Thanks for an awesome Teen Read Week!

Thanks to everyone who sent reviews of great reads during Teen Read Week! I loved reading about what YOU had been reading, and I hope everyone keeps discovering (and telling us about!) great books even though the week is over.

As for my Teen Read Week, I didn't get through as many books as I'd hoped, unfortunately. (I admit it, I caved and did the dishes and took out the garbage.) The one book I did finish, Private by Kate Brian, I would definitely UNrecommend. The whole book is about a girl who keeps trying to win the approval of a group of popular girls who don't treat her well. She also keeps going back to a boyfriend who doesn't respect her. The reason she keeps doing these things is because she thinks it's important for her to get in "good" at her new boarding school so she doesn't have to go back to her stress-filled homelife. But the most irritating thing of all is that she has OTHER friends at the school who treat her well, but she keeps snubbing them in favor of the friends who don't respect her. Not cool at all. It's also one of those books that's part of a series, so even at the end of the book, you don't find out what's "really" going to happen. Grr.

I'm also almost finished reading White Midnight by Dia Calhoun. White Midnight is a fantasy novel about a slave girl who agrees to marry "the Thing" -- a monster in her master's attic -- in exchange for her family's freedom. The book has panned out differently than I'd expected so far, and I can't make a good review until I'm done (sometimes the last page of a novel can make me change my opinion about the whole thing!). But it's definitely an interesting read and the main character's motivations are much more believable and sympathetic than the main character's in Private.

Has anyone out there read these books or their sequels? Have a different opinion than mine? I'd love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment or email blog @ newmoon.org.