Book Beat Reviews

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.

Incarceration, in the US, is the primary form of punishment for any sort of felony, according to Bryan Stevenson. But there’s a lot more to it than what meets the eye: a system that is more broken, punitive, and corrupted than helpful. It’s a system that relies on racial discrimination rather than actual facts, and it’s the system that incarcerates hundred and thousands more people each year. 

Within these mounting numbers is another problem: death row. When a system is as broken as it is, the death penalty is disproportionally borne by innocent people wrongfully accused due to a lack of understanding.

As a young lawyer, Bryan Stevenson recognized this problem and has since done as much as he can to solve it. He formed the Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI, in order to provide the legal support that innocent people, condemned to die, need—and for free. In this inspiring memoir, Stevenson shares his stories and the stories of many he has worked to save from death row: hardworking men wrongfully accused of murder, people with mental illness imprisoned rather than receiving the treatment they need, and countless children and people in abusive scenarios only trying to survive. 

Just Mercy reveals the brokenness of the criminal justice system in America, and, through empathy and compassion, sheds light on the humanity we need to find in order to fix it—and the knowledge that it’s a long way up from here.  

Find it in print here.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is a book that, to me, fundamentally proves that stories are the thread that connects us—no matter how time or distance separates us, stories bring us together… and sometimes in the most unlikely of ways. With an imagination to rival many authors I’ve read and the writing skill to fantastically share it, Anthony Doerr has created a masterpiece. His chosen story? The tale of Aethon, a man who longs to be free of his human form to seek a glorious city in the clouds. 

Set in three different timelines and three distinct settings, this book follows characters at turning points in their lives, from fifteenth-century children Anna and Omeir on opposite sides of a war, to boys Xeno and Seymour struggling to find themselves in a world that won’t accept them for who they are, to thirteen-year-old Konstance traveling through space alone.

This book is Anna reading her sister Atheon’s journey, it’s Xeno directing a group of fifth graders set to perform it five hundred years later, it’s Konstance copying the version told to her by her father, far away in space. It’s the thread that connects them all in the unlikeliest of ways.

This is a book so full of stories that each could stand on its own, but together, it spells a remarkable and spectacular tale of the human condition and the things that connect us. It’s a story for everyone, relatable, meaningful, and a celebration of books everywhere. 

Find it in print, ebook, eaudiobook and CD here.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.

17-year-old Cadence is a Sinclair: tall, white, beautiful. She lives in Vermont all year and spends the summers on their family’s private island, Beechwood. There, Cadence becomes a Liar: one of the three older cousins and Gat, an almost-step-cousin who’s been there as long as it matters. 

Beechwood is a place of glorious memories, of long summer days spent lounging as cousins, as best friends. It is spent in the glamorous halo of friendship and family and the beautiful facade of Sinclair perfection.

Under the surface, however, all is not as it seems. 

In her fifteenth summer, Cadence suffers an accident, resulting in crippling migraines and terrible amnesia. In her sixteenth summer, she’s gone to Europe. It is summer seventeen, and Cadence returns to Beechwood, determined to find out what really happened two years prior.

We Were Liars is the suspense novel the likes of which you’ve never read. Its prose is daring and original. Its story spills from complicated, cracked-open secrets at every turn. It is intense and heartbreaking and intricate and mindblowing. It is a pretty picture cracked into a thousand unrecognizable pieces. What I like best about this book, however, is that despite its twisting plot, it is unapologetically whole. The characters are imperfectly human. They are flawed and broken, they are brave and true. And they are liars.

Welcome to Beechwood Island, and the story of a lifetime. You’ll read this book, you’ll hate it or love it, but one thing is certain: you’ll never be the same. 

Find it in print, ebook, eaudiobook and CD here.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.

