2018-2019 Waltham Hawks Honors Freshman Book Reviews

Sylvie Budzinski Snow Falling By Jane Villanueva When my all-time favorite TV show was made into a novel, I knew I just had to read it. Jane the Virgin is a popular show involving romance, mystery, crime, and family values, and was adapted into Snow Falling, which is set in 1902. I was slightly disappointed in the basic and somewhat elementary writing, though it was still a good storyline that was interesting and easy to follow. The story starts on Josephine’s 21st birthday and is told by a wise narrator. She has just finished celebrating with her mom and abuela--it includes some spanish dialect--when she receives a knock on her door. It is a kind policeman warning her to stay inside since there has been some crime in the city. They have a magical first meeting, and the story then fast forwards to 2 years later when Josephine and the policeman, Martin, are dating. They get engaged, and their relationship seems to be going well. That is until she encounters Rake, the owner ...

The Pursuit of a Dream Thara Belony On The Come Up Angie Thomas How far have you gone to make your dreams a reality? Is it something that you hope to pursue, or is it a matter of survival? Brianna (Bri) Jackson is a girl who is just trying to make it. Her only dream is to become a rapper. As the daughter of a legendary underground rapper who died just before his career took off, she has big shoes to fill. She lives with her mother (Jay) and her older brother Lawrence--mostly referred to as Trey--in Garden Heights. Life for Bri and her family begins to spirit downwards when her mom suddenly loses her job. In a matter of weeks, the fridge is almost empty, and the threat of being evicted is becoming ever more real. All of this anger and frustration in Bri comes out by way of a song that ends up going viral for the wrong reasons. People from her father's past also begin to play a role in Bri’s life. Bri finds herself after having been through the terrible storm that all these ...

Catherine Perez Slasher Girls and Monster Boys By Multiple Authors Have you ever thought about the origin of some of your favorite stories? How about Alice in Wonderland except the bunny is the villain... A group of authors come together and take classic stories, movies, and even shows that have happy endings and transform them into something the reader would almost not even recognize. There is a total of fourteen short stories that are included in this book. Each story takes a previous work of art and twists it in a way you would never have imagined or thought possible. When reading these tales, I find that some are far more frightening than others, but they are all scary in their own way. I don’t like many books, but this particular book kept me interested throughout the whole time I was reading it. There are many parts within the book where I questioned what was happening; books like this are the ones I end up liking the most because they get me to think deeper about the ...

Love and Other Trainwrecks Leah Konen      Love is not the only trainwreck involved in this book. Love and Other Train Wrecks by Leah Konen is a realistic fiction book that follows the story of two teenagers, Noah and Ammy, on a train to Hudson, New York. They’re forced to sit next to each other for the entirety of the hour and a half ride. When they start talking, they realize they are complete opposites: Noah is kind-hearted and a complete hopeless romantic, whereas Ammy is cold and doesn’t seem to believe in love at all.      The main reason why Ammy doesn’t believe in love is because of her poor experience with it. Her parent’s marriage didn’t go well, and she grew accustomed to pain and betrayal being associated with love. Noah is on the opposite end of the spectrum; his reasoning for going to Hudson is to attempt to revive his relationship with his ex-girlfriend by proving that he can be “exactly who she wants...[him] to be”(Konen 62).   ...

Ashley Marquez The Fault in Our Stars By John Green      “You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world … but you do have some say in who hurts you” (313).      This sad and tragic story is a love story full of emotion. 16 year-old Hazel Grace suffers from stage 4 Thyroid cancer with metastasis forming in her lungs. As a cancer fighter, she has been able to do maintain her GED, take college classes, all while she has her regular doctors appointments. As a teen, she is reluctant to go to a support group that takes place in the basement of a church. Later in the story, she realizes how beneficial going to this group was. In support group, she meets a young man: Augustus Waters, a cancer survivor. He suffered from osteosarcoma.  He is drawn to her in a way that makes Hazel uncomfortable because she has never had a relationship before. They begin to talk and hit it off, but she tries to push him away because she believes she’s “a grenade and...

