The Champions (The Cheerleaders, #2) by Kara Thomas-326 pages
⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Teacher by Freida McFadden - 356 pages
Lesson #1: trust no one
Eve has a good life. She gets up each day, gets a kiss from her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except…
Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal, with one student, Addie, at its center. And this year, Eve is dismayed to find the girl in her class.
Addie can’t be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that’s what everyone says.
But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet.
This book was SO good, I finished it in one day; could not put it down. This is the second book of this author's that I have read and I absolutely loved it. I liked how each chapter was from each character's point of view, and the ending, WOW. I thought I'd hit the twist, then the last chapter threw in an extra twist. Definitely will be checking out her other books!
Mickey Bolitar's year can't get much worse. After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools.
A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving - until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn't who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey's father. Soon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury - and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.
This book was constant action from beginning to end. It's an easy read that I just couldn't put it down. I love the personalities of the characters. Once I was finished I gave an exasperated sigh, I had to immediately get the e-book of the sequel to keep reading. I love how Coben writes and am fast becoming a fan of his.
Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle-213 pages
The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson-416 pages
Alienated by Melissa Landers -- 344 pages
Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Saenz-516 pages
I read the first book in this series previously and liked reading it. I wanted to read this as a result. It continues the story of Aristotle and Dante. They are Mexican-American boys who are lovers in the late 1980s. Aristotle makes new friends at school he never dreamed he'd make and goes on a camping trip with Dante. He and Dante fall deeper in love. Tragedy strikes that will forever change one of them. When one of them leaves for Paris after high school graduation it changes their relationship. Will it last? It's set with the AIDS pandemic in the forefront. I liked reading this one too.
The Chosen by Chaim Potok - 284 pages
In 1944 Brooklyn, fifteen-year-old Reuven Malter prepares to play a baseball game: his own Modern Orthodox school against a team from an ultra-orthodox Hasidic yeshiva. It becomes apparent that the only good player on the opposing team is Danny Saunders, the son of a nearby Hasidic Rabbi. The game becomes something of a war between the two teams, seemingly symbolic of their differing ideologies. In the last inning, with Reuven's team in the lead, Reuven is put in as pitcher. When Danny gets up to the plate, he hits a line drive straight at Reuven's head, which breaks his glasses and drives a small piece of glass into his eye. Reuven's team loses and Reuven is rushed to the hospital.
Reuven learns that Danny possesses a photographic memory, enabling him to study an astonishing amount of Talmud per day (set by his father), yet still leaving him time to pursue other subjects. Danny tells Reuven that he goes to the library to read books on science and literature, and that a man at the library has been recommending books for him to read. Danny knows that he is expected to someday take over his father's position as the rabbi for his community, but wishes he did not have to and that instead, he could pursue psychology. Reuven would like to become a rabbi, though his father would like him to pursue academia. Reuven learns that his father, a teacher of Talmud, is the man who has been recommending books to Danny at the library.
When Reuven is released from the hospital, his father discusses the history of Hasidism with him. He then explains that only once in a generation a mind like Danny's is born, and that Danny cannot help his need for knowledge, but that Danny is also a lonely boy who needs a friend.
The next day, Reuven goes to Danny's family synagogue where he witnesses a discussion between Danny and his father which spans over the entire Talmud. After the Sabbath has ended, Danny reveals to Reuven that his father only speaks to him when they study Talmud together. The two boys also discover that they will be attending the same university, much to Reuven's delight. That Sunday, Danny, and Reuven meet at the library, where Danny reveals his fascination with the human mind and his desire to study the works of Sigmund Freud, for which he is teaching himself German.
The next week, Reuven goes to the Saunders house again to study Talmud with Danny and his father. When Danny leaves the room to prepare tea, Rebbe Saunders reveals to Reuven that he knows about Danny's visits to the library and wants to know what Danny is reading. He adds that he knows he cannot prevent Danny from pursuing knowledge, but that he fears his son will lose his Orthodox faith. Reuven immediately tells Danny about the talk, and later, Reuven's father discerns that Reb Saunders used his conversation with Reuven to communicate with Danny indirectly.
