MADreads

One choice, two paths
A review of Pivot Point by Kasie West

 At a school where the football team uses telekinesis to keep balls aloft and other students can manipulate mass to walk through walls, Addie Coleman doesn't think her ability to search the possible outcomes of her choices is terribly glamorous, since she can only see her own future, and only when she faces a specific choice. Still, it's a pretty handy power, and it's one that is particularly useful as she faces the biggest decision of her life so far: which parent she wants to live with after ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on April 29, 2013 | 0 comments

Not your grandma's gray-haired ex-FBI agent
A review of Rage Against the Dying by Becky Masterman

 Brigid Quinn thought she left the past behind when she retired from the FBI. No longer young and blonde, her undercover days of posing as bait for human traffickers and sexual predators are over, and as her 60th birthday nears, she's enjoying adding to her rock garden and learning to cook for her new philosophy professor husband. However, when an open case that has haunted her for years looks like it may finally close with a full confession from a serial killer, she can't help but return to her ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on April 17, 2013 | 2 comments

A haunting tale of love through the centuries
A review of Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

 It takes a pretty spectacular writer to combine vampires, love at first sight, and reincarnation in a teen novel and still come up with something fresh and original, but that's exactly what Marcus Sedgwick has done in his new book, Midwinterblood. This collection of seven linked stories begins in the year 2073, when loner journalist Eric Seven is sent to investigate a colony on the remote northern Blessed Island, where the inhabitants are rumored to have discovered an elixir of ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on April 9, 2013 | 0 comments

Well deserved award
A review of The Round House by Louise Erdrich

 Louise Erdrich knows how to write a book. She's received high praise for most of her past novels, and her latest, The Round House, is every bit as good as the rest. Critics seem to agree: it won the 2012 National Book Award. This story is part mystery, part coming-of-age tale, and part analytical look at Native American tribal life and law in the late 1980s. Joe Coutts has considered himself a pretty normal kid until he turns 13 ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on January 11, 2013 | 0 comments

Forever young
A review of Origin by Jessica Khoury

 When you're the only teenager living in a compound of secret research labs in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, life can be a bit lonely. It's even worse when you're the only person in the world who's going to live forever. In Jessica Khoury's debut novel Origin, Pia is the first and only immortal human, the result of generations of genetic experimentation by scientists who devote their lives to this hidden compound and its ethically questionable research. Pia has been raised by ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on December 11, 2012 | 0 comments

Heart of a seal
A review of The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

 No one writes a fairy tale like Margo Lanagan. Her first novel, Tender Morsels, was one of my favorite books of 2008, and her story collections Red Spikes, Black Juice, and ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on November 19, 2012 | 0 comments

Well worth the wait
A review of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

 It's been a hard year for Nick Dunne. He lost his job, his wife lost her job, his mother died, and his father may follow her soon. Even so, Nick Dunne hasn't been a great husband to Amy and he knows that their fifth anniversary is not going to go smoothly. He's dreading the traditional scavenger hunt that Amy creates for him every year on their anniversary. Her clues, which he's sure he's not going to be able to figure out, will lead him around town to places that have been ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on October 17, 2012 | 0 comments

Clever as a Fox
A review of Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

 I think I've found my favorite book of the summer, now that autumn is in the air. I've read some very good ones, but the only book that has made me actually laugh out loud is Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. Semple was a writer for one of my favorite TV shows of all time, Arrested Development, (which will be back for ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on September 17, 2012 | 0 comments

Slow and steady might not always win the race
A review of The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

 When worrying about the potential death of our planet, there are plenty of things to consider: global warming, holes in the ozone layer, bird flu - the list goes on and on. One possibility that I haven't considered until quite recently is the Earth's rotation slowing down, changing the pull of gravity and the cycle of day and night until the planet slowly becomes uninhabitable. Luckily for me, Karen Thompson Walker has imagined this very situation quite vividly in her debut novel The Age of ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on August 21, 2012 | 4 comments

Your blood might be safe, but guard your psychic energy against these vampires
A review of The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits

 If you're at all interested in vampire history, I highly recommend the History Channel special Vampire Secrets. Besides being very informative, the "historical" reenactments are hilarious, especially the ones about Countess Elizabeth Bathory. The part of the program that really stands out to me, though, is a section about psychic vampires. As the History Channel tells us, there are people out there who ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on June 11, 2012 | 0 comments

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