Fixing Delilah Hannaford by Sarah Ockler

Things in Delilah Hannaford's life have a tendency to fall apart.
She used to be a good student, but she can't seem to keep it together anymore. Her friends are drifting away. Her "boyfriend" isn't a boyfriend. Her mother refuses to discuss the fight that divided the Hannaford family eight years ago. Falling apart, it seems, runs in the family.
When Delilah must spend the summer helping to settle her estranged grandmother's estate, she's suddenly confronted by her family's painful past. Faced with questions that cannot be ignored and secrets that threaten to burst free, Delilah begins to doubt all that she's ever known to be true.
Rich with humor and emotion, Sarah Ockler delivers a powerful story of family, love, and self-discovery--as Delilah comes to realize that even the most shattered relationships can be pieced back together again.
Delilah had an awesome voice. She was very caring and sincere. I liked how Ockler made this book more about a daughter and mother relationship then just a romance. It also showed how grief can effect a family and make so many barriers in relationships. Patrick and Delilah's romance was really sweet and sincere and was a development from them being friends.
The setting of this book helped me relate to the plot, because I grew up in a small town. The book also starts with so many secrets and mysteries, Ockler slowly unravels them into an elegant story that you will love. Ockler is a fantastic writer, her book captures so much emotion and beauty in the world around her characters. This book is not one to miss. I would recommend this book to fans of Sarah Dessen and Jennifer Echols.

Lake Overturn by Vestal McIntyre

Eula, Idaho, is a cluster of steeples, oak trees, and boxlike homes sandwiched between golden fields and a wide-open sky. It freezes in the winter and bakes in the summer, but the air is so dry that neither extreme gets under your skin. It has never seen a battle, or an earthquake, or a Democrat in City Hall.
Still, life in Eula is anything but simple.
Lina and Connie are single mothers, neighbors in Eula''s trailer park. Lina, the daughter of migrant Mexican farm workers, is trying to cope with her angry teenage son Jesús, newly returned after living with wealthy white foster parents. Connie, long abandoned, struggles with her literal reading of Old Testament laws against remarriage, especially when a handsome missionary visits her congregation. The women''s younger sons, Enrique and Gene, are misfits whose mutual love of science offers stability and respite from schoolyard cruelties.
Determined to win the statewide science fair, Enrique and Gene devise an experiment involving "lake overturn," a real scientific phenomenon in which deadly gases collect and eventually erupt from a lake''s depths. In their quest to discover if Eula could suffer from such an event, the boys come into contact with an odd assortment of locals, including the frail-hearted school principal with grand ambitions, a rich but lonely lawyer who finds love outside his marriage just as his wife is succumbing to cancer, and a woman tortured by a past of abuse and addiction who decides to turn things around by offering herself as a surrogate mother.
With sweeping perspective and a Victorian wealth of character, Lake Overturn exposes small-town America in all its beauty and treachery, sunshine and secrets
McIntyre is an amazing author. He weaves an awesome tale that captivates the reader. A wide variety of characters that draw you into their lives. A great portrayal of small town America and all the trial and tribulations each individual must endure in life.

Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky

Bad Marie is the story of Marie, tall, voluptuous, beautiful, thirty years old, and fresh from six years in prison for being an accessory to murder and armed robbery. The only job Marie can get on the outside is as a nanny for her childhood friend Ellen Kendall, an upwardly mobile Manhattan executive whose mother employed Marie's mother as a housekeeper. After Marie moves in with Ellen, Ellen's angelic baby Caitlin, and Ellen's husband, a very attractive French novelist named Benoit Doniel, things get complicated, and almost before she knows what she's doing, Marie has absconded to Paris with both Caitlin and Benoit Doniel. On the run and out of her depth, Marie will travel to distant shores and experience the highs and lows of foreign culture, lawless living, and motherhood as she figures out how to be an adult; how deeply she can love; and what it truly means to be "bad".
Dermansky creates a exciting book, that captures the reader from the very first page. Marie is so bad and does whatever she want not thinking of the consequences. Her impulsiveness captures your attention with Dermansky's masterful writing. I found myself completely engaged in the story. I absolutely could not set this book down. I recommend this book to someone looking for a quick and edgy read!

Waiting on Wednesday (11)

Digger thrives as a spy and sneak-thief among the feuding religious factions of Gerse, dodging the Greenmen who have banned all magic. But when a routine job goes horribly wrong and her partner and lover Tegen is killed, she has to get out of the city, fast, and hides herself in a merry group of nobles to do so. Accepted as a lady's maid to shy young Merista Nemair, Digger finds new peace and friendship at the Nemair stronghold--as well as plenty of jewels for the taking. But after the devious Lord Daul catches her in the act of thievery, he blackmails her into becoming his personal spy in the castle, and Digger soon realizes that her noble hosts aren't as apolitical as she thought... that indeed, she may be at the heart of a magical rebellion.

This book sounds amazing. It looks like it would be really unique. Plus I love the cover.

Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert

Ballads are the kind of songs that Kara McNaughton likes best. Not the cliched ones where a diva hits her highest note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies, but the true ballads: the punk rocker or the country crooner telling the story of their life in three minutes, the chorus reminding their listeners of the numerous ways to screw things up. In high school, Kara helped maintain the "Stories of Suburbia" notebook, which contained newspaper articles about bizarre and often tragic events from suburbs all over and personal vignettes that Kara dubbed "ballads" written by her friends in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. Those "ballads" were heartbreakingly honest tales of the moments when life changes and a kid is forced to grow up too soon. But Kara never wrote her own ballad. Before she could figure out what her song was about, she was leaving town after a series of disastrous events at the end of her junior year. Four years later, Kara returns to face the music, and tells the tale of her first three years of high school with her friends' "ballads" interspersed throughout.
Stephanie Kuehnert makes a raw, heart wrenching, but most of all a brilliant book. Kara is like that girl that you hear rumors about, but never get to know. I have never been across a story as honest as Ballads of Suburbia. You will fall in love with the characters and the story. The ballads were one of my favorite parts of the book, because they let you look into the essence of the characters. The book was also so engaging. I kept on wanting to put it down, but it was almost impossible, because the story is so unique and genuine. I can't wait to read more from her in the future.

Waiting on Wednesday (10)

While other teenage girls daydream about boys, Calla Tor imagines ripping out her enemies’ throats. And she wouldn’t have it any other way. Calla was born a warrior and on her eighteenth-birthday she’ll become the alpha female of the next generation of Guardian wolves. But Calla’s predestined path veers off course the moment she saves the life of a wayward hiker, a boy her own age. This human boy’s secret will turn the young pack's world upside down and forever alter the outcome of the centuries-old Witches' War that surrounds them all.
I love the cover and the plot sounds amazing.

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?Samantha Kingston has it all—looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12th should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it’s her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. In fact, she re-lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she had ever imagined.
Before I Fall was stunning. Sam starts as a mean person, but from a series of the same days, she begins to realize that she can be a better person. I really didn't like her friends. They were horrible people. I also didn't like Rob, he was a huge jerk. Kent was also very sweet and kind. Sam grows into a great character, through the choices that she makes over the past seven days. I still felt that it dragged in a few places, but it was an interesting and amazing book. Lauren Oliver is a great author, who has an amazing feature in writing.