea of a romance between a almost 17 year old and a 22 year old, but it does work in the story. You can feel the draw between the two of them. I'm glad the story ends the way it does, which feels realistic. It's not happily, everything-tied-in-a-bow, but there is a sense of acceptance that feels right.

There are so many ways a heart can break that are explored in this story: war, miscarriage, lost child, lost husband, betrayal. Everyone is sympathetic in this story, and everyone is somewhat to blame. I understand why the story goes the way it does, but part of me wishes that Isabel and Thomas could have adopted a child afterward to help ease the pain.

Twig lives with her mother on the edge of Sidwell, Massachusetts. Her family mostly keeps to themselves due to their secret. When a new family moves in next door, the younger daughter, Julia, wants desperately to be Twig's friend. Can she balance having a new friend with respecting her mother's wishes?

I'm not familiar with Hoffman, other than having seen movie adaptations of her work. I know this is Hoffman's first book for the middle grade audience, and it is a wonderful fairy tale. This is another book where I felt like the ending came on suddenly, but I was sort of racing at the end to beat sleep. I think this book will be excellent for your reader that prefers a bit of magic with their realistic fiction.

I like Bollywood, and I like romance, and this one tied it together neatly.

Are you part of the one in three Americans whose family has been affected by mental illness? Then this book is for you. And even if you aren't, this book is for you. Shusterman has written a book that takes us down into the abyss with the narrator, Caden, and we stare at it, and wonder how we get back. If this wasn't MSBA reading season, I would start this book again, to follow Caden down and connect even more pieces. It is very deserving of it's place on the National Book Award Nominee list, and I will be thinking about it for years to come. I sat down and read it today, which was not necessarily what I was intending to do.

My own experience looking into that abyss is much, much milder than Caden's. I have seen it, and I have come back. Many of my friends have stared with me, and come back. I just, I want to pass this book on to so many people. I just felt it.

I liked this one. It didn't move me as much as I would have liked. It definitely felt like reading a comic in novel form. I'd give it another book before I gave up on the series overall.

I guess my biggest complaint was that I felt like there wasn't a lot of backstory or fleshed out characters. The two epilogues made me feel like there might be hope in the future, but we'll see.