Passion

**Book 1 * Book 2**

I liked this book. A lot.

Continuing on with the girl in love with a fallen angel, this book goes back.

After the end of the last book, with all its chaos, Luce begins to use her Announcers to go back to her past lives. She wants to finally understand the whole curse that she is forced to endure with Daniel. She wants to change it, make it so that she won't die, so he won't constantly worry about her death.

While Luce is jumping to her past lives and seeing her death over and over, Daniel is always one step behind her, trying to catch up and bring her back to her time.

Both of them learn more about their love and their curse.

There's just an interlude book and one more book left of this series. I'll be sad when it's done.

Torment

*Book 1*

This was a bit darker than the first book, and I liked that.

Daniel put Luce in a new school on the other side of the country to protect her. But he clams up every time she asks him questions. She's frustrated, confused, and alone. He can't be around her like he wants to be, so she starts questioning whether their relationship is really what it's been hyped to be - true love.

Since Luce is at this new boarding school, she discovers that she's around Nephilim, kids that have some sort of angel in their lineage. While she's taking classes with this kids, she starts to experiment with the Announcers, the shadows that have followed her all her life. While doing this, she is able to glimpse parts of her past lives.

She just has more questions. She asks questions, and ends up in a huge fight with Daniel. She just doesn't know what to do.

I wasn't expecting the ending, but it created a nice lead in to the third book of the series.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

**Book 1 * Book 2**

This is easily one of my favorite Harry Potter book. It takes me forever to get through this series right now, because I'm reading in conjunction with Pottermore, so I have to wait for them to open chapters. Well, now I have to wait for them to open the fourth book.

I have a hard time calling this a children's book. The series progresses in such a way that the books become more mature, darker, and just generally not children's.

Harry is thrust into his past with the appearance of the Dementors, who guard Azkaban prison. Sirius Black has escaped, and everything points that he is after Harry. But, when the Dementors, who are on the hunt for Black come around Harry, he is forced to hear the last moments of his parents.

Professor Lupin, the third Defense Against the Dark Arts professor that these students have had since being at Hogwarts, helps Harry in his pursuit to defend himself against the horrors of his past.

Hermione is taking way too many classes, and nobody knows how she's managing to go to two classes at the same time.

Everything that comes together is almost unexpected. It's such a good book. I love it.

Fallen

I read so many bad reviews about this book on Goodreads that I was convinced that I was going to hate it. Oh, how wrong I was. I actually enjoyed it.

Granted, it does fall in to the same category that Twilight does. It's the first book in a teen paranormal romance series. And I know that there are books that are in that genre that aren't like Twilight, but, honestly, this kind of is like Twilight. There's the battle for the heart of a girl between a two supernatural beings. Like Twilight.

It takes a long time to really get to where you get what's going on. Luce, the main character, is forced into a reform school after an unexplainable accident happens to a boy she likes. Her first day she meets both Cam and Daniel. Cam takes an immediate liking to her, but Daniel tries everything he can to push her away.

Luce finds that she is drawn to Daniel and, while Cam has charm, she finds him pushy and overbearing. But Daniel soon gives in and explains to her why she is so drawn to him.

I hate that I admit that I love books like this. I'm going to be 26 in two months and I love these cheesy drama filled teen books.

The Horse and His Boy

**Book 1 * Book 2**

Another Narnia book that follows new characters. The characters in this book are Shasta, a slave boy to a fisherman, Bree, a talking horse, Aravis, a noble girl, and Hwin, another talking horse.

The book mostly revolves around Shasta and Bree. Shasta is escaping after hearing the fisherman planning to sell him to a nobleman. Bree is the nobleman's horse, who desperately wants to return to Narnia. So in the middle of the night, they leave.

Along their journey they meet Aravis, who is running away from home to keep from marrying a much older man. She rides Hwin, who is also trying to return to Narnia.

Their adventure leads Shasta to discoveries about himself that he never expected.

I liked it. It was a heartwarming kind of book.

Deja Dead

I really liked this book. My mom had read it, so I went in knowing that, while the character is named the same as the one on Bones, it wasn't the same character. She has some similarities, but this is not the perfection based Brennan.

The one huge negative that I have about this book is the French. I get that it takes place in Montreal, but I don't speak a bit of French, so at least once a chapter, there were entire sentences that I didn't understand. Occasionally there would be a translation immediately following the French, but usually I was stuck to just wonder what I had missed.

Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist who is called on to help solve a series of murders involving the dismemberment and brutality of women. She gets really involved and keeps overstepping her bounds to ask questions and do extra investigating.

Things turn bad when Tempe's best friend Gabby turns up brutally murdered while a picture of Tempe and her daughter in the grave. She suddenly has to fear for her own and her daughter's lives.

This was a great book in that you knew the killer's alias early on - St. Jacques - but you don't learn his identity until the very end. It definitely kept my attention.

Sisterhood Everlasting

**Book 1 * Book 2 * Book 3 * Book 4**

Of all the books in this series, this book, the final book, was the one that I desperately needed tissues for.

This takes place ten years after the conclusion of Forever in Blue. The Septembers have all gone their separate ways, and, try as they might, they have drifted apart. Then, suddenly Lena, Bridget, and Carmen get a letter from Tibby inviting them to Greece for a reunion.

Lena is teaching art and still wondering about the possibility of Kostos. She barely talks to anyone, but she has started learning Greek.

Carmen is an actress. She's engaged to a man who treats her like she's stupid. And she is so focused on her career and upcoming wedding that she can't make time to get in touch with her friends.

Bridget is in San Francisco with Eric, who became a lawyer. She constantly moves them from apartment to apartment, never able to stay in one place. She also constantly loses her phone or doesn't pay the bill, so it is harder for her friends to get in touch with her.

