Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

I recently started reading Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares.  I think it is really fun how the pants fit and look good on all four girls.  So far, the girls have each just left home for the summer experiences, except Tibby who is staying home and has a job.  Her job is at Wallmans, which is like a Walgreens.  Lena and her sister just arrived in Greece to spend the summer with their grandparents.  Lena always imagined her grandparents as famous celebrities.  When she gets there she finds that they are just normal people and she will have to grow to love them.  Carmen is going to visit her dad and his new family.  Her parents recently got divorced.  Bridget is going to a soccer camp.  The girls have set up rules for the pants and will pass them from one to the other during the summer as a way to keep in touch.  Lena has the pants first in Greece.  I can’t wait to learn more about their adventures.  I wonder if they will meet other new friends.  I also wonder how their friendships will change while they are apart and how the pants will help with that.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I recently started reading The Hunger Games.  I started reading it because I heard that The Hunger Games has sold over 6 million copies all over the world.  The movie also just came out and made the most money of any non-sequel movie of all time on its opening day.  So I decided that I should read this book considering that it is so popular.  I have not read too much yet, but I know that Katniss, at age 16, will have her name in the reaping twenty times and that her sister, Prim, will have her name in the reaping for the first time.  Because the book is so popular, I already know the basic story.  I know that Katniss will go into the Hunger Games for her sister.  Katniss will do well in the Hunger Games but I don’t know if she will ultimately die or be the winner.  Katniss is a good hunter and survivor and these skills ought to help her in the Games.  Only one child out of the 24 in the Hunger Games can win.  The rest will all die.  I can’t wait to find out what happens.  I am also curious to know what will happen to Katniss’ family when she is gone.  Katniss is the one who gathers the family’s food because her father died.  I wonder too if Gale, Katniss’s hunting friend, will also go into the Hunger Games.  He will have his name in forty-two times, so the odds are very high that he will be chosen.  If he is in the Hunger Games, he will do a good job just like Katniss because he is also a good hunter.   This means that only one will live and one will die.  This is super scary if it happens that they are both in the game.

Twisted (Pretty Little Liars 9)

I recently started reading Pretty Little Liars 9. It is a very good book and so many unpredictable things happen. One surprising thing is that Spencer's Mom is dating a guy who has perfect kids that are very smart and going to Harvard. One day Spencer meets her Mom's boyfriend's son (the perfect kid) and it turns out that he actually doesn't want to go to Harvard and is very mad at his dad for making him go. Spencer falls in love with him.
Another interesting part of the book involves all four girls go to Jamaica for a little break from all of the A and Alli drama. They keep seeing a girl who reminds them of Alli. The girl keeps dropping little hints that she knows who they are and knows things from the past that only Alli would know. This girl (whose name they don't know) also has burns on her arms from something that happened in book 8 (don't want to spoil anything) and is making them think she is really Alli. The girls try to stay away from her because it is creeping them out. Unfortunately, they can't get away from her.
After they return from Jamaica, the girls stop talking to each other because they are too scared that Alli may have been in Jamaica with them. A few months later, all of the girls get a text saying "meet me at the mailbox by Alli's old house" and each text comes from a different girl. For example, Hannah got a text saying "meet me at the mailbox by Alli's old house" and it was from Aria. Aria, however, did not actually send the text. This was the same for each of the girls -- the text came from someone who did not send it. All of the girls go to the mailbox and are very confused. They open the mailbox and find a postcard from the resort in Jamaica saying "I hear Jamaica is beautiful this time of year. Too bad the four of you can't ever go there. Miss you, A." The four girls are now terrified because until now all of the messages from A had stopped a year ago.
I love this series so much because so many suprising things happen that make you want to keep reading.

13 Little Blue Envelopes

I recently started reading 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson. I am enjoying it so far. In the first part of the book, the main character, Ginger, gets a letter from her lost aunt saying that she has written Ginger several little notes to lead her on a journey. The letter ends by saying, "see you at the 4th Noodle." So, Ginger goes to the 4th Noodle -- a local restaurant. At the 4th Noodle, one of the people working there gives her a box. In the box there are a 13 little blue envelopes. They are marked with numbers 2 to 13. The letter marked number 2 say, "open me on the plane." The original letter from her aunt told her to get a flight to London. While on that flight she opens the 2nd letter. It tells her that when she arrives in London she should walk until she sees a house on the left marked "54a." Then she should knock on the door and wait for the person to open the door. She follows the instructions and a man opens the door and starts talking to Ginger. He says he has to go to work and invites Ginger to go along with him.

I think this book will be very interesting. I can't wait to see what is in all of the other little blue envelopes and where they lead Ginger to in Europe. I also can't wait to see who else she meets and whether she runs into her aunt along the way. I wonder what the aunt will be like.

Never Have I Ever

Never Have I Ever is the sequel to The Lying Game. It is about the same topic -- Sutton is missing and Emma, her long lost twin sister, is in her place trying to figure out who killed Sutton. In this sequel, Emma is narrowing down the people who may have killed Sutton. She figures out that a lot of people have alibis for what they were doing the night that Sutton went missing. Sutton's sister, Laurel, for example, was at a sleepover that night with her tennis team. So, it could not have been Laurel or any of the team members.

