The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

Dude!   This book was crazy!  I'd read a few others blogs about it and checked it out.

So Violet Ambrose is a teenager like any other.  She's been best friends with Jay forever.  He's always been there, but it's different this year.  He's "grown up" and basically gotten hotter over this last summer.  While it was usually just the two of them, but now all the girls who never noticed Jay before are following him around like little puppies.  Violet is a bit bothered by this but unsure of why.

Violet is different, though, in that she can find dead bodies.  She feels or senses tastes, smells, sounds that lead her to dead bodies.  It's only really happened with a body once, but she does find animals that have been killed.  As a kid she had a little graveyard where she put the animals to rest.

As the year progresses, she's dealing with normal stuff like school, friends, classes, and her feelings about Jay.  But then a string of murders in the area stirs up and scares everyone.  A serial killer is killing young girls.  Violet discovers one of them and becomes more involved than she knows in the serial killers plans.

This book is mainly about Violet, but every few chapters you get a glimpse into a short chapter from the point of view of the killer.  These chapters are freakin creepy, my friends.

I just had to keep reading this book.  Each chapter I wanted to know if the killer had gotten someone else, if Violet had found a body or discovered the killer, and then of course, were Violet and Jay ever going to hook up and get together??  It was obvious she liked him...so I just had to see how they would end up.  So all in all, this book is crazy suspenseful but also has a really great and sweet love story, too.  I just loved Jay - he was like the sweetest guy ever.  You should definitely check this one out for a strangely sweet and suspenseful read.  Cool book.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I get so wrapped up in keeping up with the newest, latest, greatest YA books, that I often neglect the classics.  I read lots of them in my college English classes, and I know the ones I teach often (Hamlet, Frankenstein, etc...) very well, but I only get through one or two "classics" a year.  I want to do more of this reading, so while my student teacher organized literature circles for my students, I decided to read Wuthering Heights along with one of the groups.

I loved this book.  It made me happy; it made me sad; it annoyed me; it made me want to holler at people; it made me smile.  I read Jane Eyre last summer and liked it a lot, but Wuthering Heights moves far beyond Jane Eyre as my favorite right now.

There's so much story in the book, but it all starts when Mr. Lockwood moves in to Thrushcross and visits his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff.  Heathcliff is a weird dude, and Lockwood, who isn't the most sociable guy in the world, feels like he's outgoing and nice compared to Heathcliff.  Lockwood visits once and then again and gets stuck at Wuthering Heights before he can make it home.  He spends the night in a room that he really isn't supposed to be in and encounters the ghost of a young girl at the window.  He's completely freaked out and what's more is that Heathcliff rushes in at the disturbance screaming:

"Come in, come in!...Cathy, do come.  Oh, do--once more!  Oh! my heart's darling, hear me this time, Catherine, at last!"

Amazed by this outburst, Lockwood gets the whole story out of his housekeeper, Nelly Dean.  You just love Nelly to death by the end of this book, as she is your eyes and ears into this story, this world.  Nelly has been working for the family for years and she tells Lockwood every exciting, terrifying, lovely bit of the story.

It all began when Old Earnshaw who had two children, Hindley and Catherine went away to Liverpool and came back with a new little rough-looking, black-haired, wild child with him.  You may expect a give when your father goes out of town and returns, but certainly not a new little brother, and a wild, gypsy seeming child at that.  Hindley doesn't like the new little one, Heathcliff, and Catherine doesn't care for him at first either.  But time goes on, and life steps in.  Hindley leaves, and Catherine and Heathcliff become best of friends.  Old Earnshaw dies, Hindley comes back and treats Heathcliff badly.  Catherine likes Heathcliff, but can't marry him because he's "lower" than her...but she really does want him.  Heathcliff hearts Catherine say something about this and leaves and disappears....and it all gets going from here.

This book has so much love and so much hate that it seems impossible sometimes.  The story spans generations and turns and twists all the time.  I was always wondering what was going to happen, who would be together, why the characters just couldn't be honest with each other.

I was completely happy and satisfied with this book, and it is one that I will read again and again definitely.  This is one classic you should pick up if you haven't already.

The Luxe by Anna Godberson

So, honestly, as a grown-up, I felt a little guilty for picking up The Luxe at the bookstore, but I really loved that dress on the cover!  I was hoping for some turn of the century, gossip-girl-like drama, and that is exactly what I got with this book.

The Luxe takes place in 1899 in Manhattan, and it was really fun to be taken back to the times when people "called" upon one another and attended fabulous parties.   Not that people don't attend parties now, but back then the parties were different.

The main characters are Elizabeth and Diana Holland, two New York sisters who are very much at the center of the social scene in Manhattan.  Elizabeth has been away in Europe, and her return starts the action of the story.  She and her sister have to appear to have lots of money, when the  truth is that  they have none.  Their father died and since then their mother has had to pay off his large debts, leaving the girls with nothing but their reputations....kind of reminds me of Rose and her mother in the movie Titanic.  With this knowledge weighing on her, Elizabeth has to play her part well and try to find a good match.  The wonderful and rich Henry Schoonmaker is single and a great catch that girls would die for. The only problem is that she sort of loves someone else...

Of course there must be a bad girl to add to this mix, and that's where Elizabeth's friend Penelope comes in.  Penelope is the wild girl (reminds me of Blair on Gossip Girl) and she always makes sure things are stirred up.

So against this backdrop, the girls, the guys, and the parents all try to match each other up.

I like the writing style of this book.  It was easy to read, but unique, too, because Godberson starts each chapter off with a little "real life snippet" of something:  a letter, a newspaper article, a line from the gossip column of the paper...and then the chapter starts from there.  Each chapter is focused on one of the girls, too, so you get to see things from each girls point of view.

I really enjoyed the book.  I did sort of figure out how things would unfold before they did, but it was ok, and still a fun book to read.  I did get the sequel, Rumors, and plan to read it soon.  All in all a fun book with old school girl drama, which, really, isn't that different from the girl drama of today.  I recommend this book to readers who are interested in drama, relationships, and love.

Grade:  B

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Nothing makes me madder than when people are mean to a sweet orphaned child.  Cinderella was treated badly.  Harry Potter had to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs.  We read these stories all the time.  Jane Eyre begins just like many of them, with a young girl struggling to live in a house where no one loves her.  Her parents are dead, her aunt hates having to take care of her, and her cousins are mean bullies. 

But somehow, Jane makes it.  This story was amazing.  I will admit that I tried to read this book twice before I actually got through it, but I loved every step of the way.  It's not as easy to zip through a classics as it is to read, say, The Luxe, but it's very rewarding.  

Jane moves from her aunt's house to a school called Lowood.  Lowood is home to other orphan girls, and here Jane gets an education and actually makes a friend or two.  The reader then follows Jane on the journey of her life.  Jane moves on and finds herself eventually as a young woman traveling to Thornfield Hall to be a governess to a bubbly young girl named Adele.  

Thornfield Hall is creepy.  Old and sort of empty, Jane wonders about the people who live and work there.  She doesn't meet the master of the house, and the servants say he doesn't come around a lot.  There are strange screams and cries and laughter that Jane hears, too, which concern her a bit.  Once Jane becomes a resident at Thornfield, though, her life will never be the same.  

I definitely recommend this book.  I really loved it.  It's a gothic novel and has spooky settings and situations.  There's a little mystery, and even more, there's love.  Ghosts and love in one book is a lot of fun.  The language was great, and I really got to know and like Jane as a person. She is calm and humble, and I learned a lot by watching her deal with all kinds of people.  

Grade:  A