Book Talks

    
Book Talks

Happy October! Here are some reviews I've written on some great books that might give you the seasonal chills and thrills you're looking for.








  Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carmen

      Ryan McCray, a fifteen year old boy living in a small town in Oregon called Skeleton Creek has been laid up with a broken leg. His parents have forbidden him to see his best friend Sarah Fincher considering she was responsible for part of the accident as well as Sarah’s parents forbid her to see him in hopes to prevent her from having a similar accident. Ryan is enveloped with writing he has several journals and this is the most important one.Ryan believes he has to write this story down or die trying just as Sarah believes she needs to film the events to uncover this dark past their town has.
      It all starts with the dredge. Before the dredge the town wasn’t even called Skeleton Creek. It was a horrific machine designed to find gold.This hound of technology left a twenty two mile long trench it was filled with water, not long after whitewashed limbs scattered the banks and it was known as Skeleton Creek and the town was then renamed in 1959. This dredge is now stationary surrounded by its self made muddy moat. Ryan and Sarah make their way out to the dredge in the middle of the night to investigate the premises without getting caught. Ryan believes he sees a ghost and it corners him against a railing it  breaks and he falls, this is his accident.
     Being at home and bed ridden doesn’t stop his or Sarah’s pursuit of the real story behind the dredge. They communicate in secret to share information. They even have to work around the parental tracking software their parents have installed on their computers. Reading emails at obscure time and erasing them in the nick of time. Finally, Sarah insists she must go out one last time to the dredge. Ryan is determined to go with her broken leg an all he drags himself to the ally to meet her.   
      The reader gets to view the videos Sarah sends to Ryan as they read by going to her website and typing in the passwords. Reading the book with the videos gives the reader an attachment to the characters and the suspense of the story that carries over to the video watching. I personally jumped a few times while watching since I was so wrapped up in the story. I nearly lost my mind when the very last video would not load and I was waiting and waiting the suspense was killing me.  

172 Hours to the Moon by Johan Harstad 
    NASA has been keeping a lunar base at the south pole of our moon a secrete for over forty years. All of a sudden they design a plan to get the next generation excited about a return to the moon so they can get funding. A lottery open to teenagers across the globe has been created three winners will get a change to go to this base for seven days and help preform experiments along side the scientists. The proposal is under debate but NASA ends up pushing it through. 
   Mia is a Norwegian teen consumed in her musical world. Her punk band is struggling to get out of the basement and on to the stage. Mia's parents constantly nag her to apply into this lottery they say it will be a great opportunity but they say that about everything. She learns her parents have secretly applied for her in her German class when the teacher reads the names out load while advertizing the lottery. Her mother bursts into the band's rehearsal to announce that she won. Completely enraged she crumples and throws the envelope across the room. 
   Antoine a Parisian young man is hopelessly still in love with his ex-girlfriend Simone. He hasn't even told his parents that they have broken up and they are entirely convinced she is the one. Antoine signs up for this lottery to escape the reality of his broken heart. While he's researching this moon lottery he doesn't even think about her and finally feels good about himself.  He sees the lottery as a chance to get as far away from Simon as possible and escape from the loneliness he feels. 
  Midori a Japanese girl applies at the first chance she gets. She sees it as her ticket out of Japan she doesn't want to have a boring life as a housewife that will be the fate of a majority of her classmates.
She feels like she doesn’t fit in at her school and has found friends elsewhere. However she doesn’t want to fit in and New York City is the fantastic place to stand out.She sees this moon trip as a way to live out her dreams in the Big Apple once she returns.
  This is the trip of a lifetime for the teens however it is the biggest risk any of them will take. This moon base has never been occupied by humans in fact it wasn’t not even constructed by man, machines were sent up to the moon to build it. Will they be able to survive 172 hours on the moon?



Halloween Image from internetmonk.com

Skeleton Creek Image from dauntlessmedia.net

172 Hours to the Moon Image from barnesandnoble.com