Sarah Toole Empire of Storm Sarah J. Maas This the fifth book in the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J Maas. The story is told from 3rd person omniscient view, and three storylines are alternated throughout the entire book until they all meet. Aelin Galathynius, former assassin and princess, arrives at her home country Terrasen at the beginning of the book after freeing the Adarlan people from the corrupted king and giving the crown to the crown prince, her friend Dorian. She and her court arrange a meeting with powerful allies, but the meeting goes poorly and no alliances are formed. They set off for a coastal city to free it from Adarlan occupation. Meanwhile, the witches in the mountains are ordered to sack Rifthold, the capital of Adarlan, to get it for Erawan, the main bad guy in charge. Manon, the wingleader of her coven and all covens in the Morath mountains goes to the palace and ends up killing a Yellowlegs witch and saves the king, Dorian. This goes against all witch ...

Rylie Warren Marcelo in the Real World By: Francisco X. Stork      Do you ever wonder what it is like living with a disability that would make you think differently, act differently, or even have an entirely different personality? In the realistic fiction novel, Marcelo In The Real World written by Francisco X. Stork, the main character Marcelo struggles with an autism-like condition that generates him to see and think of things very differently than others around him, and no doctor can identify what it is. Marcelo has many things about him that make him special: he’s shy, quiet, private, and most importantly, he’s himself. Unlike other boys his age, Marcelo enjoys conversing about religion; others enjoy the topic of girls. Patterson is the name of the school that Marcelo attends, Patterson is made for kids with disabilities where he can secure with peers that are just like him. Unfortunately, in the summer of his junior year, his father demands that Marcelo gets a job ...

Anja Brooks On The Come Up By Angie Thomas On The Come Up by Angie Thomas is about a teen rapper named Bri. Bri wants to be one of the best rappers out there. Her dad was an underground hip-hop legend; then one day, he was shot. Her mom was a drug addict and just lost her job.  Then at school something happens that makes everyone label her has a “hoodlum”(Thomas 68). Out of anger, she writes a song: it goes viral, but for the wrong reasons. She finds herself stuck in the middle of a controversy; feeling like now she has to make the come up. I recommend this book if you fiction and hip hop music and Angie Thomas’ other book The Hate U Give. In this book, Bri writes raps for rap battles and in her free time. She has a notebook full of all her songs. Another reason I would recommend this book is that it makes you feel like you can overcome anything; you think if Bri can do it so can I. Her first rap at her first rap battle was “Ready for war, Milez? Nah, you f*cked...

Kaleigh Walsh A Simple Favor By, Darcey Bell “My mother used to say: Everyone has secrets. That’s why you can never really know anyone else. Or trust anyone. It’s why you can never know yourself. Sometimes we even keep secrets from ourselves...And I wonder if she was not just preparing me but programming me for secrecy and mistrust. Did she sense that I would grow up to have darker and more shameful secrets than anyone else’s? Secrets I mostly manage to keep- even from myself?”(1). A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell is one of the best books I have read. It pulls you in from reading the first page and keeps you pulled in until you read the last page. There’s mystery, romance, drama and it all blends together to give you an amazing read. It starts when Emily and Stephanie meet picking up their sons from school. Nicky( Emily’s son) and Miles ( Stephanie’s son) are best friends and ask to have a playdate. The moms agree and hang out while their sons are playing together....

Cole Gaynor   A Storm of Swords George R. R. Martin      A continent torn into bits by war, scorched by the brutal raging of five kings. Deception, intrigue, a constant battle for supremacy and above all, the overwhelming threats of invaders, betrayal, and a cold death at the hands of your enemies. A Storm of Swords , the third of George R. R. Martin’s epic A Song Of Ice And Fire series is a rollercoaster of the entangling and captivating plot throwing the reader around at every turn. He continues to throw a stupendous amount of raw information at the reader in a somehow barely palatable form, but the story is always more than enough action and surprise for the reader. Even in comparison to the previous books, A Storm Of Swords is insane. It has more of the unforeseen plot elements that marked the series than its two predecessors and changes the course of the story more than anything before it. Almost any element of the story would be considered a spoiler...