Ketterdam is a city of kill-or-be-killed, where the only god honored is profit and the only moral is the one that suits the job. Located on the island nation of Kerch, it’s a bustling center of commerce and crime. Within its boundaries are the makings of an unlikely team: Kaz Brekker, master thief; Inej Ghafa, acrobat turned spy; Jesper Fahey, a sharpshooter with a gambling addiction; Nina Zenik, Grisha Heartrender; Matthias Helvar, witch-hunter and convict; and Wylan Van Eck, demolition expert.

Beyond the borders of Kerch, a dangerous drug is brewing. Jurda parem, a concoction that only affects those born with Grisha powers, could entirely change the world as known. The only person who knows the exact recipe? A hostage of the Scandinavian-based nation of Fjerda, held in the securest prison in the world. The only team who may have a chance of breaking him out before it’s too late? You got it: Kaz Brekker and his crazy team.

Six of Crows by Leah Bardugo is the first book in the second series in the Grishaverse. This duology stands alone, or it can be read after the Shadow and Bone series. It’s one of my favorite books by far, mostly because of how it swallows you into the story, the world fleshed in full color around you, the characters incredibly well-developed. It subverts the hero’s journey narrative, but it’s not just a heist plotline. It’s so much more. And you’ll only find out if you read it too.

Find it in print here.

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.

Alina Starkov has never been anything but ordinary. Orphan, soldier, mapmaker—she’s always been able to blend in, and is perfectly okay with that. In the ranks of the Ravkan First Army, where part of the job is crossing the Shadow Fold, a dangerous—and potentially fatal—swath of land shrouded in darkness, being invisible can play to your advantage.

But everything changes on her first crossing. When their skiff is attacked by monsters who threaten Alina’s dearest and oldest friend, Mal, something inexplicable happens. Before she knows it, Alina is swept up into the ranks of the Ravkan Second Army. Made up of the Grisha, people born with science-based magic abilities, they inform Alina that she, too, is one of them—one like no other: a Sun Summoner, and the only Grisha capable of destroying the Shadow Fold.

But all is not as it seems, and once-invisible Alina Starkov is now the target of awe, suspicion, violence… and betrayal.

Shadow and Bone is the exciting start to an incredibly detailed world by Leigh Bardugo: the Grishaverse. As Alina races to figure out what is right, what is wrong, and how to save the world from the horrors of the Shadow Fold, before you know it, you’re wrapped up in it too.

Find it in print here.

The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen

Hi, my name is Cora. I love to read and play sports, especially soccer. I also love to read and play with my cats. My favorite color is blue.

This book, The Rest Of The Story, written by Sarah Dessen, is meaningful, powerful, and adventurous. A young girl, Emma Saylor, spends the summer with her deceased mother’s family on a lake, a little ways from where she lives with her dad and grandmother. Emma’s mother always used to tell Emma a bedtime story about a never ending lake with clear water, and a creaky old house with uneven floors. Emma’s original plan, spending the summer with her best friend, Bridget at the pool, gets interrupted when Briget’s grandfather has a stroke. Hoping to save her father’s and new stepmother’s honeymoon to Greece she offers to stay at the lake with a bunch of strangers she met only once when she was four, and doesn’t remember anything.

When she arrives, she doesn’t realize that there are basically 2 different lakes, even though there is just one. Lake North is where her father’s family spent most of the summer in a fancy resort where the rich people lived. North Lake is the community completely opposite from Lake North, where her mother and the rest of her mother’s family lives. Saylor is what her mother’s family calls her, and Emma is what her dad uses as a name, this book is all about discovering who you are when you are torn between 2 things.

During her time at her Mother’s family home, she finds out things she never knew about her mother. Hoping to connect her history she befriends Roo, her best friend when they were younger, and finds out things she never knew about her family. Throughout the book, Emma tries to understand her family better, and not just be the rich kid they know her to be. Emma must learn to confront her fears and learn her past to find the rest of the story. I really liked this book because it was about finding your past and who you are without other people telling you.

At times this book would get really slow, and then dramatically speed up, so I think the flow could have been better at times, but other than that I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good adventure.

Find it in print here.