Tibby moved with Brian to Australia. But as time goes by, she stops contacting her friends. They get concerned about her, but then excuse her by saying that she's just busy.

So, with the tickets and invitations to Greece, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget are excited to actually be together again.

Then, the three States girls arrive to no Tibby. The news gets worse when they learn that Tibby died by drowning and that she had written letters to each other them that essentially says goodbye.

The mystery of the why of Tibby's death as well as the series of letters she had for each of her friends with specific dates on when to open them help to process the grief.

The book is sort of sad. It has some happy, humorous moments (gotta have that comic relief), but it's mostly a sad, gripping book.

Forever in Blue

**Book 1 * Book 2 * Book 3**

This book had a tinge of the bittersweet to it. Obviously the four girls have grown up. They're in college, but they have not spent time as a foursome since the end of the last summer. Mostly because of Carmen.

Carmen goes to school and withdraws. She becomes a quiet, shy, self-conscious girl. She makes one friend at school, Julia, but otherwise she remains invisible. Julia is an aspiring actress, so she convinces Carmen to help build sets for the theater department. She then gets her to go to a theater camp in Vermont. But what happens there is not what she expects, and she finds herself both coming out of her shell and learning what friendship really is.

Bridget takes an archaeology trip to Turkey for the summer as a retaliation to her boyfriend Eric going to Mexico to be an assistant director of the soccer camp where they originally met. She enjoys the work unearthing bodies and a house. But she becomes close to Peter, a married man who is one of the directors of the dig. In the end, she learns about herself and what she needs in her life.

Tibby is in New York taking a summer screenwriting class. She has been dating Brian since the last summer. One night they get drunk and have sex, which leads to scary consequences. Tibby breaks up with Brian, mostly out of fear. She almost immediately regrets it, especially after Lena's younger sister Effie asks her permission to date Brian. She really learns what love is over the course of this book.

Lena is at art school, trying to forget about Kostos, but at the same time, not wanting to forget about him. Carmen tells her that the moment that she forgets him will probably be the time that she sees him again. But she finds that she has a growing attraction to Leo, who is in her figure class. They both want more time with the model, but due to circumstances (not being able to afford her and not being able to work with her off the books) they decide to model for each other. This creates some slight confusion for Lena, but she does forget about Kostos...just to have him appear at her door. Lena is left confused for most of this book where the other girls are learning important lessons about themselves.

I think the big thing about this book is that the girls have to figure out how to maintain their friendship. They don't get together when they should and if something happens, at least one girl shuts everyone out for a while. It's sad and they have to figure it all out.

Girls in Pants

**Book 1 * Book 2**

Something about this series is addicting to me. I find myself being sucked in each time I read it, and it seems to just speed by. But that's how I feel about books when I really like them: they just go too fast.

This is the summer before the girls go off for their freshman years in college. They're splitting up, not just for the summer, but for the year. It's going to be strange for them and they are all confused about how their friendship will endure that.

Lena is struggling with her family. She plans to go to art school, but her father suddenly tells her she can't after he discovers her taking a class that includes a nude model. He refuses to pay and if he won't pay, she won't go. But her art teacher talks her into creating a portfolio to apply for a scholarship to the school. She gets the scholarship and it won't matter if her father wants her to go or not. But their family is already dealing with some difficulties since Valia, Lena's grandmother moved into their house from Greece.

Carmen is planning to go to the same college her father went to, and her grades are so good that she's accepted to this small college. But she learns that her mother and her new stepfather are expecting a baby around the time that she's supposed to leave and it's like Carmen's world turns upside down. Carmen, the nearly 18 year old, is afraid that this new baby will replace her when she goes away to college and that her mother will forget about her, so she makes plans to not go away to college and instead go to one locally and stay in the apartment with her mother, stepfather, and the new baby. But Carmen also meets a new boy while she's caring for Lena's grandmother Valia for the summer.

Tibby is headed to NYU to work on a degree in film. But her summer becomes a wreck when she starts ignoring Brian, the boy she's close friends with, and her three year old sister falls out of Tibby's window trying to reach the apple tree in the backyard. Tibby is wracked with guilt that her sister's fall is her fault since she never opens that window and the one time she does, the three year old falls out.With her sister's accident, Tibby starts questioning everything she thought she knew.

Bridget has a bigger struggle. She spends the summer coaching soccer at a soccer camp. But one of the other coaches is none other than Eric who she had a fling with in the first book. She imagines that the whole summer will be confusing and disastrous because of what happened the end of their first summer together. But Eric has a girlfriend, so Bridget decides that they'll just be friends, and over the course of the summer they become friends.

The girls grow together and they grow in their own ways. But, as usual, they grow.

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

**Book 1**

I'm going to go ahead and say it. I love this series. There. It's out. I love this young adult chick-lit series.

The second book could arguably be better than the first. But the changes in the girls this time around are even more about love.

Carmen's mom falls in love. But Carmen is jealous and ruins it. Throughout this book she learns about love, that even though her mom has this man in her life, she still loves her daughter.

Bridget goes to Alabama to see her grandmother and learn more about her mother. In the process she learns more about herself. She finally gets out of the funk that she fell into at the end of the first book.

Tibby struggles with the fact that she's going to "college" for a film-making summer course. She makes friends with the wrong people, makes a movie that was cruel, but eventually realizes that she has to be who she is and do the movie that she was meant to make.

As for Lena, she learns a lot about love and heartbreak. Kostos comes to town and Lena's life ends up in a whirlwind. But things take a dramatic turn when he suddenly has to return to Greece.

The girls have to grow up and learn a lot of lessons about life and, for the most part, love.

Next book is before they go to college, and I'm excited to read about that.