What I read this week...

I started pre-reading a book entitled Island Trilogy by Gordan Korman.  

Gordon Korman is an incredible author, seriously he is REALLY good at writing suspenseful stories for teens.  The only complaint I have is the language he includes, it would be just as effective without that added in, actually more so, because I find that every single time he uses a profanity, it detracts and pulls my attention away from the story instead of pulling me further in.

This latest trilogy is based on six teens bent on self-destruction - some because they fell in with the wrong crowd (Luke), some because they are gripped by an anger that in the words of a police officer "If you don't do something about these two, they're going to kill each other."(pg. 24) (Will and Lyssa), and others because they watch too much TV (Ian), are too good at things (Charla), and last but not least - the self-destruction that comes from having everything you could ever want, except for the one thing you need - your dad's affection and attention. (JJ).

So in a last ditch effort to save their lives, their parents sign each of them up for this no-nonsense, no fluff boat adventure called "Charting a New Course".  It is run by Captain Cascadden and "ratfaced" Mr. Radford.  When things (of course) do not go as planned, and only a fraction of the original sailing "crew" remains...how will these six messed up, contentious teens and two questionably stable adults tasked with leading the adventure pull together to survive?  

I was only supposed to glance at this to see if it was good, but then got pulled in to the story, so now am going to read the next two books to see how it turns out.

I also spent some time this week going back and re-reading A Crown Sharp as Pines, because I felt like I sped-read it trying to get to the end to find out how it turned out.  Which is great in the moment, but the more I thought about a few scenes...the more I realized I wanted to go back and re-read this one (and perhaps book four too...oh who am I kidding, I will re-read the entire series at some point) to understand the overarching story theme and plot a bit better.  

Oh and I've started reading In His Image (by Jen Wilkin) aloud to my girls