Before I Fall

Lauren Oliver writes, “Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through you fingers. So much time you can waste it. But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know”. I chose Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver to read as my final book for the challenge. I have had this book sitting on my bookcase for several years, but have never dived deep. I watched the movie several years ago, and went out and bought the book, but never got around to reading it. 
Samantha is a straight up bully. She is one of the most popular girls in the book, and right out of the gate you see her die. It is not everyday you read a story and the main character dies in the first few pages. I was already seeing MAJOR differences from the movie, so I was excited to see where this was going. A girl named Juliet dives in front of Samantha and her friends vehicle. Juliet commits suicide, and all the girls die as well. It turns out that Samantha and her friends were bullying Juliet.
All of a sudden Samantha wakes up and it is still February 12th again. She thinks it is all just a bad dream, until it just keeps happening. Every morning she wakes up, and it is February 12th, and every night she dies. She at first thinks the day is about saving herself, but no matter what she does it just keeps happening. The story progresses with Samantha realizing she has been a horrible person to many, and soon realizes its about saving Juliet. She sacrifices herself to save Juliet. 
If you think about the irony of our current situations, it is like we are living the same days over and over during this pandemic. I wake up everyday not sure what day it is, and wear the same clothes for three days straight. Samantha got out of this predicament when she finally owned up to her situation. I feel like this can apply to our lives as well. I am the one who chooses to pretend that everyday is the same. I am not owning up to my own life, and sit in my own boredom world of misery. I could use this time to better myself, learn a new hobby, or get ahead, but instead wallow in self pity and procrastinate until the last minute like I am right now. Samantha discovered that if she changed her bad habits she would not only save Juliet's life, but she would also get to move on. Maybe we should take a cue from Samantha, and better ourselves during this uncertain time.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

If you cannot tell by now I am a HUGE dystopian, fantasy, young adult genre loving adult. I think as a reader I got engulfed in the Twilight series first, and after that I was hooked. As a reader I enjoy these kind of stories because of the sense of friendship, love, teamwork, and honestly, girl power that is in a lot of these novels. The Divergent series has always been at the top of my favorite list. Veronica Roth has created a female protagonist that teaches us females how to stand up for who we are. I think young adults that read these kind of stories, especially teenage females, need to know they are valued, and in charge of their lives, and Tris, the main character does this exquisitely.
Tris grows up in a faction system that has people grouped based off what their personality instincts label as. They can be Dauntless, Candor, Amity, Abnegation, and Erudite. There is also characters that are Divergent, or they exhibit characteristics from each faction, but to be Divergent is basically taboo. This story follows Tris as she takes her test to see which faction she should fall into, and how she finds out she is Divergent. She goes against the advice and chooses to become Dauntless where she feels the least connection to. What is a typical young adult/dystopian novel without a love story right? Tris falls in love with her teacher, Four who is also from Abnegation, but chose Dauntless to flee from his childhood of torment.
For me, this story, and the two following books in the series, create a character so rich in plot and development. Tris becomes who she was destined to be. She goes from being a quiet Abnegation girl, to the outspoken and fiery character we love. She fights for what she believes in. She saves her friends and family.
This story also looks at how we label people. They sift these people into factions, and expect them to only excel at what they are supposed to. They never are to step out of line. Most of these children chose the life they were born into, but some like Tris, her brother Caleb, and Four leave behind the familiar, and explore something new. I think this is a good analogy for anyone. We do not have to be raised to be just one thing. This is a great life lesson to teach our students. We can be what we want to be, and we should be that, not what others want us to be.

Like A Writer!

Nyx the vampyre goddess says, "Darkness does not always equate to evil, Light does not always bring good". For a book that is followed with eleven more books and several miniseries this is the quote that has always stood out to me. I started these books when I was in high school, and was hooked. As P.C. Cast and her daughter Kristin Cast released more and more to their series I found myself excited as a late twenty-something reader to read books I started ten years prior. These women have wrote an exceptional series that obviously appeals to several different age groups.
One thing I notice when I look at this novel from a writers outlook is how they make the characters so in depth. Especially when you look at the entire series there is so much character plot and development. One of the characters, Stevie Ray befriends our main character Zoey. They refer to her a "country blumpkin" many times, and I can here the twang in her voice when I read her narratives. Another character Aphrodite is the typical mean high school bully throughout the novel, but as the series develops she gets a major story arc and becomes one of the most beloved characters. When you read her narratives its like being in high school all over again, and hearing those mean girls pick at each other. “Nice dress Zoey. It looks just like mine. Oh, wait! It used to be mine. Aphrodite laughed a throaty, I'm-so-grown-and-you're-just-a-kid laugh." This is just one instance when Aphrodite torments Zoey and her friends.
I am obviously a little biased to this series from my love of it, but I do believe it is written lovely. If you read reviews it seems to get a pretty big mix of feelings, but overall it has been pretty popular in the Young Adult world. I would not recommend this box for a class library because it can be kind of raunchy. I would put this book in more of a high school class. Something they could look at in this text is how the characters are written. There is such a vast cast of characters to chose to discuss how they are described, their narratives, and their story arcs.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower

"We accept the love we think we deserve." This has been an important quote for me for years, and at one point even considered getting it tattooed on my ribs. I remember reading this book when I was twenty-two, so nearly six years ago. There are SO MANY take aways from this book for any teen/twenty something. Stephen Chbosky wrote a work of grit, love, hate, and more. 

We meet Charlie, the main character of the story as he begins his freshman year of high school. We all know how awkward and angsty teenagers are, and so this is a weird time in his life. One thing I love about this book was how the narrative was written. Charlie is writing letters to someone, but we do not know who, and we never find out. The Oxford definition of being a wallflower is "a person who has no one to dance with or who feels shy, awkward, or excluded at a party". I am sure we have all felt like wallflowers at some point in our lives, but some more than ever. Charlie is the textbook definition of a wallflower. He is observant and keeps to himself. I personally connect to this book and to Charlie on so many levels. It deals with depression, suicide, love relationships, friendships, family, and so much more. 

The book also gives us some backstory on Charlie. We meet his his Aunt Helen who died in a car crash on his seventh birthday. He was very close with his aunt, and as a reader we can feel him coping with his grief. As the story develops we see Charlie forge relationships with a teacher, and his new two friends, Sam and Patrick. The book goes on to show their friendships blossom. 

When I hear "we accept the love we think we deserve", I think the author had many different forms of expressing this throughout. Charlie's sister was in an abusive relationship, but she shrugs it off. This part of the book really hits me because I was in a situation very similar. I dated a man for two years who I thought loved me, but he was also physically and emotionally abusive, but I never left. I accepted his love because thats what I believed I deserved. We later see Charlie and Sam start to get intimate, which was expected with how their relationship had started to blossom, but then something completely unexpected happened. As things start to warm up, Charlie gets extremely uncomfortable. He has realized that his Aunt Helen had molested him as a child, and he had suppressed these memories. By the end of the book we learn that Charlie has been admitted into a mental hospital because that day when he got home after he remembered about his aunt he mentally lost it. The way the narritative is written we go from Charlie basically worshipping his aunt, to finding out she was sexually abusing him as a child. I am so happy I had chose to pick this book back up. It reminded me of so many feelings, both good and bad. I have refused to watch the movie because of the love I have for the book. I recommend it for anyone looking for a deep read.