Free Fall

by Ariela Anhalt

Luke's life isn't easy. When he was 14, his father killed himself and his mother wasn't together enough to tell her son or to be of any help to him. The headmaster at his boarding school is the one who had to inform him of the death.

Now Luke is a senior who still hasn't dealt with his grief and anger. He hates his mom and has no relationship with her. Plus he's pretty shy, so the only relationship he has is with his best friend Hayden & Hayden's friends. Hayden oozes power and charm and pretty much runs everything at the school. Then a new boy, Russell, comes and challenges this. He even steals Hayden's girlfriend.

When Hayden, Russell, and Luke go to the cliffs for Russell's jump (a school tradition), Russell dies hitting the rocks instead of landing in the water. Now everyone wants to know what really happened up there. Was it an accident or a murder?

Quote I liked:

"Luke couldn't change his past, but he could change his future. He could take control of his life. He could do the right thing in this moment. It was time that someone stepped up."

Going in Circles

by Pamela Ribon

I really liked this book. It was an impulse buy at Super K. It was about a woman in total melt down because her husand left her after five months of marriage then changed his mind after a few weeks & moved back in . He won't tell her where he went or why, and the entire thing has caused her to doubt herself and start having anxiety attacks, so she moves out. Eventually, an unlikely girl (goth) at work pushes her out of her misery and talks her into joining the roller derby. So as she becomes skater "Hard Broken", she begins to find a way to heal herself.

Quotes I liked:

"Sometimes I marvel at what the female body can endure. We can create life, giving our bodies up to grow another human being, one who takes things from us we need, like vitamins and nutrients. We become a host, a vessel of life giving blood and shelter, only to be torn practically apart by the childbirth process. Afterward, we are never the same. Our bodies change, stretched and worn, scarred. We can never go back to the person we were before."

"When it comes to problems or misunderstandings, I'm like a sitcom character. I want everything bad or uncomfortable to be over within twenty-four minutes. Less than half an hour later, I want us to be swapping apologies, each of us insisting we are more to blame, but have learned 'something very important' from all of this. I want things resolved so the credits can roll, so that I can find rest."

"I do declare, that you need to either get over yourself or get yourself a life. And Lord have mercy, I hope you decide to do both. Preferably in that order. Amen."

(The next quote has special meaning to me, because that's my super power too. Plus, most people can't remember anything, so they think you exaggerate or make stuff up. I find this infuriating.)

"I have given up wondering how it is that Francesca can stay on top of so many people's schedules all at once. It's one thing to know exactly where her boyfriend is at any point, but she often remembers not only what I'm supposed to do over a weekend, but exactly what I was doing this time a week ago. This is Francesca's weird super power. She says she's been this way her whole life. When she thinks of people a mental calendar appears around them, like they are surrounded by their own day planners. When I first marveled at how much this must come in handy, she told me it was more like an annoyance. Friends of hers over the years have accused her of being a creepy stalker, when in fact she can't help it that she remembers how the last time you were in a sushi restaurant with her you ordered a rainbow roll, two spicey tuna hand rolls, and shishito peppers extra spicey. 'I would love to have that part of my brain used for something important,' she once told me. 'Or for the very least for my own personal memorage storage, but I don't have a say in it. Do you want to know what my best friend in the 3rd grade wore on the first day of school? A green jumper with big yellow buttons and two white bunnies embroidered on the front with a carrot between them. Why will I remember this forever? I don't know, but I will.'

"Oh, we're going to have a baby. This is the worst thing ever."
"Maybe not, maybe you'll have a cute kid that will hate everything as much as you do. And you can teach it all the things that suck in life, like laughing and rainbows. You can make sure he hates unicorns. Or if it's a girl, you can tell her how she is gentically crazy and will never make a man happy, and she's destined to live a life alone except for her cats. You always know what to say to people."
"Stop trying to make me laugh."

"These things happen sometimes, but you never know, it might work itself out. Don't be too hard on yourself. Just try and make it through today. There's nothing you can do right now, right? Whatever is supposed to happen will happen. That's life. Life is unpredictable, and we just hang on for the ride. Hopefully, with a seat belt. And if you're not wearing a seat belt, maybe because you're on a motorcycle, at least you should be wearing a helmet. Although that doesn't protect your heart, does it?"
'Dad, what are you doing?'
"I don't know."
'You sould crazy.'
"I know. I'm sorry. I don't know what to say, and you're not talking, so I'm saying a bunch of bullshit."
'I appreciate the bullshit.'

