My Summer in Books: Greetings from Your New Assistant Librarian

Welcome back to NCS! Your friendly neighborhood library staff hope that you had a wonderful summer full of great adventures, especially some adventures in reading! One of my favorite parts of summer has always been the sudden freedom to read whatever I wanted without worrying about homework or school requirements. This summer, I had homework and very little extra free time but I still found time to read a bunch of great books.  Here are a few of them! 

I kicked off the summer in the best way--with zombies! In May and June, I speed through Carrie Ryan's thrilling zombie apocalypse trilogy.  Mary's world is governed by a few basic rules: listen to the Sisterhood, obey the village traditions, and stay inside the fences separating the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.  Following these rules has allowed Mary's small community to survive in the uncertain world following the Return, when a strange disease spread throughout the country killing people and then causing them to rise again after death and become the Unconsecrated, who exist only to grow their ranks.  But when Mary discovers that the village's ruling religious order the Sisterhood is hiding secrets about the Unconsecrated and the world beyond the fences, she must decide between her past and an uncertain future in The Forest of Hands and Teeth.  Mary's tale is exciting and scary and romantic and I absolutely could not put the book down!  If you like zombie flicks and/or fast-paced dystopian romance, this novel is for you! The thrilling story then continues in The Dead Tossed Waves and The Dark and Hollow Places.

In June and early July, I was excited to read new books from a couple of my favorite authors, Libba Bray and Maggie Stiefvater.  Libba Bray, whose other books include A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine, always creates really interesting characters and stories and her newest book, Beauty Queens is no exception!  A plane full of contestants in a teen beauty pagent crashes on a mysterious island, leaving the girls stranded without food, shelter, or lipgloss. Faced with a sudden reality of survival, this group of very different young women learn about themselves and connect with each other in ways that might never have happened back in the pressure-cooker of civilization.  This book is both completely hilarious and deeply thought-provoking.  

Meanwhile, I was thrilled when, after months of waiting, I finally got my hands on the last book in Maggie Stiefvater's Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy (which began with Shiver): Forever.  In the ongoing debate of werewolves versus vampires, I usually have been more of a werewolf fan and this trilogy has pretty much sealed the deal on my loyalty.  Since her survival of a wolf attack as a child, Grace Brisbane has always felt a strange connection to the wolf pack living in the woods behind her home in Mercy Falls, Minnesota, especially a particular wolf with yellow eyes.  Then she learns that 'her wolf' is in fact not a wolf at all but a boy named Sam who turns into a wolf when the temperature drops.  Grace and Sam's connection strengthens as they struggle to save Sam from losing his humanity forever in Shiver and their relationship is tested further when Grace must face her own unpredictable link to the wolves in Linger.  I love Stiefvater's lyrical writing and her three-dimensional characters; I feel completely immersed in the world and emotions described when I read these novels.  In Forever, we follow Grace, Sam, and the rest of the pack as they discover more secrets behind the werewolves' transformations and face serious danger from the people of Mercy Falls.  


This summer I also fell in love in with Stephanie Perkins' first novel Anna and the French Kiss and since we just got our copy in the NCS library, I'll be posting a review later this week!  

                                                                                                            ~ Ms. Dickinson

Where did books take you this summer?