Second Star

I couldn't help myself; I ran out and grabbed the only other novel by Alyssa Sheinmel that they had in stock. This one was Second Star, published last year and recently released in paperback. I didn't have as strong of a connection with it that I did with The Stone Girl, but it was still amazing. I can't get over how Sheinmel writes; her way with words is beautiful and music to my ears eyes. It took me no time at all to finish this novel and it kept my rapt attention until the very last page.

Wendy just graduated high school and is getting ready to go to Stanford University in the fall. Her best friend since Kindergarten, Fiona, is practically attached to her at the hip. But with Fiona's new boyfriend, Wendy feels pushed aside just a little, and as she gets wrapped in, and then obsessed with finding her twin brothers, John and Michael, who disappeared one day, things go sour. Wendy can't get over that her brothers are still out there, hiding in some surfing hide-out that they always talked about, still surfing every day. The case is already closed though; there was a huge surfing event up north where two young boys went missing, and while they're bodies were never found, fragments of their surfboards washed up. So when Wendy comes across this boy at the senior bonfire who is there one minute and gone the next, she can't get him out of her mind and is intrigued.

Wendy's journey starts with a drive up north trying to find a hide out surfing spot based on a picture that she is convinced her brothers left her as a clue. She finds the place after some searching, along with the boy from the bonfire. His name is Peter, and she's enchanted by him. She keeps on going back to this place, called Kensington, where all these under-aged surfers live at abandoned beach homes and surf all day long. Wendy starts surfing, keeping in mind that her brothers are the end goal. But while life at Kensington is all whipped cream with a cherry on top for a while, nothing good can last forever. Wendy learns that Peter was lying, he did know her brothers. She learns about the other side of the beach and the wild parties that happen all night long. That side of the beach belongs to the "dusters" aka the druggies. She learns Peter actually kicked her brothers out after they got addicted to the dust, and Wendy traipses over to the other side of the beach in search of answers. What she doesn't realize is that she walked over there during the middle of a wild party, and the entrance fee is taking a hit of the dust. Wendy doesn't react well at all, and eventually finds herself in the hospital. In a psychiatric ward to be exact, with doctors telling her she's suffered a psychiatric break from the grief. They tell her she made up Peter and the surfing; they tell her she's been on a wild cocktail of drugs for months. She tells them what they want to hear after a while, but gets lost in trying to figure out what was and what wasn't true.

When her parents want to send her to a treatment center in Montana, no where near the water, she freaks out and runs away from home again. This time though, it's with the drug dealer living on "the other side" of the beach at Kensington. But he appears to care so much, to get it. She travels with him all the way up the coast, while he maintains they're going searching for her brothers. But bad things happen up the coast, like Peter's friend Bella saying she actually saw her brothers drown. That she was there, and never told Wendy the whole time she lived at Kensington. She did live at Kensington right?

Will Wendy ever get her life sorted out? Can she determine if Kensington is a real place, or just a place in her mind that she created out of grief? Did Wendy ever really surf? Did Wendy try and kill herself up north to get close to her brothers again? Can Wendy resume her goody two shoes life she has had most of her life and get back on track to go to Stanford?

Pick up Second Star by Alyssa Sheinmel today and soon you'll find yourself picking up her other books as well!

NEED

When I saw an available arc by the amazing author Joelle Charbonneau, an author local to my area who wrote the amazing The Testing trilogy, I was bouncing up and down with joy. You see, I've had the pleasure to meet Joelle in person, and since I can clearly remember how amazing The Testing series was, I was super excited to get my hands on NEED. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that I read this book the same day I received it, neglecting all my other duties with no regrets. It was spectacular, and I savored every second I got to read NEED once it got going.

The basis for NEED is for you to ask yourself, what to you really NEED. Not want, but need. If you're a teenager in high school, there's probably a lot of things you think you need. Kaylee is the main star of the show, she's known as the crazy one because her brother is dying and needs a transplant to save his life, which has caused Kaylee to pull some dumb stunts in the name of love. Kaylee has a best friend who has a pretty big role in the novel, and is pretty much her one and only friend. There are a lot of other people, and a lot of different POV's going on, which can make this novel hard to follow in the beginning. I'm not a huge fan of lots of POV's and prefer one strong voice, but the novel was so intense and moving that once I figured out who was who and where they all were, I really didn't mind.

The basis is the novel is a mysterious website that pops up for this one high school, asking you to tell them what you need and in return you do something, prove it and they give it to you. Need a new cell phone? Invite six friends. But as the needs become greater, people pay a bigger price to access those needs. Pretty soon the entire high school is wrapped up in this cyber game that's about to destroy them all. Everything comes at a price, right? Apparently teenagers at this Wisconsin high school don't notice that until it's too late because they think they need the things they're asking for. Except they don't, they want it. There's one exception though, Kaylee does NEED the transplant for her brother. So she's really confused when the website takes forever to tell her to do anything. She isn't aware that it's because she actually asked for something she needs, not something she wants.

For a while, no one can see that the tragedies happening in this town are connected to NEED, especially since it's secretive and only the teenagers of the town know about it. The police can't get anywhere, and the teenagers are oblivious. With things starting to fall apart as people are getting hurt and nearly killed, Kaylee sees the truth and start searching for answers. She can see how the website is ruining lives and she knows it has to stop. With the help of others with her pleas, she gets on the track of discovering the truth behind NEED. But is it going to be too late to save herself, her brother, her best friend and others in her tiny city? Only time will tell who's behind NEED and if she can go from zero to hero in Nottawa.