The coming year is dominated by the Allied victory in World War Two, and the death of Franklin Roosevelt, which brings grief to the Malters. In addition, news of the Holocaust reaches American soil, which sends all the characters, especially Rabbi Saunders, into a state of depression. During the summer of that year, Reuven's father suffers a heart attack, and Reuven goes to stay in the Saunders home. At one meal, Reuven mentions that some feel it is time to establish a Jewish state, which sends Rabbi Saunders into a fierce tirade against Zionism; for the ultra-orthodox, a secular Jewish state established by man without the coming of the Messiah is against God's will.
The next year Danny and Reuven enter college at the Samson Raphael Hirsch College and Seminary. Danny is miserable because the psychology department at the university is only experimental psychology and not analytical. Eventually, Danny's psychology professor tells him that he should go into clinical psychology.
Later in the year, Reuven's father gives a speech at a Zionist rally, which is covered by the Orthodox press, and leads Rabbi Saunders to forbid Danny to have any contact with Reuven. Reuven does not cope well without his best friend and his grades begin to suffer. Soon afterward Reuven's father has a second heart attack followed by a lengthy hospitalization. Reuven copes with his father's absence by studying the Talmud with greater intensity, eventually mastering a very complicated section of the Talmud.
After two years, just as the violence in Palestine comes to an end (the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war) and Reuven's father has recovered from his heart attack, Danny is allowed to resume his friendship with Reuven because the Jewish state is now a fact, and no longer a point of dissension.
As the years pass, Danny's father continues to remain silent with Danny. Danny reveals to Reuven that he will not take his father's place. Instead, he will apply to graduate school and pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology, and his younger brother, Levi, will assume the tzaddikate. Danny applies to Harvard, Columbia, and Berkeley. He is accepted into all three universities, but cannot understand why his father does not speak to him about it, because the acceptance letters came by mail and were surely seen.
On the first day of Passover in Danny and Reuven's senior year of college, Reb Saunders invites Reuven to their home to talk with him and Danny. Reb Saunders tells Reuven that he knows that Danny will not be assuming the rabbinate, that he has known for a long time, and he accepts it. He then explains why he raised Danny in silence: he feared that Danny's phenomenal intelligence would lead him to lack compassion for others. Therefore, he raised Danny in silence so that he could learn what it is to suffer, and therefore, have a soul. He also relates Danny to his older brother, who ran away from his homeland in Russia and became a secular professor and died in Auschwitz.
Reb Saunders expresses his gratitude to Reuven and his father for helping Danny at the point where he was ready to rebel, to help Danny remain a part of the Orthodox Jewish tradition, even if he cannot assume the rabbi role. To his father's questions, Danny indicates that he will remove some of the visible indicators of Hasidism (his full beard and earlocks) but will remain an observer of the commandments. Reb Saunders says that Passover is the holiday of freedom and that he must let Danny be free.
That September, on his way to graduate school at Columbia, Danny comes for a brief visit without his beard and earlocks. He says that he and his father now talk.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky-213 pages
I have seen the film a few times, so I wanted to finally read the book for this month's challenge and compare them. I like the film slightly better than the book mostly because the main characters don't smoke in the film, but they're like chainsmokers in the book (including Charlie who's underage at 16). However, both are good and it's cool (and unusual) that Stephen Chbosky wrote the screenplay and directed the film. Because of this, many of the details from the novel are carried over into the movie. Charlie is beginning his freshman year of high school and wants to make friends. Michael, his friend in middle school, committed suicide so he doesn't really have any friends to carry over into high school. He meets Patrick and Sam, who are step siblings, at a football game and they become good friends throughout the school year. However, Patrick and Sam (and Alice and Mary Elizabeth) are all seniors, so when they leave Charlie won't have friends in high school again. I don't want to give away too much of the story, but basically it's a story about Charlie and him making friends and "participating" in life.