This book also has a lot of Lying Game pranks. The Lying Game is a group of Sutton's friends who like to pull very big pranks on each other. One of the pranks was played by Gaby and Lilly, who are twins and two of Emma's suspects. They are not in the Lying Game club, but want to be so they pull a big prank. One night, all of the girls, including Emma in Sutton's place, go camping and on a hike. During the hike, they reach a cliff and Gaby tells Emma to jump off the cliff first. Emma does not want to because she is worried that Gaby and Lilly murdered Sutton and are trying to kill her too. So instead, Emma pushes Gaby down the cliff and they all hear a big "boom." They thought she had fallen and died. Then, all of the other girls get mad at Emma. Emma goes to look for Gaby. Meanwhile, Gaby is hiding in a spot that she built the weekend before and really hadn't fallen very far at all. When she is hiding she makes a bunch of small noises to act like she is stuck. Emma finds her in the hiding spot and says that she is sorry. Gaby says that she will never forgive Emma and wants to hurt her. Emma is very worried (because she thinks Gaby may have killed Sutton). Then everyone says that it was a prank and they had recorded and tricked Emma.

This is just one example of what made the book so interesting and fun. The book is written by Sara Shepard. She has written all of the Pretty Little Liar books and The Lying Game series. She recently published a new book in The Lying Game series called Two Truths and a Lie. I am looking forward to reading it. The Lying Game is also a TV show on ABC family, but the TV show is not very much like the books.

The Lying Game

Over winter break I started reading a series of books called The Lying Game, by Sara Shepard. The books are about a girl named Emma who has a twin sister named Sutton, but does not know it. One day, she is going to Tucson, Arizona and sees a video of a girl who looks exactly like her. She knows it is not her because she didn’t make the video. When she gets to Tucson, people start to call her Sutton because she looks exactly like Sutton. Earlier in the day, she had gotten a message saying to meet somebody in a forest and the note said not to tell anyone because it might be dangerous. So, she did not tell anyone. When she got to Tucson and people started calling her Sutton, she got scared and was afraid to tell anyone that she was not Sutton due to the note. The next day, when she is going to school and pretending to be Sutton, she gets another note saying, “Sutton is dead, keep playing along.” She is really nervous. Emma, pretending to be Sutton, is having a hard time figuring out what is what, who is who and so on. She figures it out and is good at pretending to be Sutton.

Later in the book, Emma realizes that Sutton has several friends who are all in a group called the “Lying Game”. This is a group of girls who all pull pranks on each other. They pull very big pranks, such as Sutton and her friends playing a prank in Nisha, a girl they did not like. They had a fake cop tell Nisha that he had to investigate her locker. This really scared Nisha. Sutton’s friends asked Emma (pretending to be Sutton) when are you going to do a really big prank? This made Emma wonder if Sutton is just playing a prank on her to get her to Tucson.

Then, throughout the book, Emma is trying to figure out who murdered Sutton one person at a time and whether this is all one big prank on her. I really enjoyed this book because it kept my attention through the whole book. The reason I picked this book was because the description on the back caught my eye. It said “I had a life anyone would kill for, and then someone did.” I thought this sounded like a really good book and it was. There are also two other books after The Lying Game in this series and the fourth one is coming out this spring.

Pretty Little Liars

Recently I started reading the Pretty Little Liars series. The Pretty Little Liars series is a very good set of books. The first book is about a lot of things, but the main topic is the disappearance of Alison DiLaurentise. One night, a group of girls (Aria, Spencer, Emily, Hannah and Alison) are having a sleep-over because it was the last day of seventh grade. That night, Alison went missing. Nobody knows where she went and she is still missing three years later. Aria, Spence, Emily and Hannah were all very good friends, but after Alison disappeared, they grew apart. Aria moved to Iceland and the others stopped being friends. Then the DiLaurentise (Alison’s parents) moved out of their house and a new girls, Maya, moved in. Right when Maya got there, all four girls started getting creepy texts, e-mails and IMs about secrets from seventh grade that only Alison knew. All of the letters were signed “A”. The girls have no idea who “A” is. Their only thought is that it could be Alison because she was the only one who knew the secrets. Nobody else knew them.

The girls thought that they were the only people getting the messages until they start talking to each other again and realize that they are all getting them. Then, one day, Maya’s mom is getting a tennis court put into their back yard and they had to dig out an old gazebo that the DiLaurentise’s had in the yard. They found Alison’s body.

When the four girls heard that they found Alison they all thought that she was alive, but then they realized that when people said “found” they meant that her body had been found. Later when they have Alison’s funeral all of the girls sit together. After the funeral, Aria, Spencer, Emily and Hannah each get a text at the same time from “A”. It said, “I’m still here and I know everything. A”

Hearing that made me want to read the second book. This is a series of ten books so far. The author is Sara Sheppard. Pretty Little Liars is also a TV show and it is very good. I am really enjoying the books and can’t wait to figure out who “A” is!