"We were going to buy a house, start a family, but ever since you and Matthew split up, Pete's worried that we're not going to make it, and all he talks about is whether or not we'll ever get a divorce. And if this keeps up, we will get one, and I don't really want to end up like you and Matthew."
"You can't predict your day any more than you can predict the next thing a person's going to say. By the way, you've been an incredibly shitty friend."

(It's true that this character was a bad friend, however I do understand what she means in this instance. About 9 years ago, a close friend of mine got divorced. She had no warning, her husband who baked cookies with her the night before for their son's birthday party, asked for a divorce in the morning and told her that he'd been cheating for more than a year. It put me into a total funk and gave me all kinds of things to worry about. We had always scrapbooked together too, so I kept thinking how painful all of those happy family pages and books were going to be now. I felt so bad vicariously that I couldn't scrapbook myself for almost a year.)

"The rules of the track work well for life. Roller derby is life in a tiny circle. You can only go forward, even if you find yourself turned around, facing the wrong way. There's speed, unpredictability, and danger. You can't be sure what's going to happen, you don't always know when you'll stop, and it appears most people are out to get you. You will fall. You will get hurt. You will get up again. Look, what's the worst thing that could happen? Anything that hurts will eventually heal. You get back up. You keep going. You get stronger. You get better. Life goes on. That's it. ...or you get a skate to the face. You know. Either way."

My Invented Life

by Lauren Bjorkman

This is a book I got from the library for Katie to read. It had a cute cover, and looked like a good book. It was, but it wasn't anything like what I expected. The main character, Roz, thinks that her perfect sister might be a lesbian. While trying to get her sister to tell her the truth, she tells people on a blog that she has a girlfriend. This results in a lot of interesting situations. In the end, Roz learns a lot about herself, her friends, and eventually, her sister.

The characters in this book are very likable. Roz, especially makes me laugh, she consults an on-line ouija board for major decisions in her life.

Quotes I like:

" A devious mind is a terrible thing to waste."

"I don't respond well when people strip me of my delusions. Like the time when my best friend in the 2nd grade informed me that there wasn't a tooth fairly. I hid under her bed and cut off the pink mane of her My Little Pony."

"Mom suffers from classical bad timing. I wonder if showing up at the wrong moment is an innate talent or a skill she's been developing."

"The difference between a prince and a toad is overrated because they are both just boys under the glitter and warts."

"You know how some people have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other? Well...your angel hangs out around your heart, but your devil is in charge of your tongue."

"The self-help book I'd write: I love Myself.....almost."

"Teens are often self-destructive, and feelings aren't always logical," she says. "You'll understand when you are a mother."....'at this comment, My anger builds to violence, the hair-pulling, nail scratching, and shin-kicking kind. I storm off to stew behind the speaker. When I have a daughter, a million years from now, I will accept her for who she is. More than that, I will encourage her to follow her heart, to embrace herself. I hope she turns out to be even crazier than I am.'

The Spectacular Now

by Tim Tharp

I didn't really like this book, although, of course, I was still compelled to read the entire thing. It was about Sutter Keely, a senior in high school, who embraces the weird and lives only in the now. Really he's a drunk, and the amount of drunk driving in this book drove me crazy. He's a likable enough character, but he's really a mess. I wanted to fix him the entire time I was reading, and I couldn't understand how a mom could be so absent and blind to what was going on with her own kid. It had a non-ending though...the kind where you have to infer what happens next. I hate those. I like to know!

Quotes I Like:

"Im more worried that I didn't exactly hear what she wants me to do from now on to save our relationship."
'So what, you weren't listening at all? If it was me, I'd be hanging on every word.'
"You can't hang on every word, there's too much going on at any given moment. All you can do is absorb the feel of it."
(isn't that guy logic?)

"I don't look down on anyone, except maybe for the pretentious, and you can even feel sorry for them if you think about it." (I'd like a shirt with that sentence on it!)

"It's sad in a way to watch old movie stars grow old beneath their fabulous hair."

Dying Breath, A Forensic Mystery

by Alane Ferguson

A book I got from the library for Katie & read myself. It was ok, but I think I would have liked it more had I read the first three books in the series.

Cameryn is seventeen and wants to be a medical examiner in the future. Currenly, she is in an apprenticeship with the local medical examiner. The only problem now is that all the bodies they are examing are from Kyle who used to be Cameryn's boyfriend, and Cameryn is definitely on his kill list.