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!

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

I just started a new book called The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, by Ann Brashares, but I have only read a few chapters. At the beginning of the book, one of the girls, Carmen, buys a pair of jeans at a thrift shop. Carmen and her friends -- Lena, Tibby and Bridget -- each try them on and they look great on all of them. They think it is weird how the jeans fit each of them because some of them are short and others are taller. So, they decide they are magical and to share them over the summer because they are all going to different places. Tibby is staying home. Lena is going to Greece. Bridget is going to a soccer camp and Carmen is going to stay with her Dad in South Carolina. This is the first summer they are going to be apart and they have been best friends since they were born.

The night before they leave they go to Gilda's, the aerobic study where their Mom's met before they were born, and break into the studio to hang out. They bring food and a bobby pin to pick the lock. During the night, they set the rules for the pants and how they are going to share them over the summer. Some of the rules are funny (like you can't pick your nose in the pants but you can sratch your nose). Other rules are more serious (like before you send the pants to the next girl you write the most exciting place you have been in the pants on the left and the most imortant thing that happened on the right).

I am excited to learn more about how the pants travel and what everone does in the pants. It will also be interesting to learn who the girls meet when they are wearing the pants. I wonder if the pants will help them stay connected during the summer. I think that each of the girls have different personalities so that different things will happen to them while wearing the pants.

I found this book because I noticed that a lot of my friends are writing their blogs about it. I think it will be a good book to read now and over winter vacation. I also know that there is a sequel that I can read when I finish this.

The Hole We're In

Last week, I started to read a new book called The Hole We're In. I found this book because it is by the same author (Gabrielle Zevin) as another book I recently read named Elsewhere. It caught my eye because of that. I noticed since I have been reading this book, that the author is not writing in the same way as she did in Elsewhere. In Elsewhere, the main character is talking and explaining and we only know what is happening from her point of view. In The Hole We're In, there are two main characters and the author writes in both of their voices. As a result, we know both character's points of view.

At the beginning of The Hole We're In, one of the main characters, Roger, is at his second son's high school graduation. Roger was the Vice Principal of the high school is son went to. During the graduation, Roger is thinking that if he got a PhD he would be more successful and make more money. So, he goes to school to get a PhD and he and his wife move but since he is not working anymore, the wife Georgia has to work as well. Even with her job, however, they are still not making that much money. The timing could not have been worse because it is their daughter's wedding soon. The daughter keeps nagging Georgia about getting wedding invations and other things that are very expensive. Georgia is very worried about how to support her family. Meanwhile, Roger gets a promotion to write a book with a very famous author. He is not sure if he should take it because it will require a lot of work and he will only get half of the money. His family needs money. He decides to take the job. He is very excited to write the book and also worried.

In this book, the characters are very interesting and they seem very alive like they are real people. The book is ok, but I am not sure if I am going to like it because the subject matter seems a little boring. I have a feeling it will get more interesting.

Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall

I recently started reading the book "Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall." I found this book when I looked on the back and it seemed a lot like the book I just read, "Elsewhere." In both of these books, there is a girl and she is dead. She is trying to figure out where she is in both books. In "Elsewhere," a girl named Liz is on a boat and ends up in a place called Elsewhere. But in "Heaven Looks a Lot like the Mall," the girl Tessa is in her hometown mall. Tessa realizes right away that she is dead because she remembers that she was playing dodgeball and she didn't duck before ball hit her and snapped her neck. But in "Elsewhere," it takes a long time to figure out Liz is dead because she was hit by a car and her death came fast. In "Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall," Tessa is wondering why she is in the mall by her house. She realizes that nobody is there, but she goes to the hot dog stand and a hot is right there, waiting for her with her name on it. Then she wonders if the mall is heaven for her because both of her parents work there on earth and she loves it. But then her dad's heaven would be a bowling alley because he loves bowling. But then she goes to bed and wakes up laying in a hospital, and then a couple seconds later she is in the mall again. She keeps getting visions that she is in the hospital. Then when she is in the mall, she goes out to look for somebody. She finds a boy and asks if she is half-dead because she is healthy and normal in the mall, but hospitalized on earth. So she thinks she is half-dead because she is in heaven but still sick on earth.

The book Heaven looks a lot like the mall is by Wendy Mass. I think this book will get very good and can't wait to finish it

The Magician's Elephant

Over the summer I read a great book called the Magician's Elephant. It is about a boy name Peter. He lives with an old soldier named Vilna Lutz and his parents and sister are dead. He thinks his sister is dead until one day he goes to the market to buy food, but uses the money Vilna Lutz game him to buy food to go to a fortune teller. He asks one question to the fortune teller: "Is my sister Adele still alive?" The fortune teller tells him: "You must find the elephant who will lead you to her." Peter has no idea about an elephant because there isn't one in the entire village. Later that evening, in the Opera House there is a magician. He tries to do a trick to magically appear flowers and instead an elephant magically falls through the roof of the Opera House. This is a suprise to many people in the Opera House. Once Peter hears about the elephant he immidiately wants to see him, but nobody can see the elephant. Later in the book, Peter starts to dream about Adele and where she is now. Soon Adele starts to dream about Peter. This is a great book because it is about how two people who didn't even know the other was alive, come back together.

I have also read another book by this author, Kate DiCamillo, which I really like. She is a really good author and her stories are very creative and engaging.

In my last blog entry, I wrote about the book Elsewhere. This time I am going to write about how I chose this book. I chose the book Elsewhere because I read the back and it sounded very interesting. The back had a letter from one of the main characters, Elizabeth, that was to her science teacher saying that she is dead and that she will not be able to make it to the science fair this year and is sad about it. At the beginning of the book, Liz gets to look through binoculors to see her funeral and she sees that her science teacher is not there and was sad. So she also includes this in the letter on the back of the book. This made me curious because I was wondering why if she is dead how the science teacher got the letter and how did she wrote it.

Now that I am reading the book I am learning more about Liz. By looking in the binoculors she finds out that she is dead. She was killed because she got in a bicycle accident. I also learned that the reason her head was shaved (that I talked about in my first blog entry) is because she was in an operation after her biking accident. She still has a hard time believing that she is dead until she looks in the binoculors and knows that it is really true. Now she has to learn to live in a place that is different.