The Sour Grape was a book based on how you can be angry all the time or be thankful and considerate. It taught me that my actions effect other people and I should be kind. The Sour Grape is a very, very fun book to read and it has cool illustrations.

I love the penderwicks it is so interesting

I read it all by myself. I love the princesses!

Dark, macabre, subject matter, but so interesting and suspenseful. Ava is an extraordinary 14 year old: studious, compassionate, analytical, whip-smart—and very interested in death: how animals die, the rate at which they decompose, etc. She studies this with a scientific remove, yet also with compassion. During her clandestine studies she finds a the body of her missing classmate, and thus the story begins. This book is beautifully written, and the characters are complex and convincingly rendered. Unlike anything else I've read. Highly recommend.

I read this all by myself

Fences is a beautifully written yet heart wrenching story of a black man and father being so affected by the past that he can’t move forward, causing him to lose control of those he loved over time. Troy, the main character of the play, is in many ways scarred from his past. He works with his hands because his father did and he knows that a skill if the only thing the harsh world can’t take away from you. Growing up in the post-civil war time period and seeing the ways in which his father and black people struggled, he refuses to believe society will ever treat black people justly and allow them a chance to pursue what they love most. This is reflected in his refusal to sign a paper and let Cory, his son, play football and gain an opportunity for college. Troy can not fathom a world which allows black people to play mainstream sports and tries to prevent the pain before it starts by stopping Cory from playing. Resentment grows in Cory and with added issues of society’s treatment of his disabled veteran brother, Gabe, Troy begins to feel stuck and out of control with his life’s path. In doing so, he cheats on his wife, Rose, with a woman named Alberta and becomes the father to a girl who he asks Rose to take in. Miserable, and pushing away all who cared about him in his life, he becomes a stranger in his own home and begins his “fight” with death until he passes 8 years later. His impact on those around him (both good and bad) lingers on. I liked the story, even with us heartfelt sad ending. It is an overall great book!

Inaccurately marketed as a crime thriller, this slow burn of a political novel is unlike anything I’ve read. The protagonist is a detective, but positioned in a PR management liaison role between the police and journalists. I cared enough about him as a character to stick with the drier parts of the office politics to get to the cold case that resumes in a unique and gratifying way. Overall the novel hangs together narratively, has interesting characters, broaches topics I hadn’t seen addressed in fiction before, or so well, and gives the reader enough of a plot payoff to read through the complex, intellectual matter that takes up much of its 576 pages. But if you pick it up looking for a page-turning mystery, you’ll be disappointed.

Twisty and entertaining thriller about an unsolved murder and a group of college friends at a very Duke-like university. Lots of twists and turns, suspenseful, and also a really interesting look at the complexities of friendship, especially within a group.

The beginning of this book was a little slow for me with the technical component. TJR does a great job with completely new subject matter for all of her books but it took me a second to adapt to space plus so many characters. The last 40% was purely amazing. I was crying at the gym literally

I liked it because I liked that the donkeys helped bring books to little kids. They were so helpful!