Ava Lourie To All The Boys I've Loved Before By Jenny Han “Do you think there’s a difference? Between belonging with and belonging to, I mean?” “Sure. One implies choice; the other doesn’t,” (Han 190). The realistic fiction novel To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han is about a young girl in high school named Lara-Jean Covey. She is filled with imagination and creativity. She has had 5 main crushes in her life: Peter Kavinsky, Josh Sanderson, John Ambrose McClaren, Lucas Krapf, and Kenny Donati. These boys have no idea that Lara Jean has had a crush on them at some point in her life, and to cope with her feelings she writes fake love letters to them and puts them in her late mother's hat box. She does this as a way to express her emotions without actually confronting the boys: “When I write, I hold nothing back. I write like he’ll never read it. Because he never will. Every secret thought, every careful observation, everything I’ve saved up inside me, I put it a...

Kayla Konstantopoulos Everything, Everything Nicola Yoon        “Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I, Maddy, am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster” (43). In the book Everything, Everything , by Nicola Yoon, Maddy has to make a choice. Live life in a bubble or risk everything for love.       In the book, Everything, Everything , by Nicola Yoon, the main character, Maddy, has a very rare disease called Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID). This disease causes you to be allergic to almost everything and have a very weak immune system. She refers to it as “bubble baby disease” because she can’t go anywhere; she has to stay in her house all day and every day, which she compares to a bubble. Since she can’t leave her house she only talks to two people: her mom and nurse, Carla. Her dad and brother died when she was only 4 months old from a car ...

Siella Agostino To All The Boys I've Loved Before by: Jenny Han      “When someone’s been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it’s like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you’re just clutching air and grit. That’s why you can’t save it all up like that. Because by the time you finally see each other, you’re catching up only on the big things, because it’s too much bother to tell about the little things. But the little things are what make up life” (Han 294).      The novel,  To All The Boy’s I’ve Loved Before, by Jenny Han centers around Lara-Jean Covey who is a young girl that lives with her older sister Margot, her younger sister Kitty, and her dad. Her mother had passed away when she was very little which led Margot to take on a motherly role in each of all lives.      Wh...

Jack Hazel Paper Towns By John Green How would you react if you were told to come with your neighbor on an adventure in the middle of the night without any warning beforehand? In the first half of  Paper Towns  by John Green, Quentin, the protagonist who is also referred to as Q, is put through this situation. The reader is introduced to Q at the beginning of the novel during a flashback, in which he was still a little kid, with his neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, which portrays them as very close friends. Then the reader is introduced to Q’s best friends at his high school, Ben and Radar. Once Q gets home from school and goes to sleep that night he gets woken up in the middle of the night by Margo who he hasn’t spoken to in years. She wakes him up telling him that she needs him to drive her out to run some errands and visit a bunch of different peoples’ houses. Q refuses at first but eventually gives in and takes her to all the houses she told him to go to where she...

Mohaned Aljundi When the Game Was Ours By Larry Bird and Earvin Magic Johnson Two of the greatest cities, two of the greatest players; and the never-ending rivalry. Larry Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson have competed against each other throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Their rivalry started when they played against each other in college basketball and since then; they have made each other their “Measuring stick” (Johnson Intro xi) Since they desperately wanted to be better than each other and had this constant thrive to have a better career which made both of them become better players. Although this rivalry was very intense back then, they both feel like “The respect was always there” ( Bird Intro VIII) and feel like they wouldn't be where they are without each other. This rivalry/relationship has greatly affected their personality and mindsets. In this book, it also talks about how both players affected how people view racism since Larry Bird was white and Magic was black. ...

Violet Forney Naked Economics By Charles Wheelan To those who don’t understand it, economics can be an extremely tedious subject. Is it a science, or does it involve complex math? Why can’t I keep my eyes open when another person attempts to explain this mystery to me? Naked Economics answers these questions while relating the topics you learn about to real-world issues. Instead of boring the reader with overly complex vocabulary, Wheelan teaches the basic concepts of economics in a practical yet humorous way. He uses examples that will make a reader laugh out loud while they learn about important economic ideas which include the following: how markets work, human capital, financial markets, the use of incentives and disincentives, economic indicators, and many more. This book proves that learning about a subject like economics can be enlightening while simultaneously being enjoyable. Wheelan shows the reader how important an understanding of this science can be by explaining how pr...