Duff — Designated Ugly Fat Friend — is the charming nickname that Wesley Rush gives Bianca Piper at the beginning of the novel. Of course, he turns out to be wracked by secret torments, but still. What a douche. Bianca falls for him anyway, initially using him for sex and then peeling away his layers one by one. Meanwhile, her own life seems to be falling apart at the seams. If you can get past the Duff thing, it’s decent YA with a compelling main […]
Okay, first of all — the main character’s name is Hawthorne
The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett kicked off several YA novels I read on my tablet while on vacation last week, and it was definitely the weakest. I finished the whole thing on a plane, so it’s not like I could really have been doing something else super productive at the time, but still. Following on the heels of Katy Tur, it definitely lacked… “But I always wondered, if she could turn her feelings off like a switch, how much was she hiding from us? […]
Be prepared to get pissed off
Should I have tagged this as horror? Katy Tur had the (mis)fortune of following one of the most insane campaigns in modern history — 500 days on the trail with Donald Trump. She recalls it all here — his speeches, the way he treated the press, the stunts he pulled, etc. She documents the places she stayed, the people she met with, and her horror at the realization that he was actually going to become president. “Some politicians have a gift for language. Trump is […]
To this the little old lady crowed triumphantly. “It’s no use, Mr. James – it’s turtles all the way down.”
Well, who doesn’t love John Green. The man has some special ability to tap into other peoples’ minds, and it’s hard not to find yourself in at least some small way in each of his novels. As a person who suffers from anxiety and OCD, I found myself in a big way in Turtles All the Way Down. “We never really talked much or even looked at each other, but it didn’t matter because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe even […]