Odette's world is turned upside down when her father suddenly accepts a severance package and her parents sell their house. Now they are living in "The Coach" (an RV). Other indignities include the loss of a cell phone and the purchase of a "wrong" dog. Odette desperately wanted a Labrador, instead she got a small wiry dog. The one shining moment is that they are on their way to see her Grandma Sissy, who is sick.

I loved how cranky and prickly Odette was. In my opinion, it was totally justified. I was a cranky middle schooler. I'm pretty sure I disliked a lot about myself and life, and my life was stable. My parents weren't fighting, we weren't moving from the Bay area of California to an island in Washington state, and my grandmother wasn't sick. I thought her transition into being slightly more open was realistic.

This book deals with death, and whether or not it is acceptable for it to be a choice. I thought it dealt with it lightly, but fairly.

I really enjoyed this book about saving the Golden Lion Tamarins. I felt this book had a nice balance of text to photographs. I also enjoyed that it had a happy ending! A great choice.

I thought the text about Irena Sadler was fine. However, I wasn't sold entirely on the illustrations. There are better options for books about Irena Sadler, but if she is a popular topic in your area, or you have a large collection, this would be a nice addition.

Yuri is a physics genius summoned to the US to save us all from a meteor heading toward us. He completed high school and college early, and isn't taken seriously by his colleagues because of his age. He happens to meet an American girl his age named Dovie, who helps him learn about connecting to other people. But can he stop the world from ending before he really gets to know her?

I did enjoy the science parts of this book and most of the non-science parts, but Dovie was borderline Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I just couldn't get away from that. So if that's a trope you don't mind (and to be fair, she's fairly well developed for an MPDG), I think you'll enjoy this story. It was just too much for me.

Kammie is stuck in a well as part of an initiation ceremony gone wrong. Everything about her life feels wrong. Being in Texas feels wrong, leaving her house behind feels wrong, her dad not being around feels wrong. As Kammie stays stuck in the well, she starts to share what exactly has been going on in her life the past few months, and why it's been so hard to transition to the new one.

I enjoyed this story and read through it pretty quickly. The hallucinated parts were a little weird (but what hallucination isn't). Overall, I thought it was pretty good!

If you're looking for a brief overview of the background of Harry Potter, this one is great!

I feel like I missed something because I didn't see as much of a connection to the first book as I had hoped. Still, I enjoyed the story of Lina and Ozben. The beginning is a little slow but the second half makes up for it.

Enjoyable but not essential.

I'm not normally a horror person, but this one gave me chills quickly and they